Voting Counts

Today, it is expected that three in five eligible voters in this country will fail to exercise their democratic rights. This compares unfavourably with elsewhere in the world. Last week, almost 85% of the French public cast a vote in the first round of the Presidential elections. In the 2005 Iraq elections, almost 80% of registered voters took part in the democratic process, despite the real threat of violence. Why are Britons so apathetic about voting? What should be done about it?

In this wave of local elections, new methods of casting votes have been introduced. To postal voting has been added e-voting. This new approach has come about as a response to poor voter turnout, particularly amongst the young. The principle appears to be: make the process easier and more people will vote. I am not so sure it is that simple. It is not just voter turnout that has fallen. At the same time, the level of membership of political parties has dropped dramatically. The constituency of which I am Deputy Chairman has been aware of this trend for a number of years, and even though we have maintained a membership total above 2000, that admirable figure does not compare well with the 10,000 our agent told me we once had during the 1970s.

An Australian friend of mine was over recently and he told me that he had recently been fined for failing to cast his vote at the last election. Although it was a modest sum, he accepted it was a fair penalty for not having taking an active part in his country’s democratic process. How would should such a system go down in this country?

I have long been a believer in compulsory, traditional voting. By that I mean that each eligible voter should be obliged to attend in person on an election day. Each individual would be free to not vote for a candidate by ticking a special box or spoiling the paper. And for those incapable of making it to the polling station, special mobile polling booths would circulate each constituency collecting votes from the infirmed. I do not like the postal vote system and and am very suspicious of e-voting. It should take effort to cast a vote as it took more than that to secure it and defend it. We all share a responsibility in protecting our hard-earned democracy. By casting a vote today for the party of our choice we make that democracy stronger.