What do you do if you forgot to vote?

If you were going to forget, you should’ve pre-poll voted. I usually pre-poll vote on principle as it will probably be more convenient, unless I’m sure it’ll be more convenient to vote on the day, or I want to be sure the people I vote for aren’t revealed as evil forced-birth advocates or in favour of torturing animals the day before the election (and I’ve already voted for them, argh).

You have two choices:

Pay the fine

or

Send in a reason why you ddn’t vote

The latter course has you also have three choices:

i) Say: I don’t have to vote, you fascist, I’m a free man (in which case prepare to pay the fine)

ii) give any half plausible sounding excuse

iii) write your answer in a foreign language (a type ii) excuse is best).

You could try other options like saying you did actually vote, but I don’t know how that would go, I wonder how they could prove you really didn’t.

You pay the fine they will be sending you in the mail. Either that or make up a good story and avoid it.

Aurelius said :

I did hear a while back there weren’t postal votes for this election, but that may have changed.

There was 🙂

No. Not sheep. Sheep have better morals.

Perhaps it’s cynical.
Should I have said ‘sheep’ not ‘whore’? 🙂

ilmarinen said :

Be glad.. You aren’t a whore.

Come now, blacksmith, isn’t that just a little bit cynical?

Be glad.. You aren’t a whore.
‘Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us’. (PJ O’Rourke)

Whilst I can understand missing the ballot, don’t go bitching about anything the Government does during this term… (although your summary of local politics seems pretty damned spot on)

As for the whinge about the “power trip” – I bet if you worked retail, and a customer came up after closing hours, you wouldn’t be saying “what can I get you? 😛

Just suck it up and pay the lousy fine 😀 (also, if they let you off, do GIVE to a charity – or the Karma Monkeys’ll get ya’). Let us know if you do get sent a fine… I’m sure you’ll get a whole other round of sympathy from the Riot’ 2nd time too…

I can relate to forgetting stuff like that, hoolahawk. People like you and me exist to make others feel much better about themselves. It’s a noble purpose, and somebody’s got to do it.

: )

I’m betting they won’t even get around to sending you the fine. There’s hardly any of them in there and they’re busy all year round. But now they’ve read this maybe they will make it a priority, so … sorry!

I have it on good authority that a heartfelt “sorry” and a promise to never do it again usually suffices to get one off the hook.

You can just say you were called interstate without notice (thus you didn’t pre-vote) and weren’t able to on the day.
As for Davo’s suggestion re postal, I did hear a while back there weren’t postal votes for this election, but that may have changed.

I was enrolled in (but not living in) Qld during their 2003 state election, didn’t vote, but never heard anything about it. So perhaps the fine may never materialise anyway.

^^ That’s not really an excuse; you can pre-poll for the days leading up to it, and you can put in a postal vote etc.

Well if you forgot to vote you were obviously interstate the entire day, and thus have a legal excuse to give when they send you the form.

I think that ACT elections is a big waste of time.

If that is your thinking it should not be a surprise that voting wasn’t a high enough priority for you to remember.

You have no idea how happy it makes me to find out that somebody of your caliber wasn’t able to vote.

The fine is only $20.

Sorry, no sympathy for you. Me with injury to foot (and thus couldn’t walk) still managed to make it to a polling place, where if I had said screw it I’d probably have a damn fine reason to give. Besides, with so much coverage on the internet, TV, newspapers, etc how could you forget?

You need to manage your situation better.