Write to Vote

I have recently been reading “The Reason of Things” by A C Grayling, a collection of short philosophical essays and, on the whole I agree with what he says about most things. But there is one on which I take a completely opposite view and that is on voting. It is clear that he disapproves of those who do not vote as some of these quotes show:

“The reason that so many are neglectful of their democratic privileges is that they know no history…If they grasped these points, they would not be so cavalier and irresponsible about their democratic duties.”

“The required solution is that voting should be compulsory. One has to respect civil liberty arguments to the contrary, but the fact remains that citizenship imposes duties, many of them (such as paying taxes) already embodied in laws requiring observance on pain of sanction.”

“…Every refusal to vote is an act of self-disenfranchisement in which a citizen, betraying the endeavours of history, demotes himself in to a serf.”

I am fiercely against compulsory voting for several reasons:

First, it goes against the whole idea of democracy – the right to vote for whoever you want also carries the right not to vote. That surely is what freedom means. Forcing someone to vote when they don’t want to strikes me as the sort of thing authoritarian regimes do; that after all is how they get their 99% approval votes. In those systems, people are generally too afraid not to vote and it is only in a genuinely free country that a man or woman can refuse to plod down to the ballot box without getting a late night knock on the door.

Secondly, if people are forced to vote, many are likely simply to put a cross in whichever box comes to hand. Some might deliberately spoil the ballot paper or mark the “None of the above” box (if there is one), but many will no doubt see the walk to the polling station as an annoying imposition and just place their cross down anywhere. Do we really want people elected by chance or by their position on the voting paper? Surely it is better than only those who care or have an interest should vote?

There is also the problem that in Britain we have one of the least democratic democracies in the world. Our nominal head of state is unelected. Our real head of state (the prime minister) is unelected in that we don’t vote directly for him – he just happens to be the leader of the largest party. Our second chamber is unelected and most people effectively have no vote. What I mean by that is that, because we have a first-past-the-post system, in many constituencies, a vote has little meaning. If you live in a safe Labour seat, for instance, voting for Labour will make little difference as will voting for the opposition. And voting for a minor party, wherever you happen to live, is usually a waste of time. If our system used proportional representation, then every vote would have a meaning, no matter how safe the seat or minor the party.

If voter turnout is falling, then we should ask ourselves why, not look for ways to punish those who feel voting is irrelevant or a waste of time. If we could elect our leader, if we could elect the second house, if we had a fair voting system, then more people might consider voting worthwhile and not “a good walk wasted”.

But I would go further with my revision of our voting system: I would bring in a test before anybody was allowed to vote. If my doctor wanted to discuss an illness I had, I would hope that he would consult other qualified people and not just drag people of the street. If my car has a problem, I go to a mechanic, not a dustman or, indeed, a politician. So why do we let people vote who know nothing about politics?

We wouldn’t want to limit voting to just the rich, for instance, or a selected group of people. We have taken too long to progress from that state. But I do think that, before you vote, you should show a minimum amount of knowledge about who you are going to vote for. Nothing complicated, just a few simple questions such as “Name the leaders of the main parties” or “When did women get the vote?” If people did not know these things or couldn’t be bothered to find out, then it suggests they are unlikely to know the difference in the parties and know exactly why they are voting for one over another. The universal franchise would still exist – everybody would still be entitled to vote – but they would have to show some desire to take it seriously first.

The result would be that those who didn’t care about politics, or don’t have the capability to make an informed decision, would be free to ignore the polling booth on voting day. Those who did vote and consequently elected our government would have at least done some research on where to cast that vote. Who knows – making it something you earn rather than have automatically might attract more people to bother in the first place.