I am writing to state my full support Alderman Marti Zucco’s call for compulsory voting and I share his concerns raised in ‘Making Voting Compulsory’ (printed on TT on 27.10.11 (HERE)
The overall participation of the community and return of postal votes was abysmal; this should ring alarm bells at all levels of government.
The low vote shows a disengagement of the public from the political process and I believe this is accompanied by a mentality that councils are filled with opportunists, bureaucrats and government puppets.
Many believe local government is responsible for little more than rubber stamping developments for state government, making sure garbage is collected, sending out parking fines and dealing with zoning issues and building permissions.
Council is the grassroots of our democracy and the public needs education not only around the role of council but also the importance and power the people have in this forum.
Unfortunately the current non-compulsory postal voting system is enough for the people to disengage from the process and is the antithesis of participatory democracy.
Alderman Zucco is correct to question non-received ballots and the accuracy of the signature check system.
The postal system is disenchanting for the public, entirely impersonal, complicated and potentially susceptible to corruption and fraud.
Although fully supporting Zucco’s call for compulsory voting, as is the case for state and federal elections, I believe that a movement towards compulsory voting must be coupled with a return to attendance voting.
Like Zucco I believe that electronic voting is a way forward in a tech savvy era, and I recognise the potential benefits of independence and confidentiality this would give to people with disabilities and the visually impaired.
I also feel that the paper ballot system is important to maintain; for many older voters the thought of electronic voting is daunting and complicated.
Having the benefit of having seen compulsory voting in Victoria’s local government, low voter turnout is still a problem and I believe this is in part due to the continued use of postal voting.
I believe this is in part a reflection on the dissatisfaction with candidates and political party dominated councils.
It has been true that council does attract political careerists with disclosed and undisclosed party affiliations and in some cases very little community credentials or participation.
Elections then becomes little more than an exercise in who has the most funding and backing to flood homes with election materials. It then becomes a matter of cashed up candidates sitting back and letting face and name recognition push them over the line.
For a voter under the postal voting system, council election day is nothing more than a deadline for residents to sit down and sift through the election material which has bombarded their letterboxes for the past weeks.
This then turns into rather depressing game of preferencing from bad to worse, signing the ballot and getting it to the post box before the deadline.
On a positive note I have the benefit of having experienced both the postal and attendance voting systems since living in Victoria.
When I lived under an attendance voting council, there was an incredible vibrancy and feeling of participatory democracy in the air.
For the first time in my life I experienced budding council candidates, their representatives and supporters knocking on my door wanting to discuss local issues.
There were options for early voting at town halls in the weeks leading up to the election and these town halls were manned by candidates and their supporters all on hand to talk to residents and hand out election materials and how to vote cards.
The actual election day was not a deadline but had an amazing energy; community halls and schools became voting booths flooded with placards, candidates and their supporters.
There was an incredible sense of community as schools used the huge numbers coming through their gates as a chance to raise money through cake and craft stalls as well as sausage sizzles.
A number of Councils in South Australia and Victoria are now moving back to attendance voting.
I would like to see a Tasmania which not only encourages participation of voters but also makes the voter an active part of a collective political process.
I believe this can only happen with compulsory voting which is accompanied by attendance voting.
I would like to commend Marti Zucco for raising the issue of compulsory voting and also commend Tim Morris for taking this issue to the state parliament.
Michael Harbison
November 6, 2011 at 09:48
I would like to see:
(1) The weblink on this TT article to Marti Zucco’s 27Oct TT article entitled “Make Voting Compulsory” actually work properly. (Ed: done)
(2) The Tas Electoral Commission set up a webpage where electors can enter in a few of their private details such as middle names and enrolled address street name, to see how many postal ballot envelopes the TEC claims to have received from them in the past state/local govt elections.
Local councils are able to issue replacement ballot papers for local govt elections. Council general managers have their contracts renewed subject to the consent of the majority of councillors. Obviously there needs to be some check on whether (there is any corruption of process)
Was interesting to note Dr Kevin Bonham’s considerable resistance to the second of these suggestions. A lot of TT’s readers believe Dr Bonham is independent but I think otherwise. I also have no confidence in the Tasmanian Electoral Commission.
