US Election system v. Australia

[Delarage]

I was talking with people at work today about our need for election reform in this country. It's crazy how "democracy" is pretty much supposed to be our thing---and how messed up it looks every 4 years.

Voting is compulsory in Australia, so there's no need for scientific GOTV operations.

And the voting process is the same everywhere there. On a Saturday.

And, as the article below notes, another nice addition would be a national popular vote.

Not sure if they use ranked-choice voting, but that would be another nice addition that would lessen the potential horror of voting for a 3rd party candidate (like voting for Nader and ending up with Bush). And getting rid of gerrymandering would force people to moderate and work together more.

RE: GOTV:

We're talking huge amounts of sophisticated statistics and data, opening store fronts and down to the "neighbourhood level", literally knocking on people's front doors to remind them to vote, organising buses to get them to polling stations.

"It's difficult for Australians to envisage what that looks like," Professor Jackman said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-03/us-election-vs-australian-election/7968490