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Why it's OK That Lots of Australians Won't Vote on Saturday

Around 25 percent of 18 to 30-year-olds didn't vote in the last election. Some put this down to laziness, but that's a lazy explanation.

Photo by Flickr user Simon Yeo.

Australia is one of 10 political entities around the world that enforces mandatory voting laws, which means anyone enrolled to vote on who doesn't turn up to a polling station on July 2 for the Federal Election will get a fine. It's also one of those features of Australian life that are occasionally used to troll Americans: we banned guns, and we all vote.

Mandatory voting is also one of those conversations that gets people fired up. Should we keep it or not? Those in favour of keeping it point to the 93 percent participation rate it has guaranteed since it was introduced, compared to the mid-60s in countries like Canada, the UK, and the US. Research also shows that mandatory voting closes the gender gap and actually involves more poor people in the political process.

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Those most opposed to the whole idea tend to be libertarians with high-minded ideals about democracy and the right to abstain. In Australia, the loudest voice among these people is Liberal Democrats leader David Leyonhjelm. Over in the US, the stable of writers at libertarian magazine Reason regularly talk about how mandatory voting is bad, mostly because Obama liked what he saw in Australia.

Another, more straightforward argument, is that involving really apathetic people in an important social decision making process can sometimes be bad. People who don't care to actually research what their vote means are more likely to vote the party line. After the last Australian federal election, many voters were genuinely surprised when their man Tony Abbott cut services to the bone.

The only problem with all of that is mandatory voting in Australia is not really mandatory, at least at a federal level. There is actually no law that says a person has to actually mark a ballot paper at federal an election. All they have to do to duck the $20 fine is turn up and leave it. Or stay home and offer a good excuse.

This is how, even under this system of mandatory voting, people still chose not to vote. In 2013, informal voting for the House of Representatives vote was at 5.91 percent, the second worst rate after the 6.34 percent recorded in 1984.

While this number includes ballots that were filled out wrong, those with dicks drawn on them, and it also includes those that were left blank. Of course some of this may have been down to confusion but no matter how you break down the figures, the fact is a decent number of Australians refused to vote for anyone in 2013. Well, the choice at the time was between Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd.

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It doesn't matter whether you're a miner in Perth, a steelworker in Whyalla, or a young person just about anywhere, if you feel no one represents you, no one will get your vote.

It's not hard to blame them, either. The same forces that have remade the US and UK, and given the world Trump and Brexit are also at work in Australia. Over the last few years, the Coalition has been drifting to the radical right. Labor, which is supposed to be the alternative, has been struggling to keep it together. All up, it's made for a growing feeling that politics has stopped talking to ordinary people. Wherever this feeling takes root, people start weighing their options.

Voting for a micro-party is one way to go, though this is a lucky-dip. Out of the mix sometimes comes a Clive Palmer, at other times it's a Ricky Muir. Family First may be a bit much for some, and not all states have a Nick Xenophon, so others may end up with the Islamophobic Australian Liberty Alliance.

For young people, feeling disengaged by politics is often disregarded as apathy. And the lack of engagement is palpable, about 25 percent of 18- to 30-year-olds didn't vote at the last election. But would you really be inspired by the rhetoric of this year's campaign? For eight weeks we've been listening to our Prime Minister tell us to get our parents to buy us a house. To work for below minimum wage if there are no jobs. The Opposition offers no discernible alternative to Australia's brutal refugee policy.

So whether you agree with the decision or not, the fact is that when people feel the only choice on offer is a bad one, the decision to opt-out is not apathetic. It's political. It doesn't matter whether you're a miner in Perth, a steelworker in Whyalla, or a young person just about anywhere, if you feel no one represents you, no one will get your vote.

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