by Elisabeth Mcgrath

Created on: September 14, 2008   Last Updated: April 17, 2012

Compulsory voting in democracies is a redundant imposition. Looking at a democracy that holds free and open elections, voting is compulsory in Australia. The fine for not voting is $20 but this can be appealed.

The thought of countries where the election process is orchestrated to the tune of murder and violence against candidates and constituents are reminders of how privileged many democracies are to have the unencumbered voting rights that they enjoy. No armed soldiers come to their homes to escort them to the polling booth. No machine guns are pointed at campaign supporters handing out the How-to-Vote leaflets for their candidates. There are no suspicious-looking people, overdressed for the weather because of hidden explosives, lurking in the lines of voters. No rifles dig into voters' backs as they enter the booths to write their numbers into the squares.

In the face of Australia's legal compulsion to vote and in the absence of its non-life-threatening freedom to do so, the 90% of Australian voter turnout is a shameful statistic. More than two million people exhibit their scorn for hard-won democratic rights to vote. Rights that people of some nations can only dream of and people of other nations still fight and die for, are too easily rejected because of what? Apathy? Contempt?

Since 1988 voter turnout in the United States of America has averaged approximately 50% of eligible voters. This percentage reflects very poorly on the concept that democracy is a system of government ruled "by the people" if almost half of the population does not participate in the process. Where voting is not mandatory, citizens in a democracy feel their rights are erroded if they are denied the choice of whether to vote or not. If only half of a country's citizens vote in elections, are decisions made by that elected government legitimately representative of all its eligible voting citizens?

Any democratic government wanting to legislate laws that make voting compulsory would have to proceed first with a referendum. The people served by that government could be asked whether they consider that voting eligibility is enshrined as:

* A privilege of citizenship, or

* A burden of civic responsibility, or

* Both of the above.

Here the question of enacting laws that make it compulsory to vote faces the inevitable Catch22 quandary: Not enough citizens will bother to vote on the referendum to make the results truly representative of the nation's total voting population.

Some countries do not hold elections at all. Many have only a one-party system of government. Incumbents forced to hold elections falsify results and/or imprison or assassinate winning opponents.

Victims of these regimes would be further pained to see compulsory voting imposed on nations like the United States of America where almost half of its citizens value their voting privileges at zero worth.

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