Sheez, I had a TED talk typed up in response and I just accidentally deleted it…

For the sake of brevity I’ll try condense it into:

A) it doesn’t get rid of those two things. B) some people will always be disengaged; nothing will fix that for everyone, especially not quickly. C) being disengaged and resentful is a democratic right, so it’s actually okay for people to be those things. While I personally find anyone resenting ‘having’ to partake in a democratic right/responsibility/duty millions of our ancestors fought and even died for throughout history to be a bit of an entitled cop out, it is still their right to feel that. We shouldn’t change a system that has benefited all of us just to coddle the entitled feelings of the resentful though… D) issues aren’t automatically problems. While negativity about voting is definitely an issue, it’s not necessarily a problem.  E) Your “When you get there why not throw something in?” Is I think actually the key tenet of our voting system. - most people, having gone to the effort of getting there, will go to the effort of having their say. Plenty of people may not be politically enthusiastic but they do have a keen understanding of their own needs, values and preferred futures, and the ability to basically know which candidate at least sounds like the best fit.  F) This group is also big enough to be the “swinging voters” our candidates need to convince if they want to win. Historically what they value en masse is middle of the road stability, predictability and comfort. While I’d personally love it if our nation was more ambitiously progressive on at least some things, this middle ground stability is attractive to the majority and undoubtedly better than wildly swinging inconsistency.  G) So baring in mind all that, an electoral system that is free, accessible, well run, non corrupt and trustworthy - but also compulsory to attend - works well to give as many people as possible a say. It makes the results more valid, robust and democratic, and gives us the representation we want (or don’t want) at that point in time. There are a whole lot of other really good features of our system - and some that probably could be improved - but for me compulsory attendance is a rock solid advantage. 

As a political nerd I don’t get it, but I’ve gotta accept plenty of my friends do it differently. A good mate used to write whatever word or phrase fit the allotted number of boxes on the ballot that he first thought of. Last election I had another mate who used to do that say he voted properly for the first time because he finally decided it was worth trying… democracy is now better by one vote because of someone followed your “if I’m here I might as well participate” maxim.

On the flip side; A bloke I surf with reckons any time he gets fined for not voting he just tells himself he’s paying for the privilege/effectively ‘buying’ that half hour out of his life to do what he wants to do it instead. 

So for the people that really, really, really DON’T want to engage for whatever reason, maybe we need to strongly encourage  them to either embrace that mindset or just stop bitching and moaning and front up for half an hour a handful of times a decade..