Sir, – A number of correspondents recently have suggested Ireland consider a move toward compulsory voting as a means to increase turnout. It is often pointed out in such discussions that this system is used in Australia, a country that performs very well on a host of meaningful metrics.
I’m sceptical as to how much that nation’s success has to do with being compelled to sign in at a ballot station, however. It’s interesting to consider that the system was introduced in Australia in 1924 but that voting was not available to indigenous people there for decades after that. It is also applied in referendums there. A few potential downsides and drawbacks are worth considering.
Obliging people to travel to and sign in at a voting centre, and receive and submit a ballot, will clearly require travel time, generate some pollution and emissions and lengthen vote counts which are already protracted. Doing so in order to oblige people to express an opinion they may not hold seems hard to justify. In the (admittedly unlikely) event that a law required me to place a bet once a year on, say, greyhound racing, about which I know nothing, I’m fairly sure I’d just regard it as a nuisance obligation rather than a gateway to deep knowledge of the matter. I’d surely place the smallest acceptable stake on the first dog in the list and leave, and thus my participation would be meaningless. Candidates of minor celebrity status, local sportsmen and so on, or those appearing first on the ballot or who change their names to become so, would probably enjoy significant advantages. Populism would seem likely to ensue.
Perhaps most difficult to answer is what to do with individuals who fail to vote. Low levels of participation are associated in Australia with poverty, and various forms of hardship. Imposing standard fines on such people may compound the challenges they already face, while being irrelevant or trivial to the better off.
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Compelling everyone to vote in referendums would seem to make it harder to implement change also. If voting is limited to those motivated by expressing their held opinions, as is the case presently, then a fair fight in a sense seems to emerge. However if all the “don’t knows” in every opinion poll are mandated to vote, it seems inevitable that they will bolster the numbers who are happy to leave things as they stand, and vote against most constitutional changes.
A final and paradoxical aspect is that where voting is voluntary it serves as an insight into public interest and engagement with matters political. A low or high turnout in this or that general, or local election or referendum tells us something about public opinion and outlook. We would lose that insight and ability to discern what people care about if that participation was obligatory. Thus the very topic that prompts this stream of correspondence – “the problem of finding ways to get young people interested” in their community and its problems, as Alastair Conan put it (Letters, July 10th) – would be hard to detect, measure or determine improvements in. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN O’BRIEN,
Kinsale,
Co Cork.
Sir, – Alistair Conan (Letters, July 10th) suggests that Gerard Clarke’s idea (Letters, July 9th) that voting be made compulsory has some merit and warrants further inquiry.
In a free society, the idea that people should be forced to vote on pain of criminal penalty is an appalling idea.
If you choose not to vote that is your choice and, as a result of that choice, you have forfeited the right to have a say in the composition of our parliament. That is the consequence of your choice.
As for a low turnout electing a “wrong ‘un”, well that depends on your political views. Donald Trump is universally reviled as a “wrong ‘un” in the Irish media but 70 million Americans disagreed at the last election. – Yours, etc,
PAUL WILLIAMS,
Kilkee,
Co Clare.
Sir, – Compulsory voting seems like a sensible solution to the problem of low voter turnout but what happens if none of the candidates appear in your dreams? – Yours, etc,
EUGENE TANNAM,
Dublin 24.