“I swear to the Lord
I still can’t see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.”

~Langston Hughes “The Black Man Speaks” (1943)

I read in this weekend’s mammoth edition of “The West Australian” that a record one million Australians face fines for not voting in the recent General Election (voting is compulsory in Australia). Apparently the non-voters will be receiving a “please explain” letter in the post soon and those without an adequate excuse will be fined a whopping $20. That ought to put them back on the straight and narrow.

The outcome of the election was so close that it resulted in a hung parliament and it took a full two weeks to figure out who could actually form a government. The low turnout (lowest since 1955) had a part to play in this  as, if another one million voters bothered turning up, there would have undoubtedly been a more decisive outcome.

Faced with such a uninspiring choice between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott I can see why a lot of people thought better of it BUT I feel uneasy about the whole “not-voting” thing. I’m well aware of all the arguments about voting not really changing anything and “they’re all the same” and so on but, at the end of the day, our system is based on everyone having at least SOME rights and some say in what goes on. There are still plenty of places in the world where people aren’t quite so lucky. I’m sure some of those guys would stump up $20 in order to have a vote? Rather than, you know, dying and stuff…

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