On May 3, two of the 20-or-so countries with compulsory voting will hold general elections: Singapore and Australia. Naturally, there’s quite a bit of chatter at the moment about whether compelling people into ballot booths actually works. It’s far from obvious that Singapore is a great advertisement for the democratic process, but anyway.
I am not instinctively opposed to mandatory voting, though my concern is always with conscientious abstention. The right not to vote is as important as the right to vote, while claims that it is a civic duty, as opposed to a civic right, ought to be treated as, at best, sloppy reasoning. Comparisons between voting and paying taxes – both civic duties, according to some – can be disabused. For instance, it’s by no means clear that a society will fall apart if only a minority of people vote – the European Union is still standing despite only a 50.7 percent turnout at the last European Parliament ballot – although it almost certainly would if only a minority of people opted into paying taxes.
Countries with forced voting indeed tend to get higher turnouts. It’s not uncommon to hear a Singaporean politician boast that the city-state has voter turnout in excess of 90 percent at elections, whereas the U.S. and other established democracies are lucky if they get 60 percent. U.S. midterm elections are typically around the 40-percent mark. That is all true, though it’s far from clear whether it’s a good thing in and of itself. North Korea says it gets a 99.99 percent turnout. Thailand’s democracy hasn’t improved since compulsory voting was brought in in 1997. The Philippines only introduced it under Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship, and the leaders of the People’s Power movement thought it a necessary part of the old regime to jettison. There isn’t an obvious barrier between compelling people to vote and compelling people to vote for the ruling party.
In any system, absentee rates tell a good deal about the political mood – or, rather, apathy. Likewise, so, too, do spoiled ballots. One gripe is that almost every election commission reports invalid and spoiled ballots together as a percentage, whereas there ought to be a way to distinguish between a ballot intentionally spoiled and one that is unintentional. At the 2018 general election in Cambodia, for instance, 8.5 percent of voters returned spoiled or invalid ballots, a much higher share than votes for the second-placed party. This was almost certainly a protest against the previous year’s ban on the only proper opposition party.
For me, the only way compelled voting can be acceptable is if every ballot includes a “None Of The Above” or a “Don’t Know” option. This would ensure that a voter isn’t being compelled to make a choice they would rather not. Indeed, one of the stronger arguments in favor of compulsory voting is that, if ballots included a “None Of The Above” option, it would reveal a great deal more about political disengagement. In non-mandatory-voting systems, it is impossible to tell how many people purposely choose not to show up and vote as a form of protest and how many couldn’t be bothered.
Punishments could be livened up. Most countries that have compulsory voting do not even enforce a punishment on non-voters, which appears self-defeating. In others, it’s rather a light slap on the wrist. In Singapore, for instance, I believe that by not voting, a citizen is removed from the electoral roll and can only be reinstated by providing a reasonable excuse for not voting or paying a SG$50 fine. I cannot see how this incentivizes someone who doesn’t want to vote. If you genuinely believe that voting is a civic duty on par with paying taxes or military service, the punishment should surely be more severe.
However, rather than a fine or being removed from the electoral roll, I’d prefer to see more imaginative, less retributive measures. It would be far more useful for everyone involved if non-voters were compelled to write letters explaining why they chose not to cast a ballot; an anthology of these letters would be published for public consumption. Alternatively, a random selection of non-voters could be compelled to participate in Citizen Assemblies to make recommendations on government policy, thus bringing these people into the political fold.
As noted, compulsory voting can only be defended if the electorate is permitted options of “None Of The Below” or “Don’t Know.” However, I would go further. In parliamentary systems, like Singapore’s, if more than 30 or 35 percent of voters choose either of those options in a certain constituency, then that district should not be able to send an MP to parliament for a certain period – say, six months, after which a fresh election for that seat would be held.
Unfortunately, mandatory voting is one of those things that sounds reformist and utopian as an idea, but quickly becomes staid and dull when implemented.