Monday, March 2, 2009

Compulsory Voting at Local Government Elections

The Tasmanian Premier advocates that voting at Local Government elections in Tasmania should become compulsory.
Over many years this issue has been discussed regularly at Local Government Association of Tasmania meetings, and has repeatedly been rejected as unnecessary and not warranted.
Furthermore, the devil is in the detail as always. If you own land in Hobart but live in Kentish, should voting in Hobart elections be compulsory? If you rent a house in Kentish should you have to vote here?
Failure to vote incurs a $20 fine. I could imagine that Councils would be very unpopular if they sent out fines for this.
I think we do not need compulsory voting.

What do you think?