It'd be a pity to get heated up over a misunderstanding of the Australian election system.
OP said (somewhat confusingly I admit):
>[Australia has] compulsory attendance at voting booths for eligible citizens, you can spoil your paper or walk away but we enforce with a fine,
and I think you understood that to mean:
>Australian citizens must choose: drop a valid ballot in the box or be fined
but I think what OP intended was (and this is consistent with the Australia Electoral Commission website [0]):
>Australian citizens must choose: drop a ballot (spoiled is fine) in the box or be fined
(As an aside - one WILL get fined if one appears the polling place but refuses to drop a ballot in the box - see [1].)
Then, believing (incorrectly) that casting a spoiled ballot incurs the fine, you said "Then my refusal to vote should be counted [for the system to be anywhere near reasonable, given that I went to the polling place and exercised my civic duty to the extent permitted by my moral fiber, fully expecting to be fined for it]" (emphasis and context added).
And Australia does keep track of how many "informal votes" (their term for what we're calling spoiled ballots here) are cast. See [2] for an official results page breaking out informal votes by count and percent. But informal votes have no bearing on the election results; they are thrown out and only the valid votes contribute to the result.
So I think you're fundamentally asking for the "informal votes" to have a first-class mechanism for contributing to the election result (specifics TBD, maybe a threshold to meet, maybe an disqualification of the candidates for a period of time, maybe a re-do, whatever).
And that's a valid ask and an interesting discussion to have!
But given that the reason you asked for that was based on a misunderstanding, do you even still want that? Do you still think the AUS system is unreasonable as-is?
>Under the Electoral Act, the actual duty of the elector is to attend a polling place, have their name marked off the certified list, receive a ballot paper and take it to an individual voting booth, mark it, fold the ballot paper and place it in the ballot box.
>Because of the secrecy of the ballot, it is not possible to determine whether a person has completed their ballot paper prior to placing it in the ballot box. It is therefore not possible to determine whether all electors have met their legislated duty to vote. It is, however, possible to determine that an elector has attended a polling place or mobile polling team (or applied for a postal vote, pre-poll vote or absent vote) and been issued with a ballot paper.
in Krosch v Springell, at the polling place, Mr Springell handed the presiding officer a note saying, paraphrased, "none of these candidates deserve my vote". He was fined, because it could be proven that he didn't uphold the "duty of the elector" as defined in [0].
I had tickmarks for stuff (when to go to bed to sleep for 7.5h and wake up near sunrise, things like that). I was working on adding a config file format.
Yep, can confirm. I first used Vue in 2016 to write some simple calculators for my group's use in Eve Online. Without its "progressive" affordances, I don't think I would have gotten anything off the ground. I had no idea how to set up a build pipeline at that point, and I think Vue was new enough that there weren't many vue-specific tutorials so I'd have been learning from React tutorials and trying to figure out what to change with zero JS background.
>>>>OutOfHere: Proposal: Imprison anyone who performs child circumcision.
>>>notmyjob: Even if they don’t [perform circumcision]? You're proposing violence to punish thoughtcrime. And violence to punish free practice of religion.
>>OutOfHere: No, I proposed prison to punish realcrime. And violence is not acceptable simply because religion says so.
>notmyjob: Ah, but you've contradicted yourself! You've proposed prison, which is violence, which you just said is unacceptable.
Man, that's twice now you've mischaracterized their statement to argue against it. Could you not? (Or you misunderstood them badly, in which case I apologize.)
OutOfHere's claim was "religion doesn't make violence acceptable."
I assume they'd also claim that violence in the form of "prison for punishing illegal behavior" is acceptable.
But moving on, sounds like the crux of this disagreement is whether a state should be allowed to punish behaviors permitted by a religion practiced by some of its citizens. A classic question. The whole separation of church and state thing in the US, and elsewhere. Easy to agree on the extremes:
"Should the state punish performing infant baptism in the catholic church"? (sprinkling water on baby's head) Probably an easy "naw, go ahead".
