How we can defeat the Right (part 2): You've Got To Fight For Your Right To Vote

How we can defeat the Right (part 2): You’ve Got To Fight For Your Right To Vote

By turnleft2016 on May 5, 2014 • ( 0 )

Voting is a right, use it. Protect that vote, fight any attempts to make it “easier” by kicking you off the rolls.

Enroll to vote, make sure you are in the right electorate, know your candidates and when you vote, vote properly.

Watch out for postal votes which return envelopes are addressed to a political party.

Watch out for aged-care facilities in which party hacks collect votes
on behalf of residents, especially when ballots are filled-in in
pencil.

Watch out for anyone voting on behalf of the aged or non-English speakers.

Come election time, make sure your less-than-mobile,
non-Liberal-National party loved ones have access to a polling place,
consider it quality time together – take them pre-poll voting then take
them for a coffee.

The following links are for the state and federal electoral
commissions, you can easily check you are enrolled and enrolled properly
at these sites:

Australian Electoral Commissions

Here is why Your Vote is important:

It doesn’t matter who you vote for, a politician always wins.
If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are still voting for evil.
Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote, voting just encourages them.
The only way to defeat the major parties is by not voting, for anyone.

This is just a selection of sayings people have invented to
discourage you from voting and turning their own ignorance into a
virtue.

As Emma Goldman may or may not have said: If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.

Guess what – they won’t make it illegal, not yet, they will just sit back and wait while you voluntarily give up your right to vote.

Voting does change things, that is why Right-wing governments all
over the world are pushing to disenfranchise voters, that is why the
move is on in Australia to have voluntary voting and voter photo ID.

Voter photo IDs laws punish the young, who may not have got around to
getting their driver’s licence and the poor who may not have licences
or passports. Also, photo ID requirements don’t prevent voter fraud,
they just prevent voter impersonation.

The Right want to create a scandal about voter fraud which will
result in only the Right voting – and vote they will, they never see
their vote as a burden.

Besides, all the voter restrictions – IDs, literacy tests, restricted
hours, voting tax – will not affect any party or organisation that
wants to commit voter fraud, they will have to resources to circumvent
any restriction. All moves to eliminate voter fraud entrenches fraud and
eliminates legitimate voters.

Voter fraud is not a problem in Australia, and any reasoned attempts
to convince the Right there is no problem is met with “conspiracy
theory!”, they will tell you the left relies on fraudulent votes, which
tells you they are creating a solution to a problem which doesn’t exist,
the fact they say the left relies on it, is clear they are targeting
left-wing voters for disenfranchisement.

While we are talking about fraud, do we really think any party that
has lost a Premier, a couple of ministers and a few more MPs at the NSW
ICAC (that’s, Independent Commission Against Corruption) really cares about eliminating fraud?

The Right-wing openly brag
that the more people they can prevent from voting the more their vote
goes up. People who already feel powerless will feel their vote doesn’t
make a difference, and stay at home on election day.

If you don’t vote, you increase the power of the voters who do vote to choose government.

Do not believe anyone who tells you that they want voluntary voting
to make your life easier, to relieve you of that burden of once every
three years going to your local polling booth and putting a piece of
paper in a cardboard box…

These are the people who want you to work until you are 70 because age
pensions are less important than their gold passes. Do you really think
these people want to make your life easier?

Voluntary voting favours the Right Wing, repeating that for all the Lefties who say voting should not be compulsory: Voluntary voting favours the Right Wing.

One study
found that in the 1996 election in Australia, compulsory voting reduced
the vote share of the victorious right-wing Liberal Party/National
Party coalition by five points. Another study looked at the interwar
period (1918-1941), when Australia first embraced compulsory voting, and
found that the policy benefited the left-wing Labor Party by about
seven to nine points.
What if it were illegal NOT to vote? – The Washington Post

The difference when there is voluntary voting is almost 10% (M. Mackerrasa, I. McAllister)
in favour of the Right. Imagine how difficult it would be for the Left
to win any election stating 10% down, now try to tell me that voluntary /
compulsory voting is all about making your life easier.

If the Right can encourage people to not use their voting rights they
can go a long way to ensuring permanent Liberal governments – well,
except for when Murdoch wants to show he is in charge and flips the
government, to send a wake up call to the Right to not take his support
for granted.

Voluntary voting is on the IPA wishlist,
if there is anything that should be a great big red flag that this
isn’t going to benefit ordinary people, you haven’t been paying
attention to the IPA.

When you say what’s the point in voting, a politician always wins,
you are making the case for voluntary voting. Meanwhile, those in power
want to take away your rights, permanently, they are motivated to vote
(or restrict your voting) because they know exactly how powerful it can
be. That is why they Right are doing all they can to make it more
difficult for you to excise that right to vote.

For those who say that voting is a burden – Nelson Mandela
went to prison for almost thirty year, hard labour, to get the vote.
Women suffragettes died in the fight to get the vote. African-Americans
in the United States were lynched daring to register to vote. These are
burdens, voting is not.

One more thing: when you voluntarily give up your rights – whether it
is the implied right to free speech, association, or voting – because
you see it as a burden, you are making it easier for governments to take
away my rights, and having my rights taken away makes me sad : (

Maybe what Emma Goldman should have said: If voting changed anything, the Right would make it voluntary.

How we can defeat the Right (part 1) (TurnLeft2016 / AIMN)

First posted on TurnLeft2016, reproduced with permission.
NOTE:

Because much of the feedback to Part 1 was along the lines of “that’s
good and all, but how about some practical solutions”, these will come
in part 3, 4, etc. Future posts will cover Civil Dis/Obedience; Educate,
Agitate, Organise; Don’t Get Mad, Get Organised; Get Your Hands Dirty,
Keep Your Conscience Clean; Silencing The Opposition; Go To The
Mattresses, Go To The Barricades; Hold The Media To Account; Appeasing
Bullies Never Works; Good People Don’t Always Do Good Things; Stop
Funding Those Who Enslave You; Wake Up! And Smell The Fascism; “Be Nice”
Is Censorship; It’s My Party And I’ll Cry If I Want To

Sunday, 4 May 2014