However, to address this problem – perhaps those that choose not to vote for a certain amount of elections, and hence ignore their civic and democratic duty and right (right implies the ability to do the actioan expressed therein, as opposed to a liberty, which implies choice,) then perhaps they should not be entitled to vote. Such shock tactics and scaremongering would lead to a mass influx into the polls to, if nothing else, protest against this travesty, and would hopefully remain high to prevent the election of any such official that would propose such an ideal.

I talked about this a while back on my blog – have a check if you want to see my full argument and the debate that followed.

I regard it as part of my democratic duty to vote if at all possible. But these suggestions are never about that. A legal compulsion is not about saying something is your duty, it’s about saying that the State will penalise you if you don’t. Because you might be called away on business, have a holiday booked (and who doesn’t book their holidays with more advance warning that a Prime Minister gives us of the exact election date) or whatever, and haven’t had the foresight to guess that this might happen and so get a postal vote. Which has its own allegations of widespread fraud.

“Rather mass abstention than mass ill-informed voting”

I think this applies rather more powerfully to the electorate than to MPs…

Chris,

Great post. I confess that I had not considered some of the contradictions to the NOTA options that you raise here.

Two comments however:
Firstly, I am not convinced by the problem with funding (or lack of it) for NOTA. By its very definition, all the other candidates are doing their bit (by promoting policies or just by being unappealling) to campaign for NOTA even if that is quite their intention.

Secondly – and rather more importantly – I think it is important that individuals are able to voice their active discontent with all those that purport to want to represent them. There is a very real difference between 1) those who “don’t care” – Abstentions/don’t show up to vote
2) nutters – spoiled ballots
and
3) those who really do care and care sufficiently to know that none of the options are right. – who would vote NOTA.

Without NOTA one cannot extract the size of group 3) from 1) and 2). Currently, our elected representatives assume that low turnout means that everyone is in group 1) and I doubt that this is correct.

PG

Really? You think MPs have the time to know what they’re voting for on EVERY vote? Rather mass abstention than mass ill-informed voting

Of course, compulsory electoral registration brings with it other problems; without the relevant safeguards on data protection and sharing of information, it could turn into a national identity register by stealth. But, compulsory registration for the purpose of elections (and elections only) is probably an idea that I’d back, for the very reasons you lay out.

nor does compulsory attendance at the ballot box = compulsory exercise of a vote. as an australian, i’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve spoiled my ballot paper or simply submitted a blank ballot paper. and a blank ballot paper is identical to no ballot paper: both equate to split yr preferences/ acquising with the winning candidate (depending upon voting method).

only a fool or a simpleton would claim that compulsory voting results in greater enfranchisement or participation in the political process, because only an idiot would claim that voting in periodic elections satisfies even the most minimal definition of ‘engagement in the political process’.

nor does compulsory voting necessarily result in better governments: just look at the bastards the australian people have been happily re-electing for the last 10 years.

the positive justification for compulsory voting is that voting, like taxation, is a necessary part of of the representative democratic process, and that like taxation, any claims to be excused from it must be met with the most extreme suspicion.

the negative justification for compulsory voting is that it prevents the disenfranchisement of populations (which is *not* the same as the enfranchisement of populations). we are all, i hope, familiar with the long US tradition of disenfranchising entire populations: dissuading ‘the wrong sort of voter’ from voting, either thru negative campaigning and push-polling, refusal to register voters of particular classes/ races/ genders, or thru attempts to persuade community leaders to tell their populations to not vote. this process might be most explicit in the US, but it occurs here in the UK too, altho, admittedly, rarely as overtly or as explicitly as it does in the US – and is rarely as coherently pursued here as it is in the US. compulsory voting *doesn’t* enfranchise voters, but it *does* prevent their disenfranchisement. they can still not vote, or vote for right-wing bastards or whatever else they choose – but they can’t be *denied* their right to vote. and for that reason alone, voting – in every election and every electorate – should be compulsory.

of course, if this government was even vaguely a labour gov’t, it’d do something about the shockingly undemocratic nature of the voting process: there’s no point rocking up to vote if the process yr voting in is not democratic: at the very least, based upon single transferable votes. democrativ voting process (and an end to malapportionment, even though it’d help the tories in the short term) – there’s a reform that’d return me (at least) to the labour fold.

Additionally, it still leaves the other problem I cited, namely that NOTA will not be given the support and publicity of rival candidates. Unless some loopy millionaire starts a Brewster’s Millions-style campaign…

Surely that’s a disincetive to vote NOTA, though – not only would the system be bullying people into voting, but it would be bullying them into accepting the limited options given to them (“well, if you don’t like this lot, you get nothing”). It draws a false equivalence between rejecting the presented candidates and rejecting representation all together; it’s a “you’re with us or against us” situation.

More sensible, surely, would be that all candidates who lost to a NOTA would be barred from standing again in that seat (and maybe from standing again, anywhere, ever?). All of a sudden, with ambitious politicians facing the prospect of being barred from their chosen profession, we might see some more genuinely representative actions from our MPs…

This is the reason behind the growth of special interest groups campaigning on a single issue.

Why not just allow people to vote on a single issue. You don’t have to compromise that way.

Obviously, this would mean new elections on a roughly weekly basis, nothing useful would ever get done, and our PM would never be able to attend any meetings with anyone, ever, but that’s their problem.