by mos_basik | 2026-01-23 20:22:15+00:00
Disclaimer: I'm not Australian.

It'd be a pity to get heated up over a misunderstanding of the Australian election system.

OP said (somewhat confusingly I admit):

>[Australia has] compulsory attendance at voting booths for eligible citizens, you can spoil your paper or walk away but we enforce with a fine,

and I think you understood that to mean:

>Australian citizens must choose: drop a valid ballot in the box or be fined

but I think what OP intended was (and this is consistent with the Australia Electoral Commission website [0]):

>Australian citizens must choose: drop a ballot (spoiled is fine) in the box or be fined

(As an aside - one WILL get fined if one appears the polling place but refuses to drop a ballot in the box - see [1].)

Then, believing (incorrectly) that casting a spoiled ballot incurs the fine, you said "Then my refusal to vote should be counted [for the system to be anywhere near reasonable, given that I went to the polling place and exercised my civic duty to the extent permitted by my moral fiber, fully expecting to be fined for it]" (emphasis and context added).

And Australia does keep track of how many "informal votes" (their term for what we're calling spoiled ballots here) are cast. See [2] for an official results page breaking out informal votes by count and percent. But informal votes have no bearing on the election results; they are thrown out and only the valid votes contribute to the result.

So I think you're fundamentally asking for the "informal votes" to have a first-class mechanism for contributing to the election result (specifics TBD, maybe a threshold to meet, maybe an disqualification of the candidates for a period of time, maybe a re-do, whatever).

And that's a valid ask and an interesting discussion to have!

But given that the reason you asked for that was based on a misunderstanding, do you even still want that? Do you still think the AUS system is unreasonable as-is?

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0. https://aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/voting/index.htm#c...

>Under the Electoral Act, the actual duty of the elector is to attend a polling place, have their name marked off the certified list, receive a ballot paper and take it to an individual voting booth, mark it, fold the ballot paper and place it in the ballot box.

>Because of the secrecy of the ballot, it is not possible to determine whether a person has completed their ballot paper prior to placing it in the ballot box. It is therefore not possible to determine whether all electors have met their legislated duty to vote. It is, however, possible to determine that an elector has attended a polling place or mobile polling team (or applied for a postal vote, pre-poll vote or absent vote) and been issued with a ballot paper.

1. https://www.aec.gov.au/about_aec/publications/backgrounders/...

in Krosch v Springell, at the polling place, Mr Springell handed the presiding officer a note saying, paraphrased, "none of these candidates deserve my vote". He was fined, because it could be proven that he didn't uphold the "duty of the elector" as defined in [0].

2. https://results.aec.gov.au/31496/Website/HouseInformalByStat...