What Australia can learn from US election debacle

We are witnessing a rapid upsurge in corruption amongst our politicians

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

We are witnessing a rapid upsurge in corruption amongst our politicians.

Policies that are corrupt and ineffective, politicians exploiting their expenses and using public money to engage in unsavoury practices and line their pockets.

Our political processes are being manipulated and exploited like never before by highly paid labour consultants and political lobbyists with vested interests and politicians on the gravy train to gain some form of political or financial benefit for themselves or their clients.

Even political exploitation of the negative gearing system is occurring where we see some politicians own up to twenty houses.    

We have no integrity system in place to control corruption and our political leaders show no interest in introducing such a system.

Our electoral and political systems need to be overhauled and completely cleaned up.

After the recent voting debacle in the US, presidential we should be making our electoral processes much more secure.

Firstly we should outlaw pork barrelling, any form of bribery and lying during an election campaign.           

Control of the vote is paramount in any voting system.

All people who are eligible to vote should be registered with the Electoral Commission after having been officially identified by an official identity card.

Dodgy identification processes should not be allowed.

Issuing everybody with an official identity card would solve a lot of the problems and make the process much easier to introduce.

It would make the process much easier to implement and control.

Digital notification after each vote is cast should be recorded and all election centres notified so that people cannot vote more than once during an election and rort the system by voting at different booths.

We also need to have official voter identification processes in place at election centres so that people can prove who they really are before they are issued with ballot papers.

These modifications are necessary to ensure that our electoral system is safe, fair, honest and free of any political and financial manipulation.

Douglas Young, Silkstone