I think that this is a great public forum topic: it relates to a current event that will educate students on some of the nuanc
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Lesson 4.2 Day 3
| 13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 32 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com All the benefits are simply predicated upon the idea that by garnering an increase in overall turnout you can force changes in practices, increase voice in politics, and widen the scope of politic engagement to include more than just the minority interests. But the benefits are not without their fair share of dissent. Notably, The India Times recently published a review of the several states where voting had been made compulsory and argued that the results were not as simple as higher turnout. Siddharth Varadarajan 20 writes While Italy -- at 92.5 percent- tops the list of 172 countries ranked by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) according to average voter turnout for all elections held since 1945, only four other countries with compulsory voting made it to the top 50: Belgium (84.9 percent, Netherlands (84.8), Australia (84.4) and Greece (80.3). In other words, 45 out of 50 countries with the highest rate of voter turnout do not make voting compulsory. And Italy, where voting is compulsory on paper, there are no penalties prescribed. The worst that could happen to a nonvoter, says IDEA, is that it "might be difficult to get a daycare place for your child. but this is not formalised in anyway at all" Some of the countries where voting is compulsory have turnout rates that are so low that obviously the law is strictly for the birds Egypt, at 24.6 percent, has the second lowest rate of average voting in the world. Political scientists argue that while compulsory voting can be successful in bringing voters to polling stations, it brings along a host of other problems. Among these area higher number of spoilt or invalid votes. In the Brazil's 1989 presidential election, turnout was 80 percent but 19 percent of votes polled were invalid. In Belgium, invalid votes cast run at around 7 percent, and in Australia, four percent of those who voted in 1998 spoilt their ballots. Such studies which illustrate a converse correlation between compulsion and voter turnout and then further suggest that invalidated voting could bean issue within the compelled votes certainly raise some red flags that negative ought to be able to exploit. The question of low-turnout in spite of sanctions and mandates may seem puzzling to many. The choice would seem to be clearly a rationale one go vote or be punished. But as scholars have found, rational choice theory can vary on many issues how much it costs to travel to the poll, how much work must be missed to vote, the intellectual energy which must be spent to be informed when voting, not being able to 20 The Times of India . Online, May 4, 2004. Compulsory Voting May Not Bethe Answer web. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/voter-turnout/Compulsory-voting-may-not-be-answer-to-low- turnout/articleshow/658282.cms |