How do we get more people out to vote?

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Forums › Politics › How do we get more people out to vote?

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heylinb4nz

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#1136559 24-Sep-2014 14:33

nate: What are your ideas for encouraging more people to vote? Online voting? Mobile voting? Mandatory voting like Australia?

Let's try and keep political party preferences out of this.

Rather than vote for a party have a 50 question online survey that establishes what party policies and local issues align most with whats important to you and then said system presents you with a list of parties and candidates that match the profile from strongest to weakest.

Have a pool of prizes (drawn at random) for people that participate.

It has to be online, it has be to be simple, it needs some reward or potential of reward.

Better still educate people on Rothschild Zionism and how the world really works and perhaps they will realise that voting is pointless.

DravidDavid

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#1136910 24-Sep-2014 20:42

heylinb4nz:
nate: What are your ideas for encouraging more people to vote? Online voting? Mobile voting? Mandatory voting like Australia?

Let's try and keep political party preferences out of this.

Rather than vote for a party have a 50 question online survey that establishes what party policies and local issues align most with whats important to you and then said system presents you with a list of parties and candidates that match the profile from strongest to weakest. Have a pool of prizes (drawn at random) for people that participate. It has to be online, it has be to be simple, it needs some reward or potential of reward. Better still educate people on Rothschild Zionism and how the world really works and perhaps they will realise that voting is pointless.

I don't feel as if this would work. I took a bunch of those surveys before the election, some of them twice and came up with a different result every time!

heylinb4nz: Better still educate people on Rothschild Zionism and how the world really works and perhaps they will realise that voting is pointless.

...True though.

plod

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#1136963 24-Sep-2014 21:51

oxnsox: I'm not a fan of online voting.

The right to vote carries some responsibility, it's a right that has a lot of history, through war and peace, associated with it. Perhaps in this country that's not well understood, or respected.... probably because we have no shared boarders and are rather remote.

Taking the time to vote makes it a considered vote, or it should. Doing this on line leads to doing it at the supermarket checkout/coffee shop/ or when you use your snapper card. In short you'd vote when you're more focused on buying your big mac than on the responsibilty that should surround your voting decision.

Getting more people to do it would require things to get really bad; this would incentivise people to vote (and appreciate it), or threaten something that impacts them more directly (in the short term).
Historically people seem to vote for either change or for leadership.
And yes MMP could do with some tweeks, but there is no perfect system. However it has taken us a few more elections than folk thought before we're starting to fully understand how parties and individuals can manipulate it.

i know a paralysed gentleman that didn't vote as it was to much of a hassle to go out in the rain. So online voting would have been handy

Geektastic

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#1136985 24-Sep-2014 22:09

plod:
oxnsox: I'm not a fan of online voting.

The right to vote carries some responsibility, it's a right that has a lot of history, through war and peace, associated with it. Perhaps in this country that's not well understood, or respected.... probably because we have no shared boarders and are rather remote.

Taking the time to vote makes it a considered vote, or it should. Doing this on line leads to doing it at the supermarket checkout/coffee shop/ or when you use your snapper card. In short you'd vote when you're more focused on buying your big mac than on the responsibilty that should surround your voting decision.

Getting more people to do it would require things to get really bad; this would incentivise people to vote (and appreciate it), or threaten something that impacts them more directly (in the short term).
Historically people seem to vote for either change or for leadership.
And yes MMP could do with some tweeks, but there is no perfect system. However it has taken us a few more elections than folk thought before we're starting to fully understand how parties and individuals can manipulate it.
i know a paralysed gentleman that didn't vote as it was to much of a hassle to go out in the rain. So online voting would have been handy

Postal voting is available I believe.

Fred99

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#1137138 25-Sep-2014 09:47

Sideface:
nathan: With compulsory.voting you can quite easily cast a nothing vote just by spoiling your paper.

