Why compulsory voting is a terrible idea
May 2nd, 2006The IPPR have proposed “compulsory voting for the lot of you”, to answer the problem of falling turnouts. IPPR are a New Labour thinktank and the idea is enthusiastically backed by Geoff Hoon (remember him?). That alone should be enough to tell you it’s a bad idea, though as it turns out there are plenty of proper reasons why.
Firstly, while high turnout is desirable, that does not mean that turnouts of 95-100% are necessarily a good thing: While it would be nice if everyone voted, no matter how politically engaged the populace are, there will always be people who will want to opt out. In any sort of free democracy, their wishes should be respected. High turnout is desirable but this is very different from maximal turnout; in the “good old days” of high turnout in general elections it only ever twice (1950 and 1951) exceeded 80% nationwide.
Secondly, it goes against the common-sense rule that in any aspect of life, compulsion should only ever be done as a last resort. Other measures, such as making election days national holidays (or moving them to the weekends), reforming party finance rules to widen the playing field, or adopting more proportional electoral systems, have not yet been tried at all. It is stupid to pick the most desperate option when none of the more moderate ones have even been attempted.
Thirdly, any compulsory voting system is inherently unfair, by being biased towards the candidates standing - you have to pick them, not anyone else. The concession of adding a “None of the above” (NOTA) box on voting papers is totally meaningless, unless along with it there is a guarantee that if NOTA wins with a majority, that seat does not return an MP or councillor for the duration of the entire term. Re-opening nominations is not enough - if the majority of people did not want an MP, their wish has to be respected. Else, hypothetically, 80% of the electorate could vote NOTA and yet still an undesirable candidate would be returned; the “turnout” would effectively be 20% and you would be in exactly the same situation as before: the high turnout thanks to compulsory voting is entirely cosmetic.
What’s more, even if NOTA was given the same status as other candidates, it would not receive the funding or party political backing actual candidates would, which would be an unlevel playing field. Unless of course, you have some sort of subsidy provided for people to campaign on NOTA’s behalf, which would lead to the bizarre situation of the state on the one hand telling people to vote, yet on the other to vote for no-one. That does not strike me as particularly logical.
Finally, and most importantly, the entire sentiment behind it, to “restore” universal suffrage and re-enfranchise the poor, is nauseatingly moralising and hypocritical. Despite all the hand-wringing about the poor and working-class being disenfranchised, they have failed to realise that it’s the Labour party that has disenfranchised them more than anything else. By moving to the right, they have deserted a whole swathe of society, the very ones whom the Labour party was originally founded to represent. Turnout in socially deprived areas has suffered the most in recent years; without a national party for them, people have felt deserted. Contrary to conventional belief, the majority of them don’t start voting fascist in response - they just stay at home, in their thousands. That’s chiefly why turnout in my permanently “Labour” constituency has fallen from 77.8% in 1950 to 49.8% in 2005. To first punish poor people by betraying the ideals that were meant to defend them, then to bully them into voting with the threat of a fine, in order to make election results ostensibly “legitmate”, is totally reprehensible.
What’s the solution? Ideally, provide poor people with a Labour party worth voting for; one that is in their interest, not that of supermarket owners, billionaire media magnates and piss-poor IT contractors. Since that won’t happen, then the very least they could do is reform the electoral system, abolish first-past-the-post and replace it with a more proportional system that allows a political spectrum that contains more than the two-and-a-half parties we have at the moment. Either that will allow a genuinely left-wing party into the political arena, or it will give Labour a bloody good incentive to reclaim the ground and people it has abandoned.
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:09:46
I’ll accept compulsory voting on one, and only one caveat. That any elected MP loses their seat the moment they fail to attend any vote in the House.
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.
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:36:14
Its missing the point completely. There reason why people don’t vote is that it dosen’t make any difference. The elected MP doesn’t think, they just toe the party line.
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.
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:32:41
The concession of adding a “None of the above” (NOTA) box on voting papers is totally meaningless, unless along with it there is a guarantee that if NOTA wins with a majority, that seat does not return an MP or councillor for the duration of the entire term.
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…
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:50:15
Well, that’s the problem with trying to make “No candidate” equivalent with other candidates - it leads to all sort of contradictions. Your alternative suggestion is a good one and partially solves the first problem I cited - but it could just lead to election fatigue: by-election after by-election, and an eventual winner just because local people are sick of the repeated campaigning. Also, if candidates are only banned from their own seat, then parties could just swap them round seats for the second, third, fourth, etc. bout of voting - I would suggest not allowing them to be re-elected for a year…
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…
May 2nd, 2006 at 12:53:02
sorry, but yr arguments against compulsory voting are all rubbish. the presence or otherwise of a NOTA option is as irrelevant under compulsory voting as it is under non-compulsory voting: as the anarchists say, no matter who you vote for, or how yr vote is acquired, one of the bastards will win. there’s no ‘democratic deficit’ for an MP elected under non-compuslory voting if less than 50% of the electorate votes (let alone votes for them); nothing changes under compulsory voting that mandates a NOTA option.
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.
May 2nd, 2006 at 13:01:44
Sean, if you wish to make sure that people cannot be denied their right to vote, then you could enforce compulsory registration on the electoral roll, while leaving the choice of whether to turn up at the polling station down to the individual. That way the right to vote is guaranteed, while the individual retains the choice over whether to exercise that right.
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.
May 2nd, 2006 at 15:18:08
Iain - “I’ll accept compulsory voting on one, and only one caveat. That any elected MP loses their seat the moment they fail to attend any vote in the House.”
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
May 2nd, 2006 at 17:34:32
Paul,
“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
May 3rd, 2006 at 09:59:30
Paul - that’s kind of my point. Right now, politicians and think-tanks seem to think that throwing around the idea of compulsory voting is a fun thing to do, because it doesn’t really affect them; they’ll be at the ballot anyway, because it’s a part of their job.
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.
May 3rd, 2006 at 22:46:50
Personally, I think that compulsary voting isn’t a good idea - it only leads to people making rash or ill-informed decisions that could sway an election a way it should not be swayed.
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.