Topic awaiting preservation: Compulsory voting (Page 1 of 1)

Last week, I and some friends of mine voted for the first time. We chatted a bit about the elections, and we finally ended up discussing the pros and the cons of making the right to vote to be compulsory.

What if everyone ( except people living abroad etc ) had to vote ?

In France, the abstention rate keeps increasing and becomes really important. In my opinion, too many people died, and fought for democracy for us to forget it. It is something we have to defend. On the other hand, if somebody who doesn't want to vote was forced to do so, what would he/she do ?

I was wondering what you, people from other democracies or other types of governement, would think about it.

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If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.

I think that one important thing to 'justify' the abstention is the fact that the blank votes are not taken into account. The people have two ways to express they non agreement with the schedule of the politicians : voting for really small or extreme parties or simply do not vote.

It's easy, and can be considered as lazy, to not vote, but it'll certainly have a bigger impact if instead of 37.8% of abstention, we had 37.8% of the voters who did the the choice, to say they do support none of the candidates, to put a blank vote in the urn.

And AFAIR, people living abroad can vote in their embassy, or grant someone to vote for them in the town in which they are registered as a voter.

just my 0.02?

Down under the voting is compulsory, and I think it's a good thing because it makes people pay more attention to and take more responsibility for how the country is governed.

I honestly see no reason not to vote. Someone is going to be elected even if you don't like any of the candidates, so you may as well elect the lesser evil. It also helps to keep the politicians honest. Everyone over 18 *will* vote, so they can't simply target their campaign promises towards the highest demographic of voters in their region. I'd even go as far as to say that we have more independent candidates because of this as well. They have a higher change of being elected if everyone must vote, thus is it more profitable for them to bother standing up and running as a candidate in the first place.

The right not to vote seems like you're giving up your rights full stop. If you don't take responsibility for the government you elect, well, sounds like a potential recipe for disaster.

Compulsory voting also helps to protect against corruption. Indonesia had problems with its corrupted militar.. *cough* militia, who would threaten people who went to vote so they could effectively maintain a pseudo dictator rule under the guise of a democracy. If the public had no choice not to vote then this would never happen. The UN had to step in with peace keeping forces to allow the people to safely vote out the corrupted gonvernment.

[This message has been edited by Cameron (edited 03-28-2004).]

In Brazil, vote is mandatory. I believe that the more educated people are, the less you need to make voting mandatory. Our people is not as educated as people from rich countries, for instance, and this is the explanation the politicians give for making voting mandatory. You must force the dumb people to vote maybe to try to force them to think about it. But truth is that the politicians manipulate this less educated people, we call it the "electoral corral", where a certain area is controlled by a certain "colonel", where colonel is the important guy of the region. This happens much more in the poor regions of our country than in the rich areas.

Despite voting being mandatory, since I was 18, I have almost never voted. Why? Because my jurisdiction is still in my native city, where I was born. But, since for the last 23 years I have lived only 2 of them in my native city, whenever you are away from your jurisdiction, you must, instead of voting, justify that you are not going to vote (one cannot vote physically outside its jurisdiction). So, I keep justifying, justifying (to justify is to go to a special place, in the same day of the voting, and instead of voting, send a justification letter - it's already printed, ready to send - to the Judiciary).

I could transfer my jurisdiction to where I am currently living (the law says I must do so), but I never did. The reason is that I am against mandatory voting, among other reasons.

If you had mandatory voting, then a lot of people would just go and vote based on the local adds they heard, (or vote for the person who spent the most on their campaign) because they really dont know or dont care about politics.

I think many of the people that dont vote, simply dont know who they should vote for... and it would not be a good idea to make them vote.


[antique sigs are us]

Funny, most people I talk to over here seem to think not caring or knowing about the current political issues is well, just plain wrong. Maybe this is just the people I hang out with and perhaps it's different in other areas, but I can't really see why it wouldn't be. For me, it was just something I grew up with. My parents were well informed in such matters and ever since I've able to vote I've done the same.

Those who don't care to vote can still choose not to by submitting a donkey vote (by simply checking every box instead of numbering them or by simply not marking anything). But you still have to get off your fat arse and go to your local school / town hall and make sure your name gets marked off.

Perhaps, even if you submit donkey votes for the first couple of times you have to do it, eventually you might start to realise that you really should be paying attention to what's going on in the world, you live in it after all.

This has come up in the asylum before and I've thought the process over both times but I still think compulsory voting is a much more effective model in educating the public about maters of state that they really should know about. In regards to the money spent on electoral campaigns, I believe there are independent regulations governing such things in order to make the playing field as fair as possible for all parties.

Of course, I'm bias having grown up with such a system and I have no experience with anything else, but I find no fault with the way things currently are.

However, when I first heard that the US voting system wasn't compulsory I was quite honestly shocked. First I wondered why people wouldn't want to vote. Then I was wondering what kind of things the politicians must have to do in order to get people to be bothered voting. To me, it seems like a rather commercial system. How does the independent candidate survive with such a system? I've even heard that celebrities try and encourage people to vote, but I'm hoping that's not actually true. Yet to this day, I'm still confused as to why someone wouldn't want to vote in the first place. Or more importantly, why you wouldn't want to pay attention to politicial issues in your area to begin with.