Dean Parry
November 6, 2011 at 21:08
The Tasmanian Electoral Commission has to abolish the postal ballot system. It is common knowledge the infirm and the feeble minded are used by political parties to bolster their vote! Dr Bonham’s reaction to this suggestion has raised considerable doubt and concern in the wider community.
Dr Kevin Bonham
November 7, 2011 at 00:11
Michael Harbison (#1), could you please clarify what or who you consider me to be not independent of so far as this debate is concerned?
If you are suggesting I am not independent of the Tasmanian Electoral Commission then that suggestion is simply factually [b]wrong[/b], and is an opinion to which you are not entitled. Indeed such a suggestion has no more merit than if I were to write “A lot of TT’s readers believe Michael Harbison is not actually a one-eared blind yellow spotted elephant that plays the saxophone incredibly badly, but I think otherwise”. As noted on another thread I have no relation to the TEC beyond that I see them at election time and am on good terms with several of them in that context, particularly because they do a very good job and are helpful to scrutineers. I don’t know anyone there personally outside that context and have never worked for the TEC in any capacity. It’s time for a very small number of people to stop being silly about this and realise that their disagreement with my views does not give them the right to make up claims that just aren’t true. I’ll be referring any further nonsense on this score to moderation, including any vague claims of non-independence that could be read as implying a relationship with the TEC that doesn’t exist.
I’m flattered by Dean Parry’s suggestion that my musings on the local council electoral system would be influential enough to rouse “considerable doubt and concern in the wider community” but I humbly suggest that claim is bulldust.
Dr Kevin Bonham
November 7, 2011 at 03:10
Oh, and for the record, my “considerable resistance” to suggestion (2) in #1 was confined to its woefully inadequate privacy protections. Middle names and enrolled street address are hardly “private” information for these purposes because many people will know them or at least have a fair chance of guessing. I would support a system that enabled an elector who could supply truly private information to monitor the progress of their vote. What I do not support is a free pass to stickybeaking into whether someone else has voted or not.
As for the article itself, I don’t share the author’s feeling that a process basically the same as what happens at a federal election (HTV cards, posters at polling booths, etc) is really such an amazing community outpouring or participatory buzz. If the cake stalls do well, well that’s very nice, but it’s hardly a valid argument for an illiberal policy.
Indeed, in Tasmanian state elections we’ve improved the day considerably by banning HTVs, which makes it more likely voters will think for themselves (at least in ordering candidates within their party) and eliminates the need for parties to have people out at polling booths (which disadvantages small parties anyway.)
I also don’t think the supposedly low return rate demonstrates cynicism about council politics. Indeed I have little doubt there is less general cynicism about council politics compared to state and federal politics – it’s more likely that many voters do not vote because they don’t feel informed enough. Forcing them to vote won’t make them get informed as they will be able to just vote for whatever party they vote for at state or federal level. We know there are many voters who vote more or less unthinkingly at these levels. In contrast, watching ballot papers being counted and seeing the effort with which many voters do order their preferences, I know that a high proportion of those who do vote in local government are reading the candidates’ statements and ordering the candidates with care. Hardly anyone will bother reading those statements when voting becomes an exercise in getting in and out of the polling booth quickly while juggling voting and half a dozen other commitments.
As for that turnout, Tasmania is very much outperforming those other states that have voluntary postal voting, both in terms of the proportion of electors voting and in terms of the durability of the turnout. One thing that’s very notable in Tasmanian council elections is that the return rates are highest in the smallest (in population terms) municipalities. In these communities, people know the candidates and understand what councils are about. It may also be the case that in small electorates people know their vote is more likely to matter. The response rates would not be likely to vary in this way if there was a generally negative perception of councils and councillors that was promoting widespread apathy.
Making voting compulsory will not produce turnout rates that are as high as at federal elections. Even NSW, which uses compulsory booth voting, still got only 83% turnout in 2008 (federal norm is about 94%). A similar issue is seen here with Legislative Council elections. It’s probably got nothing to do with displeasure at the candidates offered, since federal elections still get high turnouts even when both parties and their leaders are strongly disliked. More likely, even making some levels of voting compulsory does not guarantee everyone knows there’s an election on. Some people need wall-to-wall hype to pay attention.
