[EM] compulsory voting

[Chris Benham]

Stephane Rouillon wrote:

>I am against compulsory voting and compulsory full ranking.
>

I am opposed to compulsory full ranking (especially in IRV) but I regard
compelling full ranking as a much lesser evil than not allowing it.

Here in Australia "compulsory voting" works well and I'm strongly in favour
of keeping it.


>Not going to vote is the only way left to voters that want to say
>all candidates are bad, except when a None option is provided
>(which should always be the case so we could know the
>level of approbation from the electorate in regard to the result).

In Australia there is a secret ballot and voters are free to "vote informally".

If a large or significant proportion of the voters find none of the candidates
acceptable, then either the nomination process isn't open enough or those voters
have arguably dodged their democratic duty to support the nomination of a candidate
they *do* find acceptable.

If "write-ins" are allowed I'm not sure that there is a strong case for always including
a "None" option. Two of my current favourite single-winner methods (DMC and DM,IRV) use an
approval cutoff in the rankings which could give some indication of "the level of approbation
from the electorate in regard to the result".

I'm not sure how well compulsory voting would transplant to other countries. The compulsion
element could be viewed negatively compared to the ideal voluntary voting system,but it is 
vastly better than real-world voluntary voting in places like the US.

If voting is voluntary, it is easier to bias the system against poor people (and maybe some other
groups) by making it more difficult to vote in some areas than in others. If the state compels
everyone entitled to vote to do so, then it is obliged (or at least under much more pressure) to
ensure that everyone gets the (realistic) *opportunity* to vote.

Compulsory voting makes "mud-slinging" campaigns less effective because their main effectiveness
is to reduce the turnout of voters who would have voted for the attacked candidate.

Compulsory voting reduces the advantage of well-resourced candidates because candidates/parties 
don't need to spend money just to convince potential supporters to bother voting.
(The net effect of this and the previous factor is that as a whole the election is less expensive
for candidates/parties.)

Because there isn't a big pool of people who are entitled to vote but normally don't, IMO compulsory
voting makes certain types of electoral fraud more difficult.

If the election is for seats in a legislature, different turnout rates in different districts could
compromise "one-vote-one-value". If the weather is worse in areas where supporters of party A live
than in areas where supporters of party B live, then if the worse weather has the effect of reducing
turnout party A will be unfairly disadvantaged.

Some members of the current Australian government favour abolishing compulsory voting, and recently
raised that prospect. The Opposition parties have recently lost their majority in the Senate (which
has a lot of blocking power). It now looks like the government won't try to abolish compulsory voting, 
but they will move to strip the vote from prisoners and to stop a lot of young people from voting by
closing the electoral rolls as soon as the election is announced.

Left-of-centre Senator Natasha Stott Despoja in a newspaper opinion piece here makes her case for retaining
compulsory voting:

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,16717614%255E5000423,00.html

(I'll post the text in a separate message).


Chris Benham
 





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