Posted on 11/24/2004 8:33:51 AM PST by Publius
I spent polling day in this year's presidential election in Seattle and I observed one gargantuan difference between elections in my country, Australia, and those of yours -- compulsory voting. Compulsory voting forces people to engage with their democracy -- maybe the United States should try a dose.
Since 1924, Australians have had to turn up at a polling place on Election Day and have their names recorded against the electoral roll. More than 95 percent of Australians pick up their ballot papers and vote in the election, whether it is for a state or national election. If you don't vote in state or national elections in Australia, you are charged with breaching the electoral laws and face a fine or even imprisonment if you are a persistent offender.
The impact of compulsory voting on the dynamics of a national election is striking. The billions of dollars spent in time and effort trying to ensure that people actually register to vote and then fill in a ballot paper just doesn't happen in Australia. Political parties focus their efforts on promoting their leader and his or her party's policies.
And in the 48 hours before the dawn of polling day there is none of the exhausting whistle-stop touring across the country trying to encourage people to get out and vote that Sen. John Kerry and President Bush engaged in this year.
On the day before national Election Day in Australia -- elections are held roughly every three years and Australians voted Oct. 9 this year to re-elect Prime Minister John Howard -- there is an eerie quiet as leaders of the political parties begin to put their feet up at the end of a grueling four-week campaign. They know there is little they can do to persuade voters which way to vote by this time.
Australia is one of 20 countries with compulsory voting; Argentina and Austria are two others in this elite club. While Belgium was the first nation to introduce compulsory voting, in 1893, Australia was the first English-speaking country -- when the state of Queensland passed legislation in 1914.
Ten years after Queensland's law was passed, Australia's national Parliament followed suit. Intriguingly, the law to make voting compulsory apparently passed through the Parliament in only 15 minutes. Where voter turnout had been below 50 percent in elections before 1924, that number increased to more than 90 percent in the 1925 election and has been 95 percent to 98 percent ever since.
Although there are some prominent advocates of abolishing compulsory voting, including Australia's current finance minister, the issue doesn't get any serious airplay. This is because of Australia's history as a strong and progressive democracy in its formative years.
Like New Zealand, Australia in the 1890s and early years of the 20th century was a world leader in democratic reforms. New Zealand and the state of South Australia were two of the first democracies in the world to allow women the right to vote, for example.
Early Australian governments believed that compulsory voting was, according to a 2001 research paper from the Australian Parliamentary Library (APL), "as much a part of democracy as compulsory education."
For many Australians the beauty of compulsory voting is that it, as the APL paper notes, "plays a crucial role in reducing the social bias in turnout. In voluntary systems it is the poor and the marginalized who are the non-voters." It's certainly true that low-income workers and welfare recipients receive the same focus and attention as wealthy Australians from politicians because, as a consequence of compulsory voting, their votes count as much as those of the wealthy retirees, for example.
Compulsory voting has proved a resounding success in Australia. It helps to keep the cost of elections down and, most important, means that political parties don't have to raise obscene sums of money to finance their campaigns.
Participating in democracy is not optional in Australia. Even if you despise politicians and the political process, you have to turn out a couple of times every three or four years to vote for your state or national government. It forces even the most cynical individual to at least cast a fleeting glance at the political process.
Perhaps it's time for Americans to consider the democratic benefits of compulsory voting. Check out Australia -- it's a feisty and engaged democracy as a result of compulsory voting.
Greg Barns, a former adviser to the Australian government, is a political commentator.
After every election, the True Believers of the losing side sip this particular brand of Kool-Aid and argue for ideological purity for their party. This year the Left has sipped, but with a difference. Rather than argue for ideological purity, some on the Left are now suggesting compulsory voting. What better way, they think, to get that vast pool of liberals and “progressives” to come to the polls! Vote -- or pay a fine -- or go to prison.
This one is going to be as popular as a skunk at a church picnic.
If anything, too many uninformed idiots are voting. In my perfect world, only taxpayers, landowners and military (acive and veteran) could vote.
This is an awful idea! Let the ignorant and uninformed stay home.
Do we really want people who are too lazy to get off the sofa and quit eating cheesy poofs to vote to decide the future of the country? We'll have Jerry Springer suddnly the most powerful political figure.
Riddle me this, Batman. Everyone bemoans the "light" turnout and complains about how many people decline to cast a ballot. But on the other hand, the media and the parties shoot for accurate predictions by sampling about 1,250 of the population and they are flabbergasted if their prediction is off the mark. Quite the pair of ducks, eh wot?
Ditto Kiddo!
The less that vote, the more mine counts. I wish everyone would stay home on election day, because I am not!
By "taxpayer", do you mean people who pay the income tax or sales tax, or people who pay the property tax -- which is the way things worked before 1825?
Ah, a South Park Republican. Didn't Jerry Springer serve in some function as a Democrat or run for office?
I have a hunch that the non-voters are more likely to include the "leave-me-alone" types, who are not excited about Democrat plans.
Oh yeah, compulsary voting got them all to turn in their guns by force and hire/vote in a bunch of liberal wack jobs.
Oh yeah, we wanna be just like them, NOT!!!
I love the Aussies, but forced "voting" is not an American concept. If you don't vote, then obviously you don't care or know who to vote for. THAT, works for me.
The moron doesn't get it. We need fewer people voting, not more.
Maybe if we could require the voter to be able to recite from memory his Senators, representative, Governor, President, VP, at least one member of the cabinet?
Compulsory voting? In a Republic? What a crock.
I suspect the Aussies didn't experience anything like the old stakeholder franchise that existed in this country.
Weren't literacy tests required in the South for a century or so?
Right on! I am constantly horrified by the talk shows where they send someone out on the street to "interview people about their political knowledge." Hannity did one recently with fliper and the people who voted for Kerry didn't have a clue as to who the Dem VP was, what positions Kerry or Bush had, etc. I also remember a street interview that Jay Lenno did where he asked voters on their opinons and they were equally clueless.
Rather than focusing on "more" voters, we need more eductated voters.
Voting is a right. If someone doesn't want to exercise their rights, fine. But forcing people to vote totally misses the boat (hey I'm a poet).
There should be nothing compulsory about voting. The only necessary things should be the voter is a legitimate American citizen, has a proper ID, is legally registered, is at the right place at the right time, and performs the process correctly.
The lazy and foolish need not and should not be included to make the process legitimate. We have enough fools already voting as it is.
Compulsory voting forces people to engage with their democracy -- maybe the United States should try a dose.
Uhm, how about NO!
compulsory voting=bad idea
I am not an historian but even I don't remember any mandatory voting laws here. Qualifications have come and gone, districts have been spun and unspun, and the Constitution itself has been dissected, amended, and fideled with over the years and survived.
Suggestions outside out borders are welcome, but being pigheaded Americans, we like our history, we like our Constitution and so far, we've done "OK" at the polls without force.
The only one who loses if they don't vote is the voter. Unless of course you have a socialistic mindset and require a couple thousand people to convince you that you voted properly per their advice.
:-)
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