No, I just think solving a problem the hard way is some puritanical shit. Upping political interest could work or it could continue to fail as it has done for nearly half a century. My efforts will do diddly squat for that even if I…

Our grandparents managed it, and the neoliberals did it as well. Systemic change is possible. You sound like a defeatist.

I keep hoping we'd have more concern for the future> As someone above said, young people have to live with it for longer. Kids also tend to go through a rabid…

My point is that if we're going to look at the arbitrary exclusion…

...and then you go on to discuss another method. Quite a costly one. Perhaps it could work in tandem with compulsory voting which would collect fines to offset…

I couldn't get to a booth in '93, so first voted in '96. Youf then didn't vote because Labour was the crazy right wing party being voted…

If you think it's all good to make extrapolations beyond the…

Further, yes, it won't fix the ongoing decline in voter turnout.…

But. Until the age of…

I guess. But it also says something about our attitude to murder and manslaughter. They're extremely serious crimes. Judges have discretion in sentencing and a premeditated murder by a young person is something that there should be very serious consequences…

Or to be voted for.

According to the Juries Act of 1981, eligibility for jury service is "Every person who is currently registered as an elector". Presumably that's everyone of voting age. Listed among…

is 16 also the age at which the state stops paying…

(PS hear hear Hilary!)

It's an interesting idea. It's also a massive and major political change to how we operate. That level of change has only happened once in my life, the switch to MMP. I don't think I'd…

I'm not sure what you're asking. For it to be only noise, the people who would not have voted otherwise would have to vote randomly. If they don't, if there is a pattern to the way they…

16-18 in NZ.

But this is my opinion and not the point I'm trying to make, which is that maturity does actually matter. If you can convince me that it's irrelevant, then the correct age is "as soon as they can mark the sheet",…

Studies of brain development don't make 14 year olds have the same responsibilities as adults. Our laws and customs do. The brains of 18-25 may be less developed than…

They really did. Mark, I've been told the Justice and Electoral Select Committee is still taking submissions on the election process, even though their deadline has officially passed. I'm sure…

That sounds great. I'm all for it. But I don't think it goes far enough, we should do the same…

Great. Now please identify that age.

Is it 10, the age of criminal responsibility? 16, the age at which you can consent to sex? 18, the age at which you can drink? 21, the traditional "age of majority"? 25, the age…

They’ve omitted to mention the potentially preclusive step between ‘fill it in’ and ‘upload it’, namely getting the…

As in my earlier comment (but which was not well phrased), what about in some kind of segregated…

That's true, but there's also no data against it. So I guess an argument based on other data we do have is all there is, and most of the evidence out there is that very young people are…

I think it's important to distinguish between "most voters accept the current system" and "we can't change the system". We have the former right now, and as with the "black lives…

Actually I'd argue that at the moment we don't. Much as I loathe the money grubbing venal National party and their campaign to make their mates rich I cannot see any real difference in the Labour party.…

If you mean turnout as a percentage of those eligible would drop then ...

Bollocks. Pure baseless speculation. 14-18 yr olds are often remarkably opinionated, usually also ill-informed, but that's not their fault. You simply have no valid data on which to base that statement.…

It’s also not the case that if you stop people accessing roll data…

Keir, if you're answering my comment I started from wanting a solution to "only people willing to have their address published can vote". As Emma alluded, not everyone who wants to keep their address private is willing (or able) to jump through legal hoops…

If you're basing that on the existing low participation rate of 'young people', I don't think you can make that statement with such certainty. One of the elements of the habituation argument for lowering the voting age is that because – as izogi notes above…

It's supposed to achieve a parliament that is fully representative of the people, whether they wanted to vote or not.

Voter turnout would drop markedly.

Yeah, nah. Not voting is expressing consent to the current arrangement.

This is currently obvious in the USA with their "black lives don't really matter that much" campaign, where white people continue to demonstrate that they're…

FWIW my understanding is that you're required to be marked off on the roll as having obtained a ballot, and you're strongly encouraged to…

In my limited experience of an Australian local election I cast a donkey vote ranking thirty-something candidates, which felt stupid and destructive to their election (because adding noise is all it does) but after a few hours…

If there isn't a law making you…

Higher voter turnout, like what it does achieve in Australia, over and over and over.

