Mandatory voting won't help as apathetic votes would be either distributed randomly or given according to preference having nothing to do with the issues, such as which candidate is better looking or which one appears more on a popular comedy shows.

You're speaking hypothetically, but the experience of countries with mandatory voting bears out that mandatory voting drives parties towards the median voter, not the fringes. It's called Hotelling's Law.

America and Australia have a lot in common, including that of people of eligible to vote, those who have religious aims are in the minority.

One of these countries is dominated by the politics of trying to enforce the laws of herders from thousands of years ago. And the other is not.

Motivated voters -- such as folk with a religious bee in their bonnet -- are highly over-represented in voluntary systems. In a mandatory system, the median voter dominates. That's generally a better outcome, because the median voter is more interested in Shit Just Sorta Approximately Working, rather than ultra-serious micromotives.

USA and Australia are very different politically. I have no idea what you mean by "the laws of herders from thousands of years ago", but if I venture a guess I'd assume you refer to the Judeo-Christian principles. That ye olde "do not murder", "do not steal", "do not perjury" stuff. If so, I'm pretty sure, unless I missed some recent developments, that both USA and Australia are still on board with enforcing those. As USA is about 15 times bigger than Australia, fringes are bigger too - on bigger sample, you get more place for exceptional outcomes to manifest.

> because the median voter is more interested in Shit Just Sorta Approximately Working,

Why this is a good thing? It is known that every hard problem has easy, cheap, understandable and incorrect solution. Or, as you call it, "Shit Just Sorta Approximately Working" but not actually working because of complicated reasons that median voter wouldn't bother to comprehend. So you get a lot of voting for shit that sounds good but doesn't work. How that's good for anything?

> the Judeo-Christian principles

It may shock you to learn that legal systems other than the Mosaic law have that "don't kill or steal" stuff. I was thinking of the more tasteless parts of Leviticus. In fact it was worked out and written down thousands of years before anyone was thinking about leaving Egypt.

Another name for it is "Judeo-Greco-Persian-Roman-Christian-Celtic principles", given the roots of the western culture which Britain transmitted to the colonies.

> Why this is a good thing?

Because it leads to a Benthamite political culture. Australian politics is either boring or depressing, American politics is either exciting or depressing. But the boring-or-depressing option leads to occasional outbreaks of good policy. Australia is one of the less-worse governed countries in the world over the past 30 years.

Neither side of politics needs to pander to a narrow base, except as mild lip service. So they tend to be centrist managerialists. Boring but sometimes effective.

> legal systems other than the Mosaic law have that "don't kill or steal" stuff.

It wouldn't shock me, but it so happened one that is in force in US and Australia draws largely from Christian law and moral traditions, which borrows a lot from Judaic tradition (not only, Roman too, some Celtic, very little Persian as far as I know). In other countries, it is different, but in those two specific ones that's where the roots are, that's just history.

> Australia is one of the less-worse governed countries in the world over the past 30 years.

How do you know that? Australia doesn't have the same problems the US has, by many dimensions, and is very different geographically, population-wise, traditionally and so on. How you would even compare the governance, on which basis?

> Boring but sometimes effective.

Effective doing what? I don't know much about Australian politics, I admit, but I know Australia has no freedom of speech - people were imprisoned or otherwise sanctioned by government for merely expressing various political positions. Or this one: https://wikileaks.org/aus-suppression-order/. But maybe the government is efficient doing something else than protecting basic rights - but what?

> one that is in force in US and Australia draws largely from Christian law and moral traditions

Nonsense. The Common Law doesn't take the Torah as a source of precedent, neither does it look to the continental law for precedent. The bible is useless as a source of anything other than motherhood statements.

It spends less than a page listing the "ten commandments", of which only 4 (killing, theft, adultery and false witnessing) are actually enforceable laws of social consequence.

It then goes on to spend pages and pages and pages listing interior decoration instructions for the Holy Tabernacle. Even a few scribbled pages of notes about common moral questions ("is killing in self-defence murder?", "do Moses's instructions to commit genocide override the commandments?") would have been helpful. Not a peep. It was left to Rabbis and Churchmen to make any sense of.

What does the Bible say about the common defences to a murder charge? Nothing. About the intricacies of trial law? Not a peep. The bread-and-butter legal issues -- property, trusts, estates, torts, duties, equity -- that occupy 99% of the daily life of the law and most of its positive value to society? Nowhere to be seen.

Any major actually-used legal system utterly ignores the Bible as a source of law. Probably because it was not written by lawyers.

> How you would even compare the governance, on which basis?

Very much a matter of opinion. But if I had to gamble on which country will be bankrupt in 100 years, I'd be asking to settle the bet in Australian dollars.

> Effective doing what? I don't know much about Australian politics, I admit, but I know Australia has no freedom of speech - people were imprisoned or otherwise sanctioned by government for merely expressing various political positions.

Actually, the High Court has consistently found that the Australian Constitution provides freedom of communication on political matters, starting with ACTV v The Commonwealth, proportionate to public safety.