Tired of bombastic political blow-hards for candidates, along with their behind-the-scenes negative campaign henchmen, in-your-face propaganda-pushing platitudes, substance-less rabble-rousing rallies, and incendiary, idiotic bumper stickers? Why do such tactics thrive in our current political process? I suggest it is in part because of low voter turnout, especially in terms of those who have a fairly strong opinion but don’t bother acting on it. What this means is that the party that manages to motivate more of its dyed-in-the-wool supporters—in other words, the party that “gets out the vote”—is usually the party that wins. The most effective strategy if you’re a candidate is therefore generally not to be reasonable and convincing and willing to compromise toward those who may lean in a different direction from you, but rather to persuade those on your side and who are even more extreme than you (and who will likely never change their view about anything) that they absolutely must vote this time around, or else that evil ignoramus on the other side is going to end up gleefully destroying everything decent and good about our country.
It is this consideration that makes me think mandatory voting would be a good thing, at least for all the “major” elections. As long as voting is legally optional it will always be a bit of a hard sell to convince many to do it, especially considering the practical unlikelihood that their particular vote will actually make any difference. But if everyone were legally obligated to vote, then the campaigns would not have to focus on whipping up a frenzy to make that sell. In other words, the parties would not have so much incentive for fostering that near-religious fervor and polarity that energizes their base to vote, because their base would vote for them regardless. Hopefully we would therefore find more candidates focusing their attention on how they could actually work through the issues and find reasonable solutions that the whole country could live with instead.
I acknowledge that there are some legitimate arguments against mandatory voting, of course. Many non-voters are simply disinterested in the political process and could not be expected to make an informed decision, and we surely wouldn’t want them just voting for whichever name happens to catch their attention. Others abstain in many cases mainly because they don’t have a strong preference for which candidate is “the lesser of two evils.” Some just object on principle to the idea of being forced to participate. In order to address these concerns, why not include a default option of voting for nobody on the mandatory ballot? A vote for nobody would not ultimately affect the outcome of the election, but neither would it be completely wasted, because it would be counted up with all the rest and give a more realistic measure of voter dissatisfaction than voter turnout numbers currently do. This would then serve as a kind of reality-check for winners who might otherwise be inclined to claim a mandate from the people in cases where larger numbers deliberately voted for nobody.
That’s my thesis, at any rate. I don’t know how to evaluate how well mandatory voting has worked out in practice for the countries that have it. But I would think it should at least be an improvement, especially if the option of voting for nobody is included.
This page copyright © 2011 Edward A. Morris. Created June 16, 2011. Last updated June 16, 2011.