Psycho Economist

If you have compulsory voting, you're better off not even holding elections.

Well, almost.

Assume that the object of compulsory voting is to ensure that everyone in the elligible population casts a ballot.

If compulsory voting pushes turnout up into the ranges where margins of victory grow greater than the percentage of shirkers, you essentially have a sure representation of the entire population, at least as far as who won. A good random sample of 1,000 elligible voters will do the same thing with about 3% margin of error. 1,000,000 will do the same with about 2% margin of error.

The thing that makes election day returns different from the newspaper polls is who cares not to vote (except when polls are a statistical dead-heat anyway). If the people who didn't vote could have swayed the election, "donkey-votes" or not, you can have a statistically different population when Gallop polls residents from the population who actuallly votes. Otherwise, there ought to be no difference... except for miscounts, recounts, and the few last-minute switches. It'd be an interesting exercise to see if those phenomena sway elections, but otherwise compulsory voting makes itself redundant.

If it's cheaper to do a good phone poll of 1,000 or 1,000,000 residents, then you're actually better off polling... BUT! You'd need that kind of sample size for every "election". In sufficiently small elections a good random phone poll of 1,000 is more expensive than counting ballots. Heck, just borrow the scantron machine from the local high school!

When you add on that it doesn't have to cost more to count ballots for other elected offices once you've started counting ballots, the two alternatives, polling and voting, present no advantage one over another (except the possiblity but also necessity of recounts... and the costs that go into them). And I imagine people would have a preference for "real" elections. Even people who don't vote.

seanie

Well if you don't mind giving the election to the guy with the fewer votes it would be a lot simpler just to toss a coin.

John Hancock

I'm in the hate the public fram of mind immediately would of erased my for vote but poll forms don't allow that.

Martin Buber:boohoo:

mongrel

It's probably the same here- it was quite a few years ago that I heard it was 20.

Rusting Car Bumper

Compulsory voting will solve nothing.

In order for democratic elections to be successful, a culture which takes education of the voting public seriously is required.

Making people vote in a culture where this does not occur will not really change anything and may make htings worse.

DC

ju'iblex

your assumption that political choices were somehow involved in my comment are absurd as well.

Michaelson

Psycho Economist, it doesn't quite work the way you explained it. In 1993 it looked for all money up until the polling day that the opposition was going to take government, and then it all turned around and the government was returned. People refer to that as a case of John Hewson losing the unlosable election.

The main reason being, that a lot of people make up their mind on the day.

As for compulsory voting being a 'symptom treatment,' as Per said, the theory goes that compulsory voting leads to a more informed electorate, because everyone is aware that they have to vote (or at least have to turn up). And I'm not convinced that the voting public need be political experts for their vote to be counted anyway. If you want to cut down on an uninformed public voting, you might as well have some sort of philosopher king system.

The fact is that the mnore people who vote, the wider the representation, which means that no one group can be ignored by the political parties.

Per

But would it not be more desirable to have people vote because they want to instead of having to? One could say 'no' to this question if one assumes that "everyone is aware that they have to vote (or at least have to turn up)" directly translates into 'everyone will start caring about politics in order to cast the vote that most represents them'. However, I don't believe that is the case:
One would assume that in a country that has had compulsory voting for a life-time, such as Australia, where people have had to turn up for elections every time, that those people would have aquired an interest in politics and would therefore continue to turn up for elections even if compulsory voting was abolished. Instead, surveys show that 20% of Australians wouldn't vote if compulsion was abolished. Likewise, when compulsory voting was abolished in the Netherlands in 1970 voter turnout dropped by 15-20%.
It would therefore seem that compulsory voting in itself does not make people more interested in politics, and that other measures must be utilized, also because it will always be more desirable to have voters vote who are interested and informed about society and politics, than ones who are not.

Michaelson

I guess I just disagree with this. Well, maybe not disagree, but I would argue that it's advantageous to have people who don't have a particular interest voting, as oposed to not having them vote, for the simple reason that where everyone votes, the government is in turn responsible to everyone. People with little interest in politics will still probably have a good idea of what will influence them.

It also seems strange to argue against compulsory voting in this sense. Voluntary voting weeds out the disinterested, not necessarily the ignorant.

But in terms of addressing your point, if it is always preferable to have people who are informed and interested voting, then you could always combine compulsory voting with an abstain option, contradictory though that concept may be. Have a national roster, enforce people to turn up at the polling booth and have their name crossed off at every state and federal election, but ensure that an abstain option is included on the ballots...

Per

Well, what you mention is what I meant by 'interest'; that people know what will influence them positively and negatively. But when people say that they wouldn't vote if they weren't forced to, I really doubt if they are at all interested in politics. Wouldn't a person interested in politics and the governing of it be interested in letting his or her voice be heard via the most important institution of a democracy, the election?


And compulsory voting might get some parts of these grops to 'study' politics and vote in their best interest, but as seen in the Netherlands and Australia, there is still a huge group of people who wouldn't vote if given the choice. Which is why I think other measures must be employed.


What would be the difference between this abstain option and just not choosing anything on the ballot?