Quote:You're obviously not reading the arguments I put forward.
You mean the ones that seem to rely on finding ever more elaborate ways to mangle the definitions of democracy and freedom?
Quote:Pansi also said that it was a question of individual choice and had nothing to do with laziness.
I think that even she claimed to be 'unable' to tell the major aprties apart.
Quote:So you believe that the current system of compulsory voting undermines democracy?
No Muso, the opposite.
Quote:Personally, I think it makes only a marginal difference if any.
You are confusing the short term and long term outcomes. These saorts of flaws reinforce each other. The US is a good example. They very few minor parties and independents. The main reason being that people who would actually support them vote for the major parties so as not to 'waste their vote.' This not only results in poor electoral outcomes for minor parties - eventually they either cease to exist, or are so diminished in a political sense they may as well not be there, which of course reinforces people's unwuillingness to vote for them. Likewise, optional voting will not result in the same two major parties putting more focus on preaching to the converted and winding up the highly excitable minorities from their own side of the spectrum. It will eventually result in two fundamentally different major parties that do this.
Quote:Choice is another way of saying freedom
You do not have a choice as to whether there is a government, so claiming that you don't like the choices offered on the ballot is rpetty meaningless. You still end up with one of them. There is no 'anarchy' box to tick.
Quote:and freedom is a big ticket issue in any democracy
There you go, trying to conflate the two issues again. You still haven't explained how this issue is relevant to 'democratic freedom'. Did you just throw that in because it was a nice sounding buzzword?
Quote:Virtually every other major industrialised country is concerned about democratic freedom and the advantage of a "liberal democracy" over an electoral democracy.
Muso haven't you just been explaining how silly this appeal to foreign countries is?
Quote:Democracy is concerned with a great many more things than the detail of an electoral system.
Democracy means rule of the majority. Nothing more. You have even attempted to argue that it means as little as rule by 'the people'.