I'm so sorry: Australia is having an election and it's going to be very dumb

[Arwon]

In this specific case, Anning was never supposed to even be visible, and wasn't noted at all during the campaign. So I'll give credit to One Nation that they weren't looking to slyly capitalise on the the tiny vote that sort of hardcore genocidal hatred would draw. They'd get that sort of voter directly or indirectly anyway. Likewise I don't think they picked the sovereign citizen or climate hoax guy or MRA to draw in those demographics. They charge like $10000 to candidates to run for their party, I think they take nearly whoever stumps up.

Someone in position 3 on the ballot of a party who was never winning 3 seats isn't expected to be visible or pubic at the best in times, and in Hanson's case the party is all about her to the extent it has her name on it. Their job was to pay the fee, maybe put in some hours handing out flyers, and the like.

As it is, Anning got just 19 "below the line" votes. That's electorally meaningless because 95% of people vote "above the line" and vote for parties not candidates... but it's still a really low number for a candidate to get as an individual in a state the size of Queensland. 19 votes is a number which suggests that, at a personal level, he didn't even have many friends or family or acquaintances who knew him and liked him well enough to vote for him directly. His ballotmate who was 4th got about 60 or 70 direct votes, which is more what you'd expect an ordinary person to be able to get just from their immediate social circles.

 

[Arwon]

Voter enrollment has now been closed. Enrollment rate is 96.8% and youth (18-24 yo) rate is 88.8%. Both are record highs.

It will be interesting to see what voter turnout is like off such a high denominator. It was 92% of enrolled voters at the last election but that's a record low since compulsory voting in 1925, with turnout generally historically close to 95%.

 

[Cheetah]

What does enrollment mean in this case? Doesn't compulsory mean compulsory?

 

[Arwon]

Enrollment is having your name and address registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, on the Electoral Roll. When you vote you get your name ticked off and given your ballots.

Not quite everyone ends up enrolled even though it is compulsory, people slip through the cracks. Young people (88%), indigenous people (77%), new citizens (94%) have lower enrollment rates and the Electoral Commission tracks those, and has outreach programs to boost them etc.

You can also slip off the electoral roll if the AEC can't confirm your details, and other agencies (eg Tax office, drivers license body) tell them you've moved. They usually have enough to directly change your details these days, though. And I think when kids get drivers licenses they can be directly enrolled tthat way.

There'd also be people with dementia or intellectual disabilities or other conditions preventing them from understanding voting. They would potentially not be enrolled in the first place, and can be removed by a carer submitting a form.

So enrolment is compulsory, but there's not really an enforcement mechanism for enrollment itself. I think you could theoretically be charged for not enrolling if you consistently and publicly refused to enroll but I'm not sure there's ever been cases about it though. You won't be fined at the point of enrolling for not previously being enrolled. These days you're most likely to be fined (about $20) as a result being on the roll via direct enrollment and then failing to vote.

 

[Cheetah]

Huh. I find that rather backwards. More or that funny stuff you got from the English, I suppose.

Here voting isn't compulsory, but everyone's registered by default. Makes everything much easier.

I can understand why they don't do it in the UK and US, as they want to make it difficult to vote, but since Australia has made it compulsory, I thought you at least had done away with it.

 

[Arwon]

We don't have an all-purpose identification card and population register like yours, which makes these sorts of things a bit trickier.

This also means we have to have a Census regularly to track things like demographics. Each major federal database of individuals (tax, electoral roll, retained census data, and Medicare), as well as state drivers licenses, are all kept separately.

It's really easy to enroll and update, and as I said the Electoral Commission now tries to do things automatically by cooperating with the other agencies. But it's not perfect even though compulsory voting means the spirit of the electoral system is easy universality.

 

[Cheetah]

I'm sure it's easy (to some extent), but it's still a hurdle that people must overcome. It's hard enough to get people excited enough to vote on election day, but you also need to excite them enough to enroll earlier...

Do you also have this big hangup on refusing to have ID cards, like the Brits and Americans?

 

[Arwon]

Australians are, as a general rule, ultracops, massive rule followers. We apparently have a piece of legislation that can punish people for making and selling certain biscuits that insufficiently adhere to troop-respecting norms.

Most interactions with the state or with significant commercial things like phone contracts and banks require several forms of identification including a photo ID anyway, and we mostly use our universal Medicare cards as one of those forms of ID.

