Since voting is voluntary in the US, like it is in almost every other developed nation in the world, political parties need to make sure that not only the swinging voters vote for them, but that even their regular supporters come out and vote.
In Australia, there is no need for political parties to motivate the basebecause voting is compulsory. Unlike, German, Swedish, English, Portuguese, Japanese, Irish, French, Canadian, New Zealand, and almost every other democratic people, Australians are not permitted to make this important decision for themselves. And the government won’t let us forget it either.
Prior to the recent NSW state election the then government advertised far and wide that “Voting Is Compulsory”. The ALP used the NSW Electoral Commission to bombard us with the threat that not “voting” incurs a $50 fine.
So with this helping hand from government, Australian political parties have been free to focus all their efforts on persuading undecided or swinging voters, rather than motivating the base.
In countries where voting is the decision of the people and not the government, the swinging voters are not the most powerful group; and in many cases they relegate themselves, by their own free choice, to being the least influential group.
Under voluntary voting, commonly known as a free electoral system ordemocracy, political parties need to target not only the swinging voters but also the swaying voters - those members of a party’s regular supporter base who might not show up on polling day.
Consider the different influence these two systems have on the parties’ marketing strategies. For the Liberals to attract a swinging voter (the undecided who lie at the centre of the political spectrum) they need to playdown their Liberalness and appear more moderate. Yet in a free electoral system for the Liberals to attract the swaying Liberal voters, they may need to play up their Liberalness. And the same goes for Labor.
Under a free electoral system, the political parties must target two distinctly different groups, while under a compulsory system, both major parties target the same group. Therefore, under voluntary voting the marketing messages of the two major parties necessarily diverge, while under a compulsory system the messages converge.
When the messages of the major parties converge, the decision as to whom to support becomes a far more difficult one for many voters to make. Some people have trouble telling the difference between the two major parties’ ideologies already, without the centralizing affect of Compulsory Voting.
It leads to confusion, mistrust, and frustration; which produces the very type of political apathy that Compulsory Voting claims to correct.
And just because we have higher than average voter turnouts in Australia, it doesn’t mean that people are any more engaged with politics, or passionate, or anything. Compulsory Voting merely hides so-called political apathy, and our higher voter turnouts are nothing more than a government-manufacture fraud.
In any case, Malta, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Luxemburg, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Greece, Venezuela, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Norway, and Romania all have relatively high voter turnouts, above 80%, under voluntary voting.
So what of the people who don’t vote? How is their opinion represented? Well, maybe the question should be, how is their opinion not represented? Their opinion was to choose either both or neither party in equal measure. They basically split the difference and hedged their bets placing the same amount on both sides. For the swinging voter that lies at the centre of the political spectrum, there could be some logic in abstaining.
But whether you like their perceived decision of indecision or not, you cannot deny that it is their decision. And it should be their decision andtheir decision alone. Not yours. Not mine. And certainly not the government’s. When the government makes our decision to vote for us we have a case of the tail wagging the dog.
If people are capable of deciding whom to vote for then they are certainly capable of deciding if they vote.
The idea that freedom, or democracy, can or should be mandatory, is absurd. It represents a blatant political deception that sees Australians punished for doing nothing wrong and hurting no one. Punished for something that isn’t illegal almost anywhere else in the world.
Further, while both major parties are trying to attract the same narrowly defined group of undecided swinging voters, the standard of the political debate suffers. The majors can’t afford to look either too left or too right wing, so they keep their heads down and leave the people in the dark.
The confusion created by this leads to uninformed voters making potentially poor voting decisions for themselves and the nation.
Voluntary voting would allow the parties to present themselves more like they really are, and speak directly to their supporter base, instead of hiding behind the façade of centrality. And let’s hope it remains a façade, because if both parties ever really did own the centre ground, we’d be in big trouble.
It would be great if the parties needed to remind people they have the power and the freedom to choose, because that’s what living in a free democratic society is all about. Forcing people to the polling booth to exercise their freedom under threats of fines and jail terms (for not paying) sends the completely wrong message. It suggests that somehow we owe the government thanks for our freedom since they are the ones who fine us for not using it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Our freedom does not belong to the government and it is not their place to say how or if we use it. It is our freedom, and exercising it should be ourchoice. This freedom should belong to us, like it belongs to people in almost every other democracy in the world. We should own our decision to vote.
Under a free democratic system the electorate would become better equipped to make an informed choice, instead of filing into the pooling booth like donkeys to avoid a fine. Is it any wonder that for the second time in recent decades, we find ourselves in the second term of the worst government in Australia’s history?
Freedom is the heart of the Australian spirit but this is being slowly eroded by socialism. At a time when our governments should be getting better, the sum of our two-party-system is at an all time low. And what hope is there for a political party trying to sell the ideology of individual freedom & liberty, under a system in which freedom is mandatory? Our very concept of freedom is lost at sea, drowning in an ocean of socialist lies, deception, and confusion.
Of the top 70 nations, by GDP per capita, only three enforce Compulsory Voting. And there has been a trend away from it with Italy, Spain, Venezuela, the Netherlands, Austria, and the US State of Georgia, all having abolished Compulsory Voting. Why is Australia so out of step?
In 1996 the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report recommended that Compulsory Voting should be repealed. Unfortunately, the ALP and Democrat members of the committee did not support the recommendation. And as recently as 2010, Julia Gillard said that her favorite aspect of the Australian political system was Compulsory Voting. Thankfully some ex-Labor ministers have recently come out in support of voluntary voting, so maybe the tide is turning.
Jason Kent is a member of the Facebook groups “Free Our Right To Vote” and “Eureka Freedom Rally. (originally posted July 23 2011 on Menzies House)
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