This essay was originally published on Look, Stranger! on 20th May 2023
There is a voting reform that could fundamentally change British politics for the better. It’s not the much-frowned upon voter identification scheme and it is not the much-heralded Labour party suggestion that the franchise should be extended to 16-year-olds. It is compulsory voting. If we made voting an enforced duty rather than a voluntary civic right, it would do more for the integrity and efficacy of British politics than any other imaginable reform.
People are allowed not to be interested in politics but that does not mean all of life is voluntary. The very idea of law is a small trade of individual liberty for the public good. Tax is not voluntary. Since 1870 it has been mandatory for parents to send their children to school. We did not balk at conscripting men into the army. The state commands people to do jury service. In any case voting is not just a right but a “trust”, since it marries the rights of the individual with the rights of others. “The vote”, as JS Mill argued, “is not a thing in which [the elector] has an option; it has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman. It is strictly a matter of duty; he is bound to give it according to his best and most conscientious opinion of the public good.”
There are 21 countries which take this view and make voting compulsory. The most celebrated example is Australia which has mandated federal voting since 1924. Before then the highest turnout ever recorded was 78 per cent of eligible voters. Following the introduction of compulsory federal voting, turnout has oscillated between 91 per cent and 96 per cent. There are four European nations - Belgium, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Greece – which make voting compulsory. Turnout at the last Belgian general election was 90 per cent. Turnout of a high order is usually achieved without the imposition of significant penalties. In Australia, non-voters are asked to justify their failure to vote. In Belgium, a formal reprimand is issued for first-time non-voters. Switzerland and Luxembourg impose small fines. There is no prospect of large-scale imprisonment.
Everywhere it has been introduced, compulsory voting has increased turnout, by between 7.5 to 10 percentage points when no sanctions at all are imposed and by between 14.5 and 18.5 percentage points when there is no punishment for non-compliance. In her 2009 book Full Participation: A Comparative Study of Compulsory Voting, the political scientist Sarah Birch summarised the virtues of compulsory voting: higher turnout, greater political engagement outside elections and greater trust in democracy.
British politics has a legitimacy problem. Even a very successful electoral politician such as Boris Johnson in 2019 could command only a third of the available electorate. As many people do not vote as voted Tory in 2019 and, in most elections, those who stay at home are greater in number than those who vote for the winning party. In 2005, Labour attracted the vote of just 24 per cent of the electorate. 39 per cent failed to vote. Yet the electoral system granted Tony Blair a 66-seat majority. Over the six general elections held this millennium, turnout has averaged just under 65 per cent. Turnout for Scottish Parliament elections has only once broken 60 per cent and turnout in Welsh Parliament elections has never reached even 50 per cent. At last year’s local elections, which released such a surge of commentary and projection, barely a third of eligible voters turned up.
In fact, the problem is worse than it looks in aggregate because there are huge inequalities in voting. The young are significantly less likely to vote than the old, the poor less likely than the rich. People in the bottom income quintile are more than twice as likely to abstain as those in the top. Homeowners vote more than renters, graduates more than non-graduates, and white people more than ethnic minorities. The voting public is therefore older, wealthier, whiter, and more educated than the electorate as a whole.
The obvious consequence is that the incentives for politicians are all wrong and their priorities are skewed. The big questions of British politics now are generational. Housing, pensions, the NHS and the EU departure are all issues in which the population over the age of 65 has consumed resources not available for their descendants. The Conservative party has over-served older people. Two thirds of voters over-65s chose the Tories and 78 per cent of the over-65s vote. In the EU referendum, only 36 per cent of people under the age of 34 voted. It is inevitable that a democracy will serve those who vote over those who don’t.
If a putative government was forced to bid for the votes of all the electorate, and not just the committed 65 per cent, it would surely be more likely to develop a serious housing policy to allow young people the chance to buy a home. Climate change would suddenly be more politically salient. Compulsion would change the dynamics of politics in an instant. Modern political strategy is all about keeping the base and then making sure you get the vote out. A vast effort is expended on a tiny number of voters and the rest are ignored. Under compulsion the parties could concentrate on winning arguments, safe in the knowledge that the law was getting the vote out. It would no longer be possible to govern primarily in the interests of the voting elderly. Young people would count all of a sudden because the politicians would be counting their vote.
The best survey of those countries which do make voting compulsory can be found here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/is-compulsory-voting-a-solution-to-low-and-declining-turnout-crossnational-evidence-since-1945/4ED6699B791F437FDFDC13D7A12D483E
Makes great good sense to me. Thanks for this.