I have conducted a written public survey in a shopping center on the Gold Coast last year and found that: Australians holds dearly their right to vote, but very often felt let down by the lack of satisfactory candidates for them to cast a vote in an election.
The details of the survey are as follows:
The Title of the survey is: Are you satisfied with your current system of government? For which I asked only 3 questions:
Question 1: If voting is optional (i.e., you are allowed not to vote), will you continue to cast your vote in the next election?
83.3% of the respondents ticked ‘YES’, and 16.7% ticked ‘NO’. (Out of the 92 respondents, 2 did not tick on this question was not included in the survey)
For those who bothered to write down their reasons for ticking the respective boxes,
Some reasons given for ticking ‘YES’ were:
“I like being involved & having a choice in choosing my government”
“Because I believe I can make a difference”
“My Right”
“Women fought for the right to vote”
“Because I believe in our system”
“Every vote counts (numbers rule)”
“Its important”
Some reasons given for ticking ‘NO’ were:
“Because I don’t really think either major party does a great job. They fight like little children – Annoys me greatly”
“If no satisfactory candidate I prefer not to vote”
“Voting doesn’t matter, rigged”
Question 2: How often have you felt that there was a lack of satisfactory candidates for you to cast a vote in an election?
33.3% of the respondent tick ‘Very Often’, 27.8% tick ‘Often’, 30% tick ‘Sometimes’, 8.9% tick ‘Happy with the choice of Candidates’ and 0% select ‘Always happy with the choice of candidates’.
Question 3: If you were given a choice to choose a system of government, would you prefer?
Choice A: To have the right to directly elect your choice of leader at the top job even though the candidates available for selection may not be the most competent one to deliver economic prosperity, high employment and problem solving skill to overcome the current pressing issues such as water shortage and global warming.
Choice B: You do not mind not to have the right to directly elect a leader if there is a system in place to ensure the best people at the top job who have the necessary competency to deliver economic prosperity, high employment, and the ability to solve the current pressing issue such as water shortage and global warming.
57.8% of the respondents selected ‘Choice A’, and 42.2% selected ‘Choice B’.
Although the sample of this survey is small (90 participants) with 41.1% male and 58.9% female, 20% between the age group of 18 to 30, 26.7% between 31 to 40, 18.9% between 41 to 50, and 34.4% 51 year and above, but as Gold Coast is a tourist destination, the sample taken includes postcode from Northern Queensland, Brisbane, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.
I will analyse the outcome of the above survey in my coming article:
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