Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau
settled in Edmonton with his caucus (MPs, not Senators) for a
three-day policy retreat at the end of August.
Not much came out of the event, but one
idea raised there got a Canadian Press treatment reprinted nearly
word-for-word in online newspaper editions across the country.
Before the group trekked to their
unfamiliar Alberta destination, Trudeau had polled his caucus for
their views on a mandatory voting law.
It's a long way from an internal party
straw poll on an idea, to its showing up on an election platform, but
I hope the notion didn't just die behind the closed doors of the
conference room.
As Saskatchewan MP Ralph Goodale noted,
it's an idea well worth discussing.
Nobody seems to know why, but since
Canadians got comfortable in the 1960s, notions of civic duty and
voter participation in elections have been in steady decline.
In the 1958 federal election, 80 per
cent of voters turned up at the polls. By the 2008 general election,
voter turnout was a record low of 58.8 per cent turnout, rebounding
to 61.1 per cent in 2011.
One news story I found noted the
by-election in Fort McMurray last June, where voter turnout was 15
per cent. Nobody should claim a mandate to represent a region with a
majority portion of a 15-per-cent voter turnout. But I guess it's enough to claim an MP's salary.
Here's the immediate harm: if you don't
exercise your democratic duty, you can't claim the benefit of it.
Only one in four Canadians under 25 is
a voter these days. Is it any surprise that Canadian tax laws and
federal benefits packages disproportionately favour the
disproportionately richer and more politically active senior
demographic?
So in order to re-instill the sense
that voting is not just your right, but your obligation as a citizen,
perhaps we need to enforce your presence at a polling station.
Are you turned off by the machinations
of the political system? I am, quite often. But I still vote.
Under a mandatory voting law, you would have
four ways to say so:
• Ballots could have a box you can
check labelled: None of the Above;
• You can spoil your ballot by
scribbling on it;
• You can show up at the polling
station and officially refuse to accept your ballot;
• Or, you just don't show up, and
accept a small fine as the cost of your protest against the machine.
Wikipedia lists 11 countries around the
world where voting is mandatory, and the law is enforced. There are
another 17 countries that have such a law on the books, but nobody
seems to enforce it.
Australia seems to be the poster child
for a mandatory voting law. They've had one since 1924. Voter turnout
is about 95 per cent, and about 80 per cent of voters polled say they
support keeping the system.
If you don't show up at the polls, you
get a letter asking why. If you can't say you were ill, observing a
religious prohibition against voting or any other good reason, you
pay a fine of $22. About one in three non-voters end up paying the
fine.
Australian columnist Van Bacham
explained it this way: “I'm not here to tell you to vote, I'm here
to remind you that other people can't. Compulsory voting is the
guarantee of voter freedom, not it's opposite.”
Democracy was supposedly invented in
ancient Athens. They had one conference a year and every citizen
(male, adult, born in the city) was expected to show up to hear the
debates, vote on every election for office that year, and cast a
ballot on every new law.
There were those who didn't show up, of
course. And they were scorned, held to be self-absorbed people of low
intellect who weren't invited to the nicer parties.
The definition for these people
translates into today's “idiot.”
The benefits of democracy demand your
participation in its function. Failure to vote leads to our having
so-called representatives who are nobodies outside of their riding,
mere trained seals who are expected to bark, clap and vote in
Parliament under the total control and command of a leader most of us
never wanted.
In a mature democracy, only idiots
would allow that to happen.
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