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Push to lower Australia's compulsory voting age to 16 as advocate says youngsters feeling 'disenfranchised' (www.abc.net.au)

submitted 7 months ago by Zagorath@aussie.zone to c/australianpolitics@aussie.zone

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[-] Ilandar@aussie.zone 3 points 7 months ago

Why compulsory and not optional? Is there the same level of opposition to both?

[-] zik@aussie.zone 11 points 7 months ago

Compulsory is such a good system. It doesn't take long. It's on a weekend so it's not inconvenient. You get a sausage at the sausage sizzle and you do your vote. There's a real holiday atmosphere. And it produces much more representative results. Brexit wouldn't have happened if they had compulsory voting so there's no denying it's valuable.

[-] BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

"you get a sausage at the sausage sizzle" is going to be my phrase of the week, thank you!

[-] Ilandar@aussie.zone 1 points 7 months ago

To be clear, I am asking why the "push" is for compulsory and not optional, given there is likely to be stronger opposition to the former. Either will give a voice to those who want one, but on paper optional would seem to be a more realistic goal and therefore makes more sense to advocate for. Advocating for compulsory kind of feels like letting perfect be the enemy of good, so to speak.

[-] irasponsible@beehaw.org 2 points 7 months ago

Changing the voting age is one change, but making voting non compulsory for some voters starts to get messy. It would also be an easy thing for a government to tweak to reduce youth voter turnout by shifting that number around.

[-] zik@aussie.zone 2 points 7 months ago

Why not start them off in the way you mean to continue? It's not like there are any significant downsides.

[-] Ilandar@aussie.zone 2 points 7 months ago

Increased opposition is a significant downside.

[-] jagungal@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The push is to lower the voting age to 16. Plus, I doubt making it optional until 18 would change many people's minds on whether or not we should lower the voting age.