Jump straight to how to vote for yourself

in Australia we have what is called representative democracy.

that means, in theory, that you decide who is going to represent you and make decisions on your behalf.

1. the person that is representing you and making decisions on your behalf, is unlikely to know what you particularly want to happen in relation to particular matters.

2. even if the person representing you does know what you want, they may not do what you want, because ther is no legal requirement for them to do so.

3. there are other people that are represented by the same person, that undoubtably,have completely different wants in relation to decision making, than you do.

4. unless the person representing you asked every single person in their electorate what they want to happen in relation to a particular matter, the representative has no idea of what the majority of people want.

5. as in point 2 above,even if the representative knew what the majority of people wanted, ther is still have no legal requirement for them to do so.

6. as most representatives are a member of a political party, ther obligation is to their party before their constituents. otherwise they get kicked out of their party.

7. all the above is even further complicated because of preferential voting. we're more than 2 people are running for election, when nobody gets more than half the votes, the candidate with the LEAST amount of votes, has the second preferences added to the other candidates.

8. all the above is again further complicated in that each electorate has not got exactly the same number of voters.

9. in the case of elections where there is a upper and lower house again, again, all the above is further complicated in that there are different electoral boundaries, and methods of voting for different houses of Parliament

10. because there are multiple levels of government, local state and Federal and leaders such as mayors,premiers and prime ministers, that usually have, conflicting ideologies, you don't have one representative.

11. the rules that allow all this to happen were setup almost 120 years ago, when the requirements of society where completely different from what they are today.

12. all the above is so complicated and convoluted that even some representatives themselves, and government as a whole, were not aware they were invalid to represent their constituents.

13. because there is different legislation for elections in different jurisdictions, the validity of voting methods differs. and whatever legislation does exist may not work. See Queensland

a summary of all this is that basically representative democracy is not representative of societies wishes as is demonstrated in the dissatisfaction most people have with the present system. they know it's broken don't know why and feel unempowered with no ability to do a thing about it.

you may think that you have to put yourself up for election to be able to vote for yourself.

but in reality you don't

as far as I can determined, legally, although you do have to vote, you do not have to vote for any of the candidates in your electorate.

you can do so by not completing the voting form in the format required, adding your own name to the voting form or writing whatever you like on the voting form. in these situations it is called an informal vote. however from your own point of view you can consider it, as I do, as voting for your/myself.

apparently in some parts of the world it is possible when voting to write anybodies name on the voting form and vote for them. which, I assume, would include your own name.

some may argue that voting for yourself in this way is a wasted vote. but in reality it is making a statement that the present system is not adequate and needs to be changed. if enough people vote for themself then it is minutely possible that are referendum could be held such that the whole system gets changed.

a better system could be a true direct democracy.

look it up in Wikipedia