Compulsory Voting is an Oxymoron in a Democracy
I have been hesitant to blog about British politics, as I still consider myself very much a newcomer, and I’m certainly not yet up on all of the vagaries of Parliament.
But on a recent trip to my local newsagent, this front page headline caused me to spend my 80p on the Guardian instead of the Telegraph. And the details in the story didn’t disappoint.
It seems that the Labour-led government is considering various electoral “reforms.” Among these are transforming the House of Lords to a “Senate” and making its members elected rather than peers who serve for life. This has caused concern among some ministers about the perception of the House of Commons. Combine that with low turnout in the last election, and the fact that MPs in districts with strong Lib Dem or other third party presences are elected with less than 50 percent of the vote, and some ministers are downright worried about ensuring the “primacy” and “legitimacy” of Commons.
Their solution? Among other things, compulsory voting.
So, let me see if I understand this. Worried about the legitimacy of a democratic body, they want to make the voting system less democratic by forcing people to vote?
The right to vote is the fundamental principal in a democracy. But voting is a choice that free people make. And not voting is a choice, too. A decision not to vote can convey dissatisfaction with the choices. It can convey disgust with the current state affairs. Or it can be a symptom of laziness and apathy. None of these can be addressed with a legal mandate to vote. Indeed, my bet is that it would only make people angrier with the system.
And by undermining freedom, mandatory voting will most assuredly undermine the legitimacy of Parliament even more. After all, who can take seriously an election that includes participation by a whole bunch of people who don’t want to be there?
It seems to me that the ministers behind this thinking have lost sight of the forest and are utterly preoccupied with the trees. So long as Her Majesty’s Government is drawn from the Commons, and so long as the Commons controls the government’s purse, it will be the leading legislative body in the United Kingdom, in perception and in fact.
Mandatory voting is a blind alley that sounds like it belongs in a despotic regime, banana Republican or Soviet republic, not the oldest democracy in the world.
(If you’re interested in more on this, the Guardian received a number of letters about the story, which you can read here.)
March 27th, 2008 at March 27, 2008 - 2:34 pm
Marshall, I wholly endorse you spending your money on the Guardian - you might want to consider the Observer on Sundays too. The issue of electoral reform is a thorny one in the UK. Ever since Labour removed the vast majority of hereditary peers (legistlating on our behalf by accident of birth) it has been necessary to ‘complete’ the legistlative reform of the second chamber. There is by no means a concensus in any party about second chamber reform - and each path is far from problem free. But the debate is good and opening the debate about compulsory voting is good as well. Fishing trips to spark public debate are an often used tactic here and one that the media are more than happy to run with in most cases. Electoral reform is certainly on the cards but I’d hesitate to suggest what, where and when. It is what makes British politics interesting. Glad you are enjoying it!
March 28th, 2008 at March 28, 2008 - 12:12 am
I agree that compulsory voting would be wrong, but complusory attendance at the ballot box mightn’t be. If voters were given the choice of a “none of the above” on the ballot paper, wouldn’t it have the effect of revitalising democracy?
April 3rd, 2008 at April 3, 2008 - 9:57 pm
Marshall, I married a Brazilian while living there. I was “fortunate” to see the great and glorious Lula voted in. It seems that they have mandatory voting as well.
The majority of the people do not pay attention to politics, much as here in the US. And the populist candidates have much larger staffs on every street corner pushing flyers in your face with voter lists. I can imagine that many ill-informed voters just read off the list, assuming that they could read. Otherwise they fell for the populist “blame it on the US, but I can make your life better” message.
I’m more a fan of making it more difficult to vote. I would rather someone have to take time out of their day to do their civic duty. Heck, make us wait in line for 2 hours, then we’ll see who’s serious about making the decisions for the future of our country.