> It is illegal not to vote in Australian elections, if your name is on the > electoral role and is not crossed off at the election then you get fined. > Someone tried to publicise some way of making a stand against the compulsory > voting without the possibility of getting fined - they got fined for doing > that.
That's amazing... > You can understand why they make it compulsory if you could see the ballot > paper for the Senate (Upper house) it seems to get larger every year, last > time I think it was about 3ft by 1 ft. The paper is divided into 2 sections > you can put one cross in the upper section which is basically voting for a > party. Or you put numbers 1 - 10 in the lower section which has the names of > each candidate in the order of your preference. It seems like that would just make people vote randomly, since they didn't want to do it in the first place and it's so complicated... Maybe they should try to make it simpler instead of forcing people to do it. > In the UK where I originally hail from voting is not compulsory - I think I > only ever missed one local election. Citizenship is not taught at schools, as > such, depends I suppose on what you mean by citizenship. Part of education, > partly by school and mainly by parents is what it means to be a good citizen - > I suppose I talking morality and ethics. I'm not sure how much that's related. It seems perfectly possible to be an ethical person and an anarchist... Then again, maybe that just shows my personal idea of citizenship <g>. But I really don't see countries as very important - both the people you interact with and people in general seem to be more important groups to be ethical towards. Weronika To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
