Australia was the first country to make voting compulsory by law, with a fine for those who don’t show up. I often hear people from other countries saying that it’s a good thing, but I’m not so sure. The usual reasoning is that it forces people to take an interest in what goes on in their own country and to have a say. ‘You can’t complain about the results if you don’t vote,’ they say.
I’ve never worked out how most people stay informed even if they want to. I used to donkey vote – get my name marked off, put an unmarked form in the box and walk out. That wastes my time and the time of the counters, but at least my ignorance doesn’t impact the vote.
My flatmate decides who to vote for by counting the number of leaflets each party hands him on the walk to the centre and choosing the one who wastes least paper.
I was forced to vote for the local council on Saturday and I was determined to make a more informed decision. It seems to me that my choice should be for someone who I believe stands for the right things and has the experience to deliver them. I could find nothing on the web to indicate who was running or what they stood for, so it came down to the papers I got on the day. Of the five parties running, three were at lunch when I arrived and one gave me a leaflet showing how to vote for them, but didn’t say why I should. I chose the last one because they stood for the environment and had a plan to provide affordable rainwater tanks for residents.
My vote will count in this election, but I have been swayed by marketing and have no confidence in the ability of my elected representative to follow through. It would probably have been better if I’d left the voting to those who are informed.
And thus we see the problem with democracy. The vote is most effective when the voter is informed. To be informed takes effort. Most people can not or care not to make that effort.
From what I’ve seen of US politics, it seems they try to overcome this by making a political rally almost entertainment. It’s all very dramatic with flag waving and rahs to the rooftops.
Australian politics isn’t the same, thank goodness, but there’s still the problem of inducing the effort to become informed. It’s especially important because of compulsory voting, which would force the “care nots” to vote. I think that this could be solved by reducing the informed effort threshold.
Internet web pages are the perfect solution for this. The Internet really shines at dispensing information. There should be a central website which lists all candidates and their policies. It should be publicised so that people can be made aware of it. I’m not aware of any such resource, and obviously you didn’t find anything when you did a search. It’s a shame, because democracy needs this awareness to function optimally.
Oh, and I didn’t vote by counting leaflets. I voted by the greatest number of cute sounding women in the party. OK, that’s not the whole truth, but I do think that we need to reduce the amount of testosterone in the political system.
Hi Murray,
Thank you for the thoughtful blog, but, my friend, I can’t disagree more on the importance of compulsory voting. Finding myself living the USA, it is very disheartening to see candidates speaking extremism through the sides of their mouths to encourage the psychopathic fringes to vote, because they can be relied on to be bothered. No-one speaks to normal tax payers, normal people. There is much talk of “base” and “core” supporters – normal, decent, non-extremist people are left scratching their heads. Extremists bother me a great deal, and they bother most Americans, but without compulsory voting they get much more air play than they deserve.
S.
There’s always another way of looking at it, isn’t there? Thanks for sharing this, Scott. The US system has always left me baffled.