Let voting be voluntary

In this year's Victorian state election, next year's NSW state election, and the federal election in 2028, plenty of voters will find the whole process a serious inconvenience. They won't care who wins, won't know who the candidates are, won't know which parties are running, and won't vote for anyone based on their policies.

Many will be confused by the fact that they voted in an election not long ago, probably without knowing which one. Plenty of people have no idea that there are parliaments in each state capital as well as Canberra.

They may not vote informally, as that tends to be a deliberate choice. More likely they will enter a donkey vote (ie sequential numbers down the page) or vote for the candidate with the nicest teeth or hair.

In most other countries, such people would typically not bother to vote. On election day they would simply go to work, watch or play sport, go shopping, or do whatever else they normally do on a Saturday. If Australia was like those countries, this might be around 30 percent of voters.

Australia is one of only a handful of countries in which voting is obligatory. There is a cluster in South America including Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay, a few in Europe (Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg and Slovakia), plus Nauru, Singapore and North Korea. All the countries with which we like to compare ourselves, including the UK, USA, New Zealand and Canada, have voluntary voting.

Those who live and breathe politics cannot contemplate how anyone could be disengaged from voting. They tend to view it as an education challenge: if it is all properly explained, everyone will take it seriously. They see a lack of eagerness to vote as simply an information deficit.

No doubt it would be nice if absolutely everyone was genuinely committed to electing the best possible candidates based on a comprehensive understanding of their policies. But reality is not like that.

Elections are often decided by margins of less than five percent, which makes the votes of low information, disengaged people highly influential. It makes sense to ask: what is being achieved by forcing them to vote?

Compulsory voting supporters worry that optional voting will result in a loss of support for their side of politics. Labor supporters tend to worry more than conservatives, despite the fact that left-leaning parties have never had any trouble winning elections in countries where voting is voluntary. New Zealand and Canada are just two examples.

Proponents of compulsory voting also argue that compulsion improves the quality of the democracy. One of their favourites adages is that while you may not be interested in politics, politics is interested in you. You are affected by the results of elections, so you must participate.

The problem is that there is simply no evidence that countries with compulsory voting achieve better democratic outcomes than countries with voluntary voting. No matter the measure – political stability, civil rights, social cohesion, economic performance – the evidence is just not there.

What the evidence shows is that countries with a history of turbulent governments, such as Italy, would be no better off if they had compulsory voting. That includes now, when its government is stable. Some say that governing Italy is absolutely impossible – and totally unnecessary.