If you are prone to occasional anger over political things it is probably best to stop reading now and come back for the next cake post instead…So I have to vote again. Yep, have to. It is mandatory here, and they SEND YOU A FINE if you don’t – for EVERY election, not just the big ones. Even had a table at the citizenship ceremony where they sign you up before you can go in the room to get your certificate and native plant. But it probably is a good system as I would imagine that it makes people a bit more accountable for their government’s actions. Still can’t change the fact that the leaders right now of both parties are the most non-charismatic people ever, but oh well [parliamentary system – we don’t exactly elect the leader, just the people in the party who hold seats, and the party with the majority of seats heads up government and then subsequently in-fights about which of them get to be the leader of the party….google it if you are that keen!]
Can you imagine if they made voting mandatory in America-land? Ha! For starters it would have to be implemented by politicians – and the last thing they want is the 50% of the country that doesn’t vote to suddenly start [on the other hand a fine for not voting might be a good way to pay off that billion-squillion dollar debt…]. And what would happen then with all these third-party groups if all of a sudden the voter population doubled? My firm opinion, a three [or four or 10] party system just doesn’t work with the current US structure. It only manages to take votes away from the two major parties and many times result in the greater of two evils in power rather than the lesser [yes, I understand that we need challengers to keep the rest in line and that the ‘lesser’ of two evils is very, very subjective]. In truth, I have voted in America-land Presidential elections for years not necessarily for who I wanted to win, but against who I didn’t want to win – and hence my point about third parties taking away votes from whoever is deemed by those voters as the lesser evil – I mean really, a vote for Nader just doesn’t ever go anywhere except to put Bush in office [my step-father probably has steam coming out of his ears right about now, sorry!].
They say never discuss religion or politics at dinner parties but I’m not eating dinner right now, and hopefully the other 3 people who read this don’t get too annoyed. Chocolate and other more delicious things to return shortly. Can you believe they give you a native plant when you become a citizen here [had to get that one in again]!
Truths you tell!!!