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I've even heard that celebrities try and encourage people to vote, but I'm hoping that's not actually true.

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Sorry to break this to you Cameron =) but yes celebrities do indeed encourage people to vote..vote for 'them' the celebrity. Highest profile celebrity would be Ronald Reagn. Then there's 'Arnold' now the governor of California... one-time wrestler Jessie, the body' Ventura Governor of what state ? Clint Eastwood who for a time was Mayor of Carmel California I think it was... and there are/were several less notables but who nonetheless were celebrities encouraging people to vote. And then celebrities of all political stripe hold rallies...attend public functions as speakers or 'eye-candy' for the candidate of their choice hoping to convince you to endorse whomever.

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To me, it seems like a rather commercial system. How does the independent candidate survive with such a system?

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It is completely 'commercial' - dollar driven - and 'independent candidates' do not survive. At the local town/city level a few 'independents' might get elected but at the 'state' and 'national' level 'independents' are pretty much unheard of.

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I still think compulsory voting is a much more effective model in educating the public about maters of state that they really should know about.

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Geeeezzzz! hold on there a bit will ya bi...here in Canada and certainly the USA the mother of all nightmares for politicians is a public educated about matters of state. Add to that 'compulsory voting' by a public educated about matters of state and you'll have politicians soiling themselves in their sleep.

In Canada compulsory voting would be unenforceable and that's with a population of something like only 30 million or so... 300 million in the US and for sure you're farting against thunder.

Not really...Australia may not have that many citizens, but the system we have to completly scalable. We have an office of voting, where a database is maintained of every voter in the country. From there, the voting lists in each district as drawn up. When you go to vote, you present some kind of ID, and your name is maked off the list. Those who aren't marked off their list, and haven't done an absentee vote are sent a fine. Since you have al ltheir details, it's very enforcable, and this system could easily be scaled from 20 million to 300 million.

Oh, and independants are everywhere over here. The Australian electoral system is very conducive to their survival. I know that I for one vote for the More Beer party every time

Justice 4 Pat Richard

[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 03-30-2004).]

The size of the population has nothing to do with voting being compulsory or not. Brazil has 170 million people and voting is compulsory and there is no problem in it. We started using electronic voting and now we can know the results very quickly. There has been no accusations of miscounting or fraud so far, very different from what happens in some places like Florida...

I think that compulsory voting would be a very good thing for the US. I've long thought that our electoral system needed a serious overhaul - the 2000 election shouldn't have happened the way it did.

But the thing I see happening first is that they make voting easier for us lazy Americans (said facetiously...)...

I'm wondering why one has to get up and go anywhere to begin with. Why not create a web-based voting system. Surely there's a way to verify that a person has voted only once, but also to keep their vote anonymous... I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet...

bodhi, the biggest problem with web voting is to assure that you are you. Of course it's easy to allow just one vote for each voter, but what if you try to vote just to find out that someone has already voted for you. In a population of millions, this can result in many problems. What we need first is an easy way to prove we are we, when using the Internet. There are people working on the digital signature, but this is still yet to be widely accepted.

In Brazil, we use what we call electronic ballots. Voters still have to get their asses out of the chair to vote and go to a very specific place, their electoral zone, that's usually very near to where they live (unless in the remote and rural regions of the country, like the Amazon State, where some people has to use boats and travel hours before they get to the ballots). There, they vote electronically. Later, all the results from each electronic ballot is uploaded to some place and counted electronically. Of course that each electronic ballot is full of security measures to avoid fraud.

I'm hoping that someone figures out a process for it sometime in the near future... I think more people would vote here if they didn't consider it to be an inconvenience. You know we're all about "convenience" here in the US! My voting place is only a few blocks from my house, but even so, dragging myself out in the November rain takes some serious working up to... Not that I don't want to vote - it's just dang inconvenient. I think there's probably a lot of people who think that way and decide against going to the polls. I can usually make myself do it, but I don't always feel good about it either before or after.

I'm not sure if mandatory voting would help the issue... I think a lot of folks in the US would rather pay a fine than do something they don't want to do...

I know, I know... we're all spoiled brats...

In Brazil, you have a fine, but it's ridiculously low.
The bigger issue is that without proving that you have voted, or justified, you can't do some things, specially things that depend on the Government, for it will ask you for proof of voting to do what you want. For public employees, like me, I ran the risk of having my salaries held until I prove it (same for IRS returns).

In Australia you have a fine which is rediculously high. I think it's currently set at $10,000

Justice 4 Pat Richard

Ouch!

Wow, I didn't know it was that high. Good thing I always vote.

Although, there are of course pros and cons for everything. I Found this simple article that runs through some of them:
http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa060100a.htm

I followed the link above, ended up in the australian electoral commision website, and learned that the fine for not voting is between 20 to 50 dollars. Very acceptable.