If a bully in the schoolyard ordered you to tie his shoelaces, what would you do?
Some people argue that being forced to attend the polling booth on polling day is no great burden, so we shouldn’t complain. It may be true that voting’s not a burden, but that’s not the point. Voting is something we do for ourselves, and not as a service to the government.
Compulsory voting is enforced in only 9 countries in the world, for the simple reason that our decision to vote should be democratic. It should be our choice if we attend the polling booth. That’s what makes democracy democratic.
Recently Chile abolished compulsory voting. They had a problem with people avoiding registering to vote so as to avoid the fines and penalties. The same thing is happening here. Over ten percent of eligible voters are not registered to vote, and many more submit informal ballots.
Who knows how many more Australians submit donkey votes or blind guesses—merely to avoid a fine. We could have the world’s lowest number of ‘real’ votes and we’d never even know it because compulsory voting hides the truth.
Our actual voter turnout is only 81%. This is lower than Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Malta and many others countries where voting is voluntary. In those countries, people vote because they want to vote. They vote because they are informed and engaged with the process. They are not thoughtlessly going through the motions to serve the government.
Some politicians like to promote artificially high voter turnouts to make themselves appear more legitimate, powerful, or popular. They say our turnouts are 93%, which is only the number of registered voters who vote. Over 10% aren’t registered. Our turnouts are probably a lot lower than 81%. But again, who knows?
In Chile, voter registration is now automatic and voting is voluntary. Today in Chile, everybody has the same freedom to vote, and nobody is forced to attend the polling booth. Their system is much fairer than ours because their electoral sample is now chosen from the entire population, democratically, rather than from only registered voters. And their system does not favour compliance over freedom and put upwards pressure on the size and power of government.
But the worst element of compulsory voting is the message that it sends. Australian citizens are punished if they don’t bend over and tie the bully’s shoelaces. Our system punishes innocent people who have done absolutely nothing wrong. We punish freedom, reward conformity, and celebrate bullying, on the very day when we are supposed to be the most free.
You can’t promote freedom by stealing people’s freedom away from them. The best way to engage and empower the electorate is through peaceful means, such as providing good honest policies.
While the bully in the schoolyard might steal your lunch money, the Australian government is far more brutal. If a registered voter simply does nothing on polling day, they can be fined. If they continue to do nothing they can be sentenced to jail. And if they continue to do nothing, the police can enter their home and cart them away. And if they resist with force, they might even be shot dead. As unlikely as this scenario is, over 50 Australians have been sentenced to jail terms for not voting.
Again, only 9 countries in the world enforce compulsory voting. It’s interesting to look at the other eight countries and ask yourself if this is the type of group we should emulate. No offence to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it’s hardly democratic.
These (above) are some of the reasons why compulsory voting is wrong, and why many countries in addition to Chile have abolished it in recent decades, including Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands. We could do the same with a simple vote in parliament.
But one of the biggest problems with compulsory voting is that the political parties do not need to motivate their base (regular supporters) to vote, which forces the parties to focus all of their efforts on the relatively small group of swinging voters at the centre. So instead of becoming polarized and distinct, the political parties merge into one. This is dangerous, and makes it almost impossible for people to make an informed choice on polling day.
Further, when voting is voluntary it forces the political parties to work harder to earn votes. Any leaders who cannot motivate, inspire, educate, and empower the electorate to vote, will be replaced by leaders who can.
The force of law, and ultimately the threat of violence, is not the way to promote freedom or empower the electorate. It does the complete opposite.
If Australians do not understand the concept of freedom, we risk the ravages of an authoritarian and oppressive government regime that would attempt to nationalize the internet, filter the internet, and ultimately ban media bias & free speech.
At the centre of our freedom is our freedom to vote. Leaders who favour the use of force over truth, freedom and democracy, are not the type of leaders we want. We need leaders who are focused on empowering the people, rather than empowering themselves.
Jason Kent supports Free Our Right To Vote and Eureka Freedom Rally on Facebook.
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