Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond (died 1788) Artist: Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (French, Paris 1749–1803 Paris) Date: 1785 Medium: Oil on canvas
I feel like this would be a slippery slope towards making it illegal for people to choose to not vote.
that’s already how it is in australia
That’s just so fucked up. :( Do certain medical conditions exempt you?
?????? why is it be fucked up to have compulsory voting? that’s the way it is in most democratic countries? it’s a part of being a citizen, like paying taxes and obeying speed limits? the fine for not voting is only like $50 and because of the compulsory voting law, our country bends over backwards to make it accessible: it’s always on a weekend, lasts most of the day, and is set up at schools and community centers so there’s one within easy reach of almost everybody. you can also mail your ballot or vote early if you’ll be out of the country on the day. like, IT’S EASY TO VOTE, and the penalty isn’t even that ridiculous. i don’t understand why the usa doesn’t have this, except obviously it would make it harder to literally stop minorities from voting.
I think we Americans tend to forget that a lot of other countries don’t actively work to make it harder to vote.
Adding to this here, in Australia you don’t have to vote. Or, more precisely, there’s no way they can tell if you ruined your ballot. You have to turn up, get your name marked off, but you can put a line through the ballot if you don’t think any of the candidates are worth voting for. Or do this:
Or this:
Or this:
You have get your name crossed off (if you don’t want to wear the fine), but you don’t have to make your vote counted if you’re opposed to it.
And it is so, so easy to vote. Stuck at work or on holidays? That’s fine. Do a postal vote. Stuck in hospital? That’s fine. They’ll go to you. Stuck in an old people’s home and can’t get around? Again, they’ll go to you. It’s amazing to me that it’s so hard for so many Americans to actually vote. If you make it compulsory, than at least the government is obligated to provide you with the means to vote.
And look, I get it. Sometimes I don’t want to vote either. But I suck it up, I walk three minutes down the street, and I hope that this year they’re selling lamingtons again. Oh, and I buy a democracy sausage, which, even if all the candidates suck, makes the effort of turning up pretty worthwhile.
ALSO, you can see even on the fucked up ballots that you NUMBER CANDIDATES IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE. There’s no need to calculate whether I would be throwing away my vote on the candidate that I most agree with if they’re not from a major party. I can say, I want that independent person to get in, but if not them, give me Big Party A, and if not them, that minor party person is still better that Big Party B, and I’m not giving any preference to the Lunatic Fringe Party.
Our system certainly has some issues still, but I can show up to somewhere nearby, line up for a few minutes (if at all), vote exactly in line with my values (on paper, leaving a paper trail that can be recounted), and then buy a sausage and some home made cupcakes on my way out.
A country’s voting system matters a hell of a lot and every citizen deserves one that makes it easy to vote and results in a government that is representational and accountable.
And by the way, one time I had a bad asthma flare-up on Election Day and didn’t make it to my polling station. I got my fine in the mail, I filled out the form explaining why I couldn’t vote, no more fine. I would rather have, you know, expressed my preference for who should run my country, but they were cool with the fact that I couldn’t do it that day.
“oh no, what if people actually have to participate in picking the government officials who will impact their lives” jesus christ
EVERYONE SHOULD VOTE. IT’S YOUR CIVIL DUTY TO VOTE. IT’S YOUR RIGHT AS A CITIZEN.
This is an example of a voting ballot in New Zealand. You register to vote, you show up, get your name crossed off, get your ballot form and make TWO (2) ticks: one for your preferred candidate and one for you preferred party. That is it.
Even referendum are this easy.
Elections are held on a Saturday, although advanced voting is available prior to election day. Voting is not compulsory, although many believe registration should be. Registration can be done online or by post.
Employers are legally required to allow you the time necessary to vote and polling stations are everywhere. Registered voters are sent a card to enable easy identification at the polling station.
If you are away from your home electorate you can cast a ‘special’ vote, these are also available for New Zealand citizens and permanent residents who are, or will be, overseas.
If you are
in hospital
and cannot make it to a polling stating on election day, they come to you. Arrangements are even made for those with mobility/disability issues that enable them to vote.
Proportional Representation is needed for representative democracy.
Compulsory registration with or without compulsory voting is good. Ranked ballots are great if its in multimember ridings. That’s called Single Transferable Vote (STV), and that’s the system that 57.75 of BC voters voted to implement in their first Electoral Reform Referendum. The fact that it didn’t get implemented in a country where 39% can deliver a “majority” federal government really tells you why we still don’t have fair voting in Canada, even though the calls for fairness predate confederation.
Fritz Moser, director of the documentary A Good American, about NSA whistleblower Bill Binney who blames the 9/11 attacks on the NSA’s capture by corporate contractors who sold it an expensive, useless, self-perpetuating mass-surveillance system, writes, “Since 6 Sept A GOOD AMERICAN is on Netflix and since then I am getting between 10 and 20 emails per day of people telling me how shocked they were by the film and how angry they are, asking what they could do to help. So we came up with this petition. The petition is hosted by a member of Sascha Meinrath’s cross-party Civil Liberties Coalition we are working with in Washington DC, backing the cross-party anti-surveillance Caucus in Congress on a grassroots level.”
The war on drugs is rooted in racist policies . The failure of the war and drugs is obvious. We need to find a better solution, because people of color should never be the victims of racist policies. White Americans are more likely than black Americans to have used most kinds of illegal drugs, including cocaine and LSD. Yet blacks are far more likely to go to prison for marijuana, which is not a hard drug. Moreover , even when white people get caught , they get less time in prison.
…is that Rachael Leigh Cook, the same actress who did the original anti-drug ad when she was a teenager?
The twenty-third of September is International Rabbit Day! Rabbits
are known for their wiggly nose, large eyes, powerful hind legs that enable
them to hop, and for their long ears (though, Hares
ears are twice the length of their heads, making them notably longer than a
rabbit’s ears). Being prey animals, these features help to aid rabbits in
avoiding predators. Their large ears allow them to hear predators before they
get too close, and their large eyes allow them to see almost a full 360
degrees, enabling them to spot predators easily. In order to escape predators,
rabbits will run away in a zigzag motion and will thump the ground with their
powerful hind legs to warn others of approaching danger. Rabbits also have long,
constantly growing and self-sharpening incisors, similar to those of wombats
and vicuñas. These incisors are called “gliriform”,
and were actually named after rodents and rabbits, which are placed in the
grand order “Glires”.
There are eight different genera in the rabbit
classification, which includes the European rabbit (Oryctolagus) and cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus).Rabbits
belong to the Leporidae family, which
includes Hares. Both belong to the order Lagomorpha,
which extends to include pikas.
Wild rabbits live in meadows, forests, grasslands, deserts, and wetlands. They
usually burrow and live underground in warrens, with the exception of
cottontail rabbits, which nest above ground. Rabbits are most active at dawn,
dusk, and throughout the night. Rabbits are herbivores, and usually graze on
grass or weeds. In order to digest their food, which is high in cellulose and
difficult to process, rabbits use a form of hindgut fermentation, in which they
actually eat their own feces. By re-ingesting this, rabbits can digest their
food and process the necessary nutrients.
Image: rabbit-373691 by SimonaR. CC0 Creative
Commons via Pixabay.
