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The Watercooler
Lowest voter turnout in Canadian history
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 204223" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>We had a surfeit of negative ad campaigns for our last election, but we still had to vote. Some people went in with a sense of, "I wish I didn't have to do this," while others went in with a sense of determination to bring about change, ANY change. I think in our situation, we would have still had a moderately large voter turnout if it wasn't compulsory for us, because in our situation there was a lot of strong feeling against the incumbent, who would have stayed in power if the vote hadn't gone against him. In Australia, we don't have a limit on the number of terms a leader can stay in office. We were fully expecting our then PM to lose the election at the end of 2001, I'm sure he was expecting it as well; he was in Washington on Sept 11, scheduled to address Congress - a really big feather in his cap to try and send a message to the Australian people, "Look! Even the US thinks I'm important!" He had run out of rabbits to pull out of his hat, it was his last attempt to hang onto power.</p><p></p><p>After the tragedy of the planes the PM's address to Congress got cancelled, of course. There were far more important things for the US to worry about, frankly. But it didn't matter to him - when our PM finally got back to Australia, with the world on the sort of alarm footing it hasn't been for decades, he had the election in the bag. Countries tend to NOT change leaders when in such a state of international crisis. So it took us another 7 years to see a change of leader for Australia. By the time of our last election, he could have been the most brilliant and popular leader in the world, and I think he still would have lost - Aussies were just sick of the sight and sound of him, I think. So we would have had a bigger turnout anyway, I feel, just to ensure some sort of change.</p><p></p><p>Whether to have the vote compulsory or not - at least YOU know that the people who vote are REALLY wanting to exercise their democratic right; they're not just doing it because of a legal compulsion. So maybe this could give you a higher calibre of vote?</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 204223, member: 1991"] We had a surfeit of negative ad campaigns for our last election, but we still had to vote. Some people went in with a sense of, "I wish I didn't have to do this," while others went in with a sense of determination to bring about change, ANY change. I think in our situation, we would have still had a moderately large voter turnout if it wasn't compulsory for us, because in our situation there was a lot of strong feeling against the incumbent, who would have stayed in power if the vote hadn't gone against him. In Australia, we don't have a limit on the number of terms a leader can stay in office. We were fully expecting our then PM to lose the election at the end of 2001, I'm sure he was expecting it as well; he was in Washington on Sept 11, scheduled to address Congress - a really big feather in his cap to try and send a message to the Australian people, "Look! Even the US thinks I'm important!" He had run out of rabbits to pull out of his hat, it was his last attempt to hang onto power. After the tragedy of the planes the PM's address to Congress got cancelled, of course. There were far more important things for the US to worry about, frankly. But it didn't matter to him - when our PM finally got back to Australia, with the world on the sort of alarm footing it hasn't been for decades, he had the election in the bag. Countries tend to NOT change leaders when in such a state of international crisis. So it took us another 7 years to see a change of leader for Australia. By the time of our last election, he could have been the most brilliant and popular leader in the world, and I think he still would have lost - Aussies were just sick of the sight and sound of him, I think. So we would have had a bigger turnout anyway, I feel, just to ensure some sort of change. Whether to have the vote compulsory or not - at least YOU know that the people who vote are REALLY wanting to exercise their democratic right; they're not just doing it because of a legal compulsion. So maybe this could give you a higher calibre of vote? Marg [/QUOTE]
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Lowest voter turnout in Canadian history
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