Yes voting is compulsory in Australia. When I was younger I rebelled against and and didn't vote for decades, seeing the cynicism of politics, and not wanting to be a part of it. I managed to get away with it for a long time. I did get fined once. But these days I think it's essential to have compulsory voting in a democracy. I do not think the fines should be large and they aren't large $50 at the last count, but it's enough to get people to vote who'd like to vote but simply can't be arsed.
There is no voter fraud here. When I move somewhere and usually there are local council records of a move and if so they will send you a registration form to be on the local register. I don't know how it works, but I certainly wouldn't want to try and vote twice seeing that can end in jail time, I'm guessing. You vote and they cross you off a list.
There's simply no incentive either in Australia or the US to vote twice. Maybe a handful of dozen people might do it in 100million votes cast but that's utterly irrelevant.
In Australia there have been the occasionally dodgy ballot box and strange shenanigans, just like in America, but it's usually the right wing polititions who are implicated and if not then it favours neither side and in the end it's exceedingly rare.
Fact is for all the frothing and foaming people in authority who watch this stuff have found nothing of any consequence at all. It's vote suppression that is the big thing in America simply because you do not have compulsory voting.
Donald Trump who always says the small print out loud, said what we all know to be true, and that is that if all eligible voters were allowed to vote the GOP would never get elected. No way. And that would be true, if that were the case I guess in order to get elected the GOP would have to alter their policies to match the will of the people. Which is how it's meant to work.
But the GOP do not want to do this so they engineer Gerrymandering, and obstructionism to thwart the will of the people.
Graham Lindsay in his reversal of his opinion that they won't rush through Supreme Court judge close to an election says "as far as I can tell the president is elected for 4 years and not 31/2." However between the Death of Scalia and the death of Ginsburg, 4.7 years had passed and Trump filled both vacancies.
Further McConnell tries to now justify it by saying "this time though we have the Senate as well as the Presidency" implying that he has the will of the people.
Why rush through Barrett unless they know it's to thwart the will of the people. This is why if the people give Biden the Senate, they would not just have a right, but an obligation to increase the size of the court.
Barrett is an ideological troll. Great article on her here.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/amy-coney-barrett-nomination-char...Look I do get that you lot have this fixation on the Democrats and you have your beliefs, but disagree or not, I find it impossible that you cannot see the long term damage that the feckless supine Republicans are doing to your democracy. Maybe you like the chaos and civil strife. I don't know the American psyche well enough to form an opinion on that.
But I do know that the vast majority of Americans do not share your views, even if a lot do. Barrett herself has no scruples or principles as you can see from the article I linked to.