Here in Oz it is quite explicit. Voting is a responsibility. It is one of the questions asked of applicants for citizenship - what are your responsibilities as an Oz citizen, and the answer is to vote. There are not many responsibilities.
The system works reasonably well. The usual complaint is that it tends to bias voting slightly towards favouring policies directed at the poorer. But it isn’t huge. As noted earlier - we don’t end up with political leaders running scare campaigns to get people to vote. We do import some of the nasty political stuff, from both sides, but it generally doesn’t get the traction it seems to outside.
Australians mostly vote based on how they perceive policies will affect their standard of living. Single policy parties occasionally get a bit of traction, but tend to fade away pretty quickly.
Overall I would say that we regard compulsory voting as a slightly annoying but better than the alternative idea.
Voting in local government elections isn’t compulsory and the turnout is pretty dreadful. Depending upon where you live local government is dominated by political parties or is free of them.
Highly organised political parties seem to be the main problem in any system. Effectively disenfranchising voters of most of their choice.
Remember, compulsory voting doesn’t obligate you to actually choose someone. You could cast an empty ballot, or vote for Mickey Mouse.
Someone I knew spent most of his career in Oz and had to explain at every election that he was not a citizen and not allowed to vote. In order to avoid a fine.
But the main problem in the US is that few vote in primaries and those who do tend to the extremes, which means extreme candidates get selected.
I live in a closed primary state. One can only vote for the candidates of the party that they are registered to. I believe that alone gives you candidates more at the fringes than centrist, on both sides.
As to the OP what happens to people who intend to vote but don’t/can’t for whatever unplanned reason?
I am a first responder; we got a call on the night of the most recent election. I knew that if I took it I probably wouldn’t make it back in time before the polls closed (& I was right). I made our community less safe because I elected (SWIDT) to go vote.
I had a cow-orker in another state who stood in line for a couple of hours. What if she needed to pick up the kids, or needed to eat?
What about someone who gets into an accident or gets a flat tire & doesn’t make it in time?
Well haven’t you been played for a mug!
If he wasn’t a citizen then he’s not on the electoral roll. So the Australian Electoral Commission have no reason to chase him up.
Now around the company water cooler he might explain to somebody not aware of his circumstances that he wasn’t going to vote, indeed is not required to vote, because he isn’t on the electoral roll. And he was never going to be fined.
Having gone through at least 25+ elections in Aus (Federal and State) - I like the compulsory voting. As described, it puts a requirement on every citizen to ‘exercise’ their right to vote - they must make a positive decision NOT to vote - ie - by turning up to the polling station and drawing a cock-and-balls on the ballot paper (other less offensive options are also available).
In 1982, a referendum was held in Tasmania about the construction of a dam in a sensitive environmental area. The referendum was about where to build the dam - there were two options. What happened was the environment lobby encouraged everyone to write on their ballot paper ‘Option 3 - No dam’. Nearly half of all ballot papers were spoiled thus (and recorded as ‘invalid’), and the ongoing controversy eventually led to the dam not being built at all.
Some other elections have also had large numbers of ‘invalid’ votes, which sends a message that a lot of voters weren’t happy with any of the options on the ballot paper.
I live in a country with mandatory voting. This is how it works here.
If you know in advance you won’t be available on election day, you can request a ballot to be submitted via post. This process is easy and takes two minutes online, or you can go to your local commune* office. There’s no verification afterward about whether or not your stated scenario was legitimate, either. I know people with erratic work schedules (lots of travel) and they always request a mail-in ballot by default. There’s never an issue if it turns out they were available on the day.
If something happens on the day and you just can’t get to the polls, there’s another form to fill out, again with the local commune office. In my experience, as long as you provide an excuse, enforcement is quite lenient. They really only levy the penalty on people who skip the vote and don’t explain themselves.
Incidentally, there are also standing exemptions from the compulsory-vote rule. For example, if you’re above the age of 75 (i.e. have mobility issues), or if you permanently live overseas, your vote-by-mail participation is welcomed, but not required.
*For the record, a “commune” in my country refers to the local governing entity. Conceptually it’s sort of midway between a state and a county, in U.S. terms, with many but not all of the same responsibilities. Communes run voter registration, for example. However, all policing is managed at the national level. So it’s not a perfect correspondence. Where I live, the commune’s office is a three-minute northbound bus ride; overall my commune has a population of about 3000 people. Just to give you an idea of the scale.