"Should the state punish human sacrifice as practiced by [insert least ambiguous historical example on relevant wiki page]"? Probably an easy "yeah, that's murder".
Harder to agree on other cases: Female circumcision? Polygamy? Going on a 2 year proselytizing mission? Male circumcision?
A state reaches those agreements through some political process. A religion reaches those agreements through ??? (process varies by religion; don't think I've heard of a religion that has an equivalent to California's Ballot Propositions--maybe that's a good thing).
(An aside here; a probable contender for ??? is "divine revelation", but that of course leads to the question: how come a decent number of neolithic etc religions condoned human sacrifice, but no modern major religion does (again, according to the wiki page)? Did the divines change up the rules on that for us? or did states exert pressure on religions to comply? or was ??? some human-driven process?)
Assuming the goal of most human organizations (examples: states, religions) is to improve human experience (i guess both now and in the hereafter)...
you know what, lunch break is over and ain't nobody got time to talk about the tensions and similarities between state and religious goals on the internet with random internet people.
might as well drop my 2c on the topic at hand - I consider circumcision a major body modification, similar to tattooing. I think it's reasonable for it to require informed consent, which a minor cannot grant by themselves. I think it's reasonable to allow circumcision of minors with the consent of a guardian. But then my thoughts get less well defined; I don't want infants circumcised period, but also I don't want teens with medical issues fixable by circumcision to be forbidden that option until they're 18. It's tough.
It'd be a pity to get heated up over a misunderstanding of the Australian election system.
OP said (somewhat confusingly I admit):
>[Australia has] compulsory attendance at voting booths for eligible citizens, you can spoil your paper or walk away but we enforce with a fine,
and I think you understood that to mean:
>Australian citizens must choose: drop a valid ballot in the box or be fined
but I think what OP intended was (and this is consistent with the Australia Electoral Commission website [0]):
>Australian citizens must choose: drop a ballot (spoiled is fine) in the box or be fined
(As an aside - one WILL get fined if one appears the polling place but refuses to drop a ballot in the box - see [1].)
Then, believing (incorrectly) that casting a spoiled ballot incurs the fine, you said "Then my refusal to vote should be counted [for the system to be anywhere near reasonable, given that I went to the polling place and exercised my civic duty to the extent permitted by my moral fiber, fully expecting to be fined for it]" (emphasis and context added).
And Australia does keep track of how many "informal votes" (their term for what we're calling spoiled ballots here) are cast. See [2] for an official results page breaking out informal votes by count and percent. But informal votes have no bearing on the election results; they are thrown out and only the valid votes contribute to the result.
So I think you're fundamentally asking for the "informal votes" to have a first-class mechanism for contributing to the election result (specifics TBD, maybe a threshold to meet, maybe an disqualification of the candidates for a period of time, maybe a re-do, whatever).
And that's a valid ask and an interesting discussion to have!
But given that the reason you asked for that was based on a misunderstanding, do you even still want that? Do you still think the AUS system is unreasonable as-is?
----
0. https://aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/voting/index.htm#c...
>Under the Electoral Act, the actual duty of the elector is to attend a polling place, have their name marked off the certified list, receive a ballot paper and take it to an individual voting booth, mark it, fold the ballot paper and place it in the ballot box.
>Because of the secrecy of the ballot, it is not possible to determine whether a person has completed their ballot paper prior to placing it in the ballot box. It is therefore not possible to determine whether all electors have met their legislated duty to vote. It is, however, possible to determine that an elector has attended a polling place or mobile polling team (or applied for a postal vote, pre-poll vote or absent vote) and been issued with a ballot paper.
1. https://www.aec.gov.au/about_aec/publications/backgrounders/...
in Krosch v Springell, at the polling place, Mr Springell handed the presiding officer a note saying, paraphrased, "none of these candidates deserve my vote". He was fined, because it could be proven that he didn't uphold the "duty of the elector" as defined in [0].
2. https://results.aec.gov.au/31496/Website/HouseInformalByStat...
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