It’s not removing disengagement, it’s just renaming it.

No, it's doing a lot more than that. It's actually recording it, officially, in some detail. It's treating as a duty…

– a large waste of money, time, and effort on the part of the EC, dealing with deliberately spoiled/blank ballot papers

– a larger section of the eligible…

The regrettable part is that this solution would perpetuate the current double standard where it is OK to run a civic participation campaign using roll information if out are also standing in the election, but not if you…

Though he seemed to change his tune when SYRIZA won in Greece.

What is this meant to achieve? How is it different from declaring that the non-voters voted in the same proportion as the voters, and hence we have…

And also about New Zealand's steady march towards having online voting here: https://medium.com/@nigelmcnie/the-next-step-for-online-voting-in-new-zealand-498ce4e86201

In short: In today's internet environment, it's just not possible to uphold our democratic rights to a free…

I did think so, thanks for clarifying.

Compulsory voting seems like such and easy fix for declining participation. We went through all this before, can't find the thread just now.

I find the arguments…

No, not at all, that’s kind of the opposite of what I was trying to say. In a non-proportional system, it’s easier to ignore a minority group of voters. It’s easier for…

I thought Farrars prime role for national in the election area, was in the drawing of the electoral boundaries.
Now…

Because partisan parents are sooooo much better

I'm not sure I believe that hacking an e-election is any worse than the blatant purchasing of policy by donors that exists now.

Russel Brand didn't help much, there.

That could be interesting if it makes it easier for schools to foster more youth interest while they're still inside the system. (Cue people complaining about partisan teachers.)

If there are too many cold feet amongst those who…

There's a third and obvious possibility. They think…

Same here. I think the hacking issues could be dealt with to some degree of acceptence,…

I love them already.

They don't necessarily need the roll for this.

Because the roll (thank god) doesn't have any online contact details, online engagement doesn't involve it at all. And parties can knock on doors, attend events and a bunch of…

There isn’t one, but there isn’t one for having it available for…

yeah that was what I was getting at as well.

I wonder whether a lot of young people just don’t ‘get’ politics.

And yet I disagree, they get it at the macro level, they realise that by not voting they are letting their Mom…

It doesn't matter who you vote for,…

I wasn't thinking of it being 'casual' disinterest, Bart – more a question of perceived irrelevance. I think Emma addresses this in her imagined campaign message to young people, trying to make it relevant by playing a generation gap dynamic:

.…

So, the EC ran those ‘your vote is a powerful thing’ ads with the changing faces. But…

I think that kind of underrates those who have chosen not to vote. There is an assumption that…

Okay, to me this looks like two people/groups identifying similar problems, and suggesting different solutions. So at the moment,

If rolls and…

Um... there's "Didn't know who to vote for", I guess...

How did you manage to write an entertaining column about voting?

But Bart, voting is fascinating. Utterly fascinating. Let me tell you all about the EC's plans…

Was there an option for, "because all the candidates were lying cheating scumbags"?

And

How did you manage to write an entertaining column about voting?

Word.

The demise of real consultation and a sense that most citizens’ opinions no longer matter loom as a crisis…

I think it's worth noting that, of 670 'informal' votes, 66% were people casting a party vote, and not a candidate vote. Only 2% were the other way around.…

It's not completely clear from context, but the figure given in the point immediately underneath it is "voter turnout of those eligible to enrol".

Meanwhile the enfranchised majority vote for the same old spanners…

About bloody time. I spent the whole of the PAL project hammering the need into them (I ran the Government Web Standards programme from 2002-2005 and…

Yeah, me too. Technical and social issues aside, it in no way addresses what the Commission identifies as the issues with voter turnout: engagement, and valuing one's vote.

As the number of votes received from overseas grows, and as the internet voting push from government moves forward, we are beginning to head towards a time where hacking our elections become merely…

There is, basically, a whole 'nother column in there about accessibility issues.

That was my favorite part! I'm getting misty-eyed just thinking about reading it.
[not joking]