[Mothy]

According to the Australian Electoral Commission web site the fine in Australia for not voting is $20 - so its not a big stick but enough to make you remember to go!

I agree with dewolf - we are generally well informed about politics and each party publish and handout how-to-vote cards on the day. With peferential voting you need to number each box on the Ballot paper, so the handouts help. For my local rep Ballot there were 7 on the list.

For the Senate, the NSW Ballot paper had 79 people - so to make it easy, the names are grouped by party and you can chose to vote for one group instead of numbering all 79 boxes. The Electoral Commission then assume your vote will be spread by the predetermined (and registered) pattern for that party.

Polls close at 6pm and by about 9pm there are enough votes counted to know what the result is likely to be.

One of the interesting things about representative elections is that it is posible to govern in your own right (majority of seats) with only 26% of the vote - you only need to gain slightly more than half the votes in sligtly more than half the seats.

Tim