I've little doubt that such a national ID reform would be viable if done in a bipartisan way, but the two times it's seriously come up, the other party has opposed it. Our electoral politics are super cautious and oppositional. The introduction of a national ID card in the 1980s was massively botched by Labor, and a Liberal "access card" in 2006 was ditched when Labor won office. Nobody's been game to touch it since.

However, database integration has gone a lot further since then - with things such as the "direct enrollment" power of the Electoral Commission and with the combination of census data with other databases for analysis. It's quite possible that datasharing might eventually go far enough to achieve the same function as a proper national ID.

 

[Camikaze]

There's no big hangup about it. It's just that it's not a thing, never has been a thing, and has never (within my memory) really been seriously suggested as a thing. It's probably because the most common form of ID, the driver's licence, is issued on the state level. That's a fairly unique reason relating to the specific allocation of competences in Australian constitution.

 

[Arwon]

There's no big hangup about it. It's just that it's not a thing, never has been a thing, and has never (within my memory) really been seriously suggested as a thing. It's probably because the most common form of ID, the driver's licence, is issued on the state level. That's a fairly unique reason relating to the specific allocation of competences in Australian constitution.

The Australia Card would have done this, and the Access Card would have been a start along the road.

 

[Cheetah]

To be fair, we've spent 12 years now (iirc) to try and implement a Norwegian ID card and it just got postponed again. Though no one is negative to actually getting it.

The electoral enrollment thing still looks like a bad thing though. The English were early starters with elections and a parliamentary system. It was good for its time, I suppose, but really is in need for some modernization nowadays.

 

[Arwon]

The British also do things with their election like making you turn up to a specific polling place rather than being able to vote from almost anywhere in the country, there's a lot of other issues going on there!

 

[Traitorfish]

If you think that's bad, you should see the people we vote for.

 

[Cheetah]

 

[Takhisis]

If you think that's bad, you should see the people we vote for.

You really deserve the apology in the title if the OP has gotten you to call yourself British.

 

[Mise]

Without having read the thread and large chunks of the OP, I have a few questions:

1. Have your politicians stopped trying to get each other disqualified from political office for being secretly Kiwis?
2. What happened to Eggboy? Is he running? What are his chances?
3. Is this guy for real? https://twitter.com/EssexCanning/status/1122191038469292033
4. Do they really still call them "boat people"? I mean, boat people.

 

[Takhisis]

Without having read the thread

Not that you're missing much.

On the subject of missing: has anybody seen rugbyLEAGUEfan?

 

[Ferocitus]

If you think that's bad, you should see the people we vote for.

Are they worse than the bishops and druids in the HoL who you don't vote for?

 

[FriendlyFire]

One Nation candiate filmed at a high class strip club
Well it would be One Nation, they should just rename themselves the Bogan Nation.

 

[Arwon]

Without having read the thread and large chunks of the OP, I have a few questions:

1. Have your politicians stopped trying to get each other disqualified from political office for being secretly Kiwis?
2. What happened to Eggboy? Is he running? What are his chances?
3. Is this guy for real? https://twitter.com/EssexCanning/status/1122191038469292033
4. Do they really still call them "boat people"? I mean, boat people.

1. There's a new process to pre-screen for section 44 constitutional issues (which also include being a bankrupt or profiting from an office of the crown as well as dual citizenship) but it's basically a checklist and is voluntary. A lot of minor parties who won't get elected probably have issues with their candidates. The two major parties are being hyper-vigilant and have removed over half a dozen candidates for citizenship or employment reasons, in some cases due to a surplus of caution, mostly from seats where they had no chance of winning. Some cases are where they tried to renounce citizenships but just didn't get confirmation back from the other country in time.

2. Fraser Anning was only accidentally elected as a down-ballot candidate for Pauline Hanson's party. He's formed his own party, it's presumably full of nazis and criminals, the main use of which will be telling the police and intelligence services who they need to watch as far as white supremacist violence goes. For instance their lead candidate here is on a suspended sentence for trying to strangle an animal welfare worker after he stole his neglected dog back off the RSPCA.

3. Yes, Pauline Hanson's One Nation are the "populist" racist party and will get a senator in Queensland off maybe 8 or 9% of the vote (quota is 1/7th, 14.3%), and possibly another senate seat or two. Their vetting and candidate selection are a freakshow, which is how we got Fraser Anning. Their Queensland leader just resigned over a strip club video where he's being racist and msogynist, after he survived being filmed by Al-Jazeera soliciting money from the American NRA and tried to spin it as foreign espionage.

4. Yes.