Also, regarding the comment above about uninformed voters, and whether it’s really a good idea to have politically ignorant people participating: This very much reflects an American perspective. As a former American, I know well that lots of people check out entirely, simply because that’s an option. (Look at how many people were googling “wait, what happened to Biden?” just before the election.) So it’s natural to think that adding these idiots to the voting pool is unwise.
But what happens in practice, I can confirm, is that the mandatory ballot has the opposite effect: a hard baseline of political awareness is established. Because your vote is compulsory, you feel an obligation to know something. We have seven major political parties here, with Parliamentary representation (plus another couple of fringe parties, like the Communists, who lack the national support to advance from local council seats and achieve higher office). I would be astonished if there were more than a fraction of the population who couldn’t name all seven parties and provide at least a general summary of their political postures, and whose ballot, therefore, is at least minimally well informed.
It may trigger an allergic reaction among reflexively American “but mah FREEDOM” types, but I can assure you, after direct experience with both models, the electoral system where I live now is decidedly superior versus how it works back in the States. It’s not even close.
After having sat through a couple of voir dires, and listened to the disingenuous lies people gave just to get out of serving, I’m nervous about how many people would try to somehow throw a wrench into the election system to express their resentment. Like, an underground write-in campaign for someone qualified by virtue of being old enough, and satisfying citizenship and residency requirements, but being utterly unqualified, like Joel Steinberg or Leslie Van Houten.
People win these things-- ask HMS Boaty McBoatface.
Americans are great at doing more work than they need too just to feel the way they want about something. I read about an ad hoc charity organized to collect money to ship a huge lot of amassed plastic milk jug caps to Japan to recycle them in order to pay for children’s vaccinations. No one had checked beforehand to see where to send them, whether such a program even existed (it did, but it used Japanese milk bottle caps; the US ones were incompatible), nor questioned the economics of expending fuel and labor to send bottle caps to Japan to recycle: people gave generously.
I just know in my heart that if people had simply been asked to donate money to vaccinate children in Japan, not nearly as much money would have been collected.
I have a point: if Americans (specifically, Americans) are mad about having to vote, they aren’t going to take the easiest path through the voting requirement, and do something like mail a blank ballot back in a no-postage-required envelop. They’d rather fill out a form for time off work to go and vote, and drive out of their way to their assigned precinct, just to write in Leslie Van Houten. Or SpongeBob SquarePants. And laugh all the way to work at their cleverness.
What you’re pointing out could quite literally be equally applied to any program or roll out, of, well, anything!
Of course there is nothing that can be done, that I am aware of, to prevent citizens, at any time, over any issue or new development applying the techniques you mention.
That’s not a very good reason to avoid making changes or trying improvements, in my mind. Progress is made by trying things to see. Then measuring success, based on results. Then making adjustments, as required.
Could there be malicious compliance? Very likely. Broad and widespread? I highly doubt it. But the end result might still be getting many more people to participate. That’s a win in my mind.
I think the main opposition wouldn’t be 1st Amendment, but rather whatever the difficulties are to actually be required to vote, as it’s already apparently quite onerous to vote for some people, between getting to a polling place, having to have ID, and other things like that.
Requiring voting would necessarily mean that some of those things would either need to be changed, or we’d basically be making a whole set of people law breakers just by virtue of not having an ID or being unable to secure transportation, etc.
He was never fined, but kept getting asked why he wasn’t voting.
Back in the day when Canada made up its electoral list by sending canvassers door-to-door and my wife and I were not citizens, we ended up on the electoral list thanks to a neighbour. We were not at home and so they asked the neighbour. Nowadays we get on the list by checking a box on our tax returns.
I think the exact opposite. Freedom of Speech includes the right to not speak. Freedom of Religion includes the right to not go to Church. Freedom of Assembly includes the right to not participate in a protest.
I want to thank you for being a good example by using the correct word “uninterested” instead the incorrect word “disinterested” (which, as YOU know, means impartial).
On the topic of the thread, would a “None of the above” ballot option, with a requirement that a winning candidate would need a majority of votes cast, including those marked “None of the above” (eg, candidate with most votes has 10 votes, but there are 11 “none of the above” votes so no winner) take some of the sting out of a potential compulsory voting requirement and give some interesting insight into voters?