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Comment by boredatoms | Hacker News Reader

Australia has a solution for this: mandatory voting

It's that or sortition.

How can they signal mistrust towards all of the candidates?

You can submit a blank ballot. Since the ballot is secret, compulsory voting merely verifies that you got a ballot and submitted it, not that you filled it out correctly/completely.

Which is, incidentally, the exact same way you do it in a non-compulsory voting system. Spoiled ballot is a signal that you cared enough to get off your arse and vote and deliberately chose none of the candidates, so you might be reachable with the right message. Not voting is just a signal of general apathy, not very tempting to engage with.

63.9% turnout is just business as usual, but - if you ask me - 36.1% of ballots being spoiled would precipitate a sea change in the political landscape.

There are other reasons for not voting besides apathy. Many people would like to vote but are deterred for a variety of reasons: they have to work, or take care of children, or they're afraid of being arrested. A common tactic is to put up posters telling people that they can't vote if they owe child support.

An alternative would be a national holiday rather than mandatory voting. Either way, I'd like to see voting made easier.

So if blank ballots win in a contest for a particular political office, does that mean that that office is a candidate for the chopping block ? I would hope so.

Does it also have the option to legally chose something like:

You're all insane! Go die in a fire!, so that the vote is counted, but not for any of the grifters?

Meaning 90% of people voting like that, leaving 10% so called "legitimated" candidates, government falls flat, just like that. Repeat until stability emerges...

You’re not required to submit a correctly filled out vote, so you can submit a spoiled ballot, and sometimes theres a candidate who is there to sweep in the ‘none of that’ votes

Most people do actually vote correctly though and it drowns-out the special interests

I love the idea actually.

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