Voting in Downunder

is often a sociable sort of affair. There are the queues where even people on opposite sides of the political divide will stand and chat amiably enough to one another. The party faithful handing out the "how to vote" leaflets have even been known to support one another. 

Inside the polling station there is no need to show any form of "ID". It is just assumed you are who you say you are.  It does not matter what you look like or how you are dressed.  

You can go privately into the little cardboard cubby and take your time. Nobody can see how you vote. Nobody puts your thumb into indelible ink. On the way out you might buy one of those "election sausages" to support the school or community centre or other venue the polling station is being housed in. People go and vote in their bare feet and swim suits. This election I saw someone in pyjamas and slippers.  

There are people who still do not know who they intend to vote for even when they are standing in the queue. They take all the leaflets handed to them. They will vote on the basis of someone's looks and not on the policies. 

And therein lies a problem. It is all too easy. Political parties do not need to work to get the vote of the vast majority because of the compulsion to vote. (There is no compulsion to actually vote, just take the ballot papers and mark them in some way, but the vast majority of us actually do vote - and rightly so.) We take it all very casually.

Some years ago there was a kerfuffle at the state election because a family or group got together and claimed they had voted multiple times, enough times to influence the outcome of the election. A senior member of the electoral commission  admitted that, with organisation and discipline what they claimed to have done was possible. Did they actually do it or was it just a poor joke? We do not know. Changes have been made since then to prevent that happening again if it happened at all. That has to be a good thing.

But perhaps we really do need some other changes as well.  We need to change our voting system so that would be members of parliament actually do need to work for all the votes they get not just those of the small percentage of "swinging" voters. 

I say this because the local member, now returned, barely put her head above the parapet during the election campaign. She has been barely visible for the past three years but she was returned. She will be barely visible for the next three years. There is no need for her to be visible. It is a "safe" seat for all it was touted to be otherwise.

There should be no "safe" seats for any member. We should have to go to the polls knowing a great deal more than we do.