Compulsory voting

Here is a nice video from the BBC:

Australia election: Why is there compulsory voting? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-61186402

This is, folks, a good example of how overthinking, rose-tinted academics can spew bullshit. This "historian" says that compulsory voting draws the electorate toward centrist politics, and that gives populist politicians less chance at doing their thing.

She obviously has not visited a certain country in America Latrina, where voting is so compulsory that you can't get a passport, or a driver's license, or even be legally employed, if you are not "up to date with your electoral obligations." Fines are irrelevant, it's the threat of exclusion that supplies the compulsion. And guess what - I know of few countries that have had a succession of populist, corrupt, incompetent, extremist politicians even comparable to what has afflicted Brazil for the past 120 years.

By the way, Brazil and Australia also have in common some system of "proportional representation." In Brazil that is manipulated to give more value to votes from the poorest areas to the ablest demagogues.

So what is different? Why does Australia score so much higher in ... everything? Education, education, education. Corrupt populists (pleonasm, I know, but here for emphasis) first give the poor poor education, then work hard to erode it for the middle classes as well.

Tyrannical oligarchies hate educated voters.