As an Australian now living in NZ, I have several decades of experience with compulsory voting in Oz.
Australian voting papers are very complicated and the voter is required to number ALL of the candidates on one or more voting papers in order of preference.
There may be 50 or more candidates, listed in alphabetical order.
This can result in a "donkey vote" by disinterested voters - just number the first candidate "1" and continue down the list.
One famous candidate for the Communist Party was called Adam Aarons, and his name improved his party vote considerably.
Even a motivated Oz voter can easily accidentally spoil his/her voting paper.

Keep it simple (like NZ).
The new option in NZ for (unrestricted) early voting is excellent.

"Informal" votes were < 6% in the last federal elections. (Sequential) donkey votes are supposedly about 1%, but position on the voting papers isn't alphabetical but random. The same can happen here (but just ticking the top box) - also why position on the ballot papers isn't alphabetical. Casting of random but non-sequential preferences can't be isolated and identified, but the result of this overall is also reasonably random. Whichever way you look at it, 'valid" participation rates in Aus are (much) higher than here. That's probably a good thing.
I agree that the Aus system of listing and counting preferences is complicated - but that's got nothing to do with the fact that voting is compulsory - they are two separate issues.

On another topic relating to our system here, with "thresholds" for party representation, there seems to be some acceptance that a high-ish (ie 5% as we have) threshold is needed "to keep the lunatic fringe out of parliament".
I'd argue that the"lunatic fringe" is an emotive, subjective term, and there have been quite a few MPs from various "mainstream" parties with very dubious sanity anyway.
If the objective is perhaps to keep "radicalism" out of parliament, then a system which effectively denies representation to "radicals" is potentially dangerous. Better (IMO) to let "the lunatics and radicals" have a voice - rather than drive them underground.

BurningBeard

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#1137193 25-Sep-2014 10:19

heylinb4nz:Better still educate people on Rothschild Zionism and how the world really works and perhaps they will realise that voting is pointless.

Don't forget they need to start teaching about UFOs, HAARP and Chemtrails in science class too.
And they really need to drop that crap about The Moon being real. Pfft!

My very metal Doctor Who theme

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Geektastic

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#1137454 25-Sep-2014 13:22

BurningBeard:
heylinb4nz:Better still educate people on Rothschild Zionism and how the world really works and perhaps they will realise that voting is pointless.

Don't forget they need to start teaching about UFOs, HAARP and Chemtrails in science class too.
And they really need to drop that crap about The Moon being real. Pfft!

And how will the poor afford Tin Foil Hats?!

BurningBeard

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#1137592 25-Sep-2014 15:40

heylinb4nz: So you are saying that its all just coincidence that these events play into the hands of a very small people (who all happen to have Jewish banking connections).

You'd have to be more specific.

heylinb4nz: I think the truth that politicians are corrupt, corporations are greedy, and world bankers are power and money hungry holds more water than ...oh well thats just how things panned out you know...no conspiracv here.

I think the real truth is more complicated than that.

It's nice & easy to boil it down to a small group nefariously running the world (the Jooz, the interdimensional shape shifting reptoids, NWO, Illuminati, Freemasons, whatever) because, while it's not a very nice concept, at least that makes it feel that at least *someone* is control, because the reality that the world is completely rudderless and chaotic is even scarier a thought.

Icke's narratives are disjointed and dubious at best.
The last time I tried to sit through one of his "talks" I turned it off because it was just nonsense. There must have been ten easily debunkable bites of junk-science is as many minutes. (He was trying to sound "sciency" with some science facts that were just miles off.)
He's made a real art out of looking convincing while spouting out patently absurd drivel.

Yeah, yeah, there's greasy politicians and greedy corporations; that's hardly ground-breaking news to me. I can figure that using mainstream sources without resorting to whackjobs and charlatains. Shapeshifting Aliens controlling our minds from a fake moon?... that's going a bit far.

These are complicated issues that are hard enough to comprehend without these nutjobs and charlatans scribbling pseudo-science and fantasy over them.

My very metal Doctor Who theme