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That's interesting history on the name Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

I could be wrong but isn't Kentucky known as the "Commonwealth of Kentucky"? Which I'm guessing is a throwback to the days of British rule?

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My polling place was pretty empty, but in UT many take advantage to vote early.

I work the graveyard shift so I walked in all bleary eyed. Knowing I had to provide photo ID I blindly reached into my wallet and handed the pollster my VISA debit card. Pretty funny moment as the nice ladies were having a good time with that. :taunt:

It makes me feel good to study up on the candidates & ballot issues and then cast my votes!

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That's interesting history on the name Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

I could be wrong but isn't Kentucky known as the "Commonwealth of Kentucky"? Which I'm guessing is a throwback to the days of British rule?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_%28U.S._state%29

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Voting is compulsory here in Australia, for both Federal and state elections.

Local government though is elective voting.

Question - What's the penalty if you don't vote in the compulsory elections?

I've heard of compulsory voting before but never any of the consequences if you don't.

Ken

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Question - What's the penalty if you don't vote in the compulsory elections?

I've heard of compulsory voting before but never any of the consequences if you don't.

Ken

If you don't participate in the compulsory voting in Australia......you get deported to New Zealand. :D

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Question - What's the penalty if you don't vote in the compulsory elections?

I've heard of compulsory voting before but never any of the consequences if you don't.

Ken

I don't understand this law. If I pay my taxes, why can't the government just leave me alone? I disagree with the notion of everyone gets one vote. The right to vote should be earned, not granted. And I know a lot of people (myself included) have no desire to go through the troubles to earn that right, they just don't say it in public because it's taboo.

Terry

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If you don't participate in the compulsory voting in Australia......you get deported to New Zealand. :woot.gif:

Holy crap!!! I wish Canada had this "penalty"!!! I'd make sure I was caught and processed!!

(would kill to live in NZ)

Tilt

btw - it's great to see this stay non-political, and just an interesting topic of voting in elections. Guess you missed that part pinkpuppy.

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That's interesting history on the name Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

I could be wrong but isn't Kentucky known as the "Commonwealth of Kentucky"? Which I'm guessing is a throwback to the days of British rule?

There are four Commonwealths that are not technically "states". Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Kentucky.

J

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A surprising number of the under 30 crowd showed up where I voted, and some seemed really informed about what they were casting their ballots for, though none openly said "I voted for", and in California that's very encouraging!!.

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I think they should make today a voting holiday for all

I've brought up the concept of a national voter's holiday with my coworkers... You get the day off (WITH PAY) if you vote. If you provide proof of your voter registration and voting stub or something like that, you get paid. Otherwise, if you're not going to vote you gotta work as normal.

The point being it rewards you for voting, and if you weren't going to you don't get anything different. Great way to get major increases in voter turnout.

P.S. We're not talking politics. We're talking the mechanics of voting, and maybe an issue or two. Nobody's touting their favored candidate nor are they talking about policies or opinions of other candidates.

We're just talking about a common, shared, experience and the merits or quirks it entails.

Edited by Mark M.
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Question - What's the penalty if you don't vote in the compulsory elections?

I've heard of compulsory voting before but never any of the consequences if you don't.

Ken

they send them back to england !!! :)

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We're not talking politics. We're talking the mechanics of voting, and maybe an issue or two. Nobody's touting their favored candidate nor are they talking about policies or opinions of other candidates.

We're just talking about a common, shared, experience and the merits or quirks it entails.

Right, it's the mechanics of voting, if you will. So it's not really politics.

I've never voted in my life because there isn't an option to vote "against" a candidate. Why won't they allow that? The way it'd work is a vote against candidate A essentially balances out someone else's vote for candidate A. The end result is the same, but it shows you how much each candidate is loved or loathed. Yes that means someone can actually win with a negative number of votes as long as there is someone else with an even worst negative score.

This way you never have to vote "for" a politician (and inevitably get disappointed or lied to), yet still fulfill your civic duty (which I think is a crock of nonsense) by voting against someone else. The net results are the same, but it's the principal that matters. Wouldn't that be cool? Too bad it'll never happen.

Terry

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Ooh, I'd love that. Even better, give people like "20 points". You could then vote for 20 different offices, 1pt each. Or cast 20pts AGAINST a single person if you really, really didn't want them for a particular office.

Basically---you'd get as many points/options as there are offices---same as normal. Many people would probably use 1 point per office, and there'd be little difference from a normal election. Some would use 2 or 3 points against a single person, and thus "give up" being able to vote for a few offices they don't care much about. And some would use many points for or against just a few candidates.

Of course, if you have a bunch of "county conservation board vice chair" options etc, that would mean you have a large number of points, and many people would "skip" the local/lesser offices in order to put large numbers of points into senate/representative etc.

Edited by David Hingtgen
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Question - What's the penalty if you don't vote in the compulsory elections?

I've heard of compulsory voting before but never any of the consequences if you don't.

Ken

If you can't provide a valid reason for not voting you get fined $20. Though I'm not sure how zealous they are about enforcing this. Also, if you don't put your name on the electoral roll in the first place I don't know how they can tell you didn't vote. Anyway, you can always deliberately mess up your ballot. A record number of people voted informal (~5%) at the last Federal election, in some electorates is was as high as ~20%.

Chris

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I've brought up the concept of a national voter's holiday with my coworkers... You get the day off (WITH PAY) if you vote. If you provide proof of your voter registration and voting stub or something like that, you get paid. Otherwise, if you're not going to vote you gotta work as normal.

I am fine with making it a true holiday, if one want's to put icing on the cake like you wrote, I would make it, if a person votes in a giving year they get a free pass on not doing jury duty for that year.

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Voting gives you the right to make credible opinions on your government.

Voting reveals to yourself your opinion on whom you vote for, nobody can take that away from you.

Voting shows that you accept that right and you use it.

Sure your choices may not be what you truly want nor may they be best for you or your society in the bigger picture. In essence we truly only vote for 'Provisional Governments' in our developed, so called democratic world as the bankers, Wall Street manipulators, other elite corporatists and their cronies really pull the strings. But! a strong provisional government can and has at times risen to fight these back room boys who only live for power, fear mongering and most of all never ending greed.

So yes, vote but a serious voter should be well informed and not mislead by the political elites, their media talking heads and self proclaimed experts before you cast that vote. Vote for your better interest as a citizen and as a member of a greater society.

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The point being it rewards you for voting

I heard an interesting discussion on this exact point yesterday. One participant made a good point: Rewarding voting is counterproductive. What you don't want is to lure the uninformed to the polls just because. An uninformed voter is dangerous to democracy.

His other point: Why reward expected behavior? It's a civic duty. Voters should be happy to vote, since there are still lots of places in the world where the average person doesn't have the right or ability to cast a free and fair vote. How sad that we feel the need to reward people for exercising a precious and hard-won right such as this.

That said, I agree that national election days should be national holidays.

J

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That said, I agree that national election days should be national holidays.

J

Kinda silly when I think about it. We celebrate "holiday" our independence tho we don't celebrate keeping/making it work yet we celebrate on a GRAND SCALE a year change :woot.gif:

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Our polling place was in a local elementary school gymnasium. There were a bunch of pictures on the wall of scary monsters (or possibly Halloween costumes) drawn by the kids. I asked one of the poll workers if it they were violating election rules by putting up pictures of the candidates..

SN

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