The Merits of Saturday Elections

Weather in Adelaide today:  Reasonably fine and mild

An open letter to all United Kingdom citizens wherever you may be.

For any citizen of the United Kingdom looking for a better...

...electoral system, hello from Australia. We have a fairly good electoral system here, and a fairly good postal service, too. How about you?

If you look up "saturday elections australia" on google, you will have an indication of our voting system.  We usually like to pencil Saturday in the diary for election day.

We have something called "compulsory voting", too. This usually means that everyone who is registered to vote in Australia will have access to a ballot paper, either on election day itself or beforehand as a postal voter.  This latter option even applies if we will be on holiday in the sunny UK on election day.

Compulsory voting does not actually mean that we have to vote, as all we need to do is have our name ticked off the list of registered voters. We will then be given our ballot papers and can put them in the box (or in the post if we are postal voters) without even making any selections. This option is especially useful if we do not like any of the candidates and/or their policies.

Here are a couple of links you may find useful:

Frequently asked questions about Australia's voting system

Frequently asked questions about Australian voting while overseas

Well, it is lunchtime here on a pleasant autumn day in Adelaide.  The temperature is about 20 degrees celsius.  I am not sure if our preference system of voting is more democratic than your first-past-the-post one, dear UK voter, but it would be fascinating to know who would be your prime minister if you had the same system as ours.

Wishing you a happily democratic future 
from yours truly,

Twaklin of Adelaide, citizen of Australia xxx

PS. If you wish to improve your postal service as well as your voting system, here is something about Australia Post, too.