But if dissatisfaction with political parties is the problem then we need only consider the likely nexus between compulsory voting and easier election for party careerists without community credentials. Yes careerists (endorsed and unendorsed) do get elected to local councils as it is – but generally they have to demonstrate some kind of relevance to get in in the first place, at least in my experience of Hobart Council. (About the only exception to that is that if you manage to get endorsed Greens #1 in some municipalities, you’ll get in – but even then [i]most[/i] of those thus endorsed have the form on the board.) We’ve just seen in Hobart that the Labor Party ran an endorsed campaign and polled less than 5% of the vote. It appears the candidate’s relative lack of Council-related community experience was a factor here – whether he was actually a careerist or not, he may have been perceived as one. Is it likely or even plausible that if voting was compulsory that a sole Labor endorsed candidate could fail in this manner? I really don’t think that it is.
Dean Parry
November 7, 2011 at 21:42
#4 “I’m flattered by Dean Parry’s suggestion that my musings on the local council electoral system would be influential enough to rouse “considerable doubt and concern in the wider communityâ€.
There is no cause to be flattered. Quite the opposite. It is not your ‘musings’ that are at issue. This is what I wrote “It is common knowledge the infirm and the feeble minded are used by political parties to bolster their vote! Dr Bonham’s reaction to this suggestion has raised considerable doubt and concern in the wider community.”
It is his (in my view) defensive reaction to any suggestion thde current system is a joke that has attracted attention to him in the broader community.
Dr Kevin Bonham
November 8, 2011 at 00:41
Dean, firstly I never actually reacted to any suggestion that “the infirm and the feeble minded are used by political parties to bolster their vote!” since no suggestion to that exact effect was put to me. Issues of alleged vote theft were raised on a previous thread, and implausible claims that the Greens benefit from voluntary voting were also made, but no connection was drawn between the two.
Secondly my term “my musings on the local council electoral system” was a general term that, in this context, could include any specific case provided it was actually real.
The attention to me in the broader community on this issue so far consists of (i) yours and (ii) comments from two people called Harbison, who I assume just might be related. Wake me up when there are more people bothered about my comments than voted for you in the election!
Dean Parry
November 8, 2011 at 08:36
I reiterate.
“It is common knowledge the infirm and the feeble minded are used by political parties to bolster their vote! Dr Bonham’s reaction to this suggestion has raised considerable doubt and concern in the wider community.”
Dr Kevin Bonham
November 8, 2011 at 13:08
I reiterate: Dean is just trolling. Repeating the same nonsense after it has been clearly discredited isn’t going to make it true.
Brian Austen
November 8, 2011 at 15:52
The reason for compulsory voting was to save the political parties the expense and effort put to get people to the polling booth.
Hopefully we will continue to be largely free of political parties in local government in Tasmania. If so there is simply no valid reason to try and make everyone have a voting opinion. The size of the turnout is simply no reason for compulsory voting, especially in the absense of any observable significant deficiency in either process or outcome.
I suspect that the call for compulsory voting is really code for a dislike of the results.
Dean Parry
November 8, 2011 at 16:41
#8 None of the claims have been discredited. Your alarmimist reaction and subsequent denial is not helping you case.
Dr Kevin Bonham
November 8, 2011 at 23:56
Dean Parry’s accusation of denial on my part is both hypocritical and baseless, since the claim I am accused of incorrectly denying is demonstrably false. The reasons it was false were provided in #6 and Parry has completely failed to engage with them.
I will not be responding further to Dean Parry on this thread but I thank him for his advance booking of last place on my ballot paper (and doubtless a few others!) the next time he runs for anything. 🙂
Dean Parry
November 9, 2011 at 08:24
#11 The weight of public opinion has got you on this one. The whole state is alarmed at your reactionary approach to the fact that the system is rorted.
abs
November 9, 2011 at 14:34
he is right , Kevin, it is on everyone lips. all i have heard all week, from work colleagues, friends, associates and random people in the street, is, “OMG, have you heard what Kevin Bonham is (allegedly…) reactively saying about Dean Parry’s correct assessment of our rorted system of government” .
and that Deano is so handsome and dashing