this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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Australian Politics
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I'd quite like to see the voting age lowered to 16. I'd lean towards it being made compulsory over allowing voluntary voting in Australia.
As the one expert mentioned we could use some more education on voting in the curriculum to help prepare students for it. Teaching them how prefferential voting works, how to research candidates, etc.
Compulsory voting (along with preferential voting, a proportional senate and a permanent, nonpartisan electoral commission) is one of the success stories of Australian democracy. (Making showing up to vote — or formally lodging a reasonable excuse — compulsory makes declining to vote a deliberate act, and prevents anyone from winning merely by riling up a base of hardliners and counting on apathy on the other side, as happens often in the US.) Ditching it would be a retrograde step for Australian democracy.
As I've said before to many people, the only compulsory action required of you is to show up, get your name ticked off the electoral roll and put your ballots in the boxes.
I don't think anybody is suggesting ditching it. Just not implementing it for 16 and 17 year-olds.
That seems like a dangerous first step to ditching it though.
US here, I’d love compulsory voting… and preferential voting.
Agreed, if anything I'd like to see mandatory civic classes added to the curriculum before reducing the voting age. There's no point in lowering the voting age if people fundamentally don't understand how our democracy works.