Here in Australia we get a fine if we don’t turn up at the polling place and have our name crossed off the list on election day. Of course this creates a pool of voters (5-10%) who really don’t want to participate (these people typically spoil their ballot by doing things like drawing a penis on the ballot), but what this does do is keep a much larger section of the population engaged in the political process.
What happens is that many people who don’t really care about politics most of the time take notice in the last few weeks of an election campaign because they know they will be voting. While not perfect, I think the good of “compulsory voting” outweighs the negative.
I tend to agree. The UK has had big drops in turnout recently, due to inscreasing distrust of politics, and the most recent government was elected by less than a quarter of the electorate.
It's led to some claims that our democracy is becoming dysfunctional and growing calls for PR or electoral reform.
At least with compulsion you have to be positive in your apathy!
Do you think the penalty works better than a positive incentive? i.e. if you got $5 to vote or a 1 in 100 chance of $1000? Also, was the penalty introduced in order to increase turnout? Is there any data on how it affected it, including among which demographics?
Normally people give a higher weight to a loss than the equivalent positive gain so I think fines should work better than a cash payment.
We have had the fine system since the 1920s so it is really hard to know how it affects the political process. One thing it does do is get the turn out to >95% (we also get a fine if we don’t register too).
One of the big positives is it takes away the decision of voting or not - it is just one of those things like paying your taxes that you have to do.
Preferential voting means it's harder to shift the mean anyway, because parties have to appeal to other parties/interest groups to get preference deals etc (of course no one has to follow a preference voting card!).
Secondly, having 98% polling day turnout means you don't have to build outrage to get people to vote (as they do in the us/uk). I remember hearing that if polling day was rainy in the UK the conservatives could usually count on a 10% boost because their constituency have cars and the working class don't - not sure how true this is these days
Yes the combination of compulsory and preferential voting has a great calming influence on the political system. Our two major parties (labor and liberal) are very similar in practice as they are competing for the middle ground, not the exciting the extreme wings to the polls. The only downside is it tends to make for boring politics, but overall boring is good if you have to live in the country.
Yes, but this actually a side effect of the how close our elections are. A few nut jobs on the far right of the Liberal party are able to cause mayhem due the slim majority the liberal party holds in parliament.
The good thing is it is mostly just noise - what actually gets through the parliament is much more benign.
Incidentally, I think the AEC said prior to the last election that you could effectively draw a cock and balls on your ballot, but if the intention of otherwise marking candidate preference was clear, the vote could count.
This happened in the last general election in the UK. Someone drew a penis next to the conservative candidate's name on the ballot paper and it was counted as a vote.
I like compulsory voting. It means candidates don't need to run to the left/right extremes to 'energise' the base or encourage those voters to show up. Instead they can focus time and airtime on more reasonable policies for the centre majority in the knowledge that those on the periphery will have to show up anyway.
What happens is that many people who don’t really care about politics most of the time take notice in the last few weeks of an election campaign because they know they will be voting. While not perfect, I think the good of “compulsory voting” outweighs the negative.