Compulsory Voting
Richard @ Philosophy, et cetera proposes NZ should have compulsory voting. His reasons are well stated in the post.
I am against compulsory voting. If you make something compulsory it means you fine or sanction people who don’t do it. I don’t think fining hundreds of thousands of NZers for not voting is a good idea. Likewise I don’t regard fining adults who don’t wear a seat-belt as a good thing. I would however support insurance companies having exclusions for injuries for people who don’t wear one and get injured in a crash,
Anyway back to compulsory voting. For a start it doesn’t always get huge turnouts. In Greece in 1996 turnout was only 76%. Now they only make it compulsory for those under 70, but still a low turn-out. It also highlights the issue of age – do we really want to fine the 88 year old who decides not to vote because it is freezing cold outside, and they don’t have a car? Will that reason be accepted as why not to vote?
Even in Australia where federal election turnout is over 90% due to compulsory voting, the state election turnouts can be as low as 17%, even though they are also compulsory!
Again in Australia, 95% of those who don’t vote offer an excuse for not voting and are not fined. Do we really want an army of bureaucrats deciding whether or not an excuse is good enough, so someone isn’t fined for not voting?
Finally there is a much more fun way to encourage people to vote 
December 29th, 2005 at 8:59 am
Bot voting? Is that when you move over to Diebold and you just enter as many votes as you want for yourself into the results table?
December 29th, 2005 at 9:20 am
That poor 88 year old will usually be able to ring up their local MP/Candidate and get a lift down to the polling booths.
December 29th, 2005 at 11:47 am
So apparently what NZ really needs is more laws (and $ wasted) to force people to something they don’t want to do just because someone promises that it will be good for us. No thanks.
And yes it is a problem forcing poorly informed people to vote precisely because many people not vote altruistically. What kind of politician will they vote for? Probably the kind with highly popularist but poorly thoughtout policies designed specificlly to suck in the ignorant voter. Again, no thanks.
December 29th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Yep! A non vote is better than a vote cast by a moron who doesn’t know what the hells going on. This is one reason why democracy is a badly flawed system and is not the same as freedom.If you can’t find a reason to vote you shouldn’t.
December 29th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
The only law should be that if you do not enrol (assume you are eligible) you are not entitled to any welfare support.
December 29th, 2005 at 5:09 pm
With all the fraudulent voting that goes on we would probably end up with more votes than we have voters on the roll.
December 29th, 2005 at 7:12 pm
How about we do the opposite? Make voting illegal. However, to be really twisted, the Government is still elected by it. So, you have to find an “underground” way to get your vote in.