If the case I made for compulsory voting was as self indulgent, citizen-blaming and superficial as Suzy claims, I doubt whether the 78% of the people attending the Fabian conference would have voted to back it as the best proposal of six to improve our democracy.
The heart of my case is this. Modern campaigning methods mean that politicians' best chance of winning is through generating a differential turnout, with our own supporters being more likely to vote that those who want to vote for the other parties. The consequence of this is that campaigns are not directed at shifting voter allegiance from opposition or even apathy to support but at making supporters actually go out and put a vote into the ballot box. I live in a constituency with a proud history of campaigning and talking with voters. Slough Labour Party members speak to around thirty thousand voters each year, I contact many others, listening to their views and telling them about mine. But we do not generally bother with people who are known supporters of other parties.
This makes an already enfeebled political discourse weaker. The clash of ideas in politics orchestrated through the supporters of different candidates is just not happening on the ground in constituencies in the period before a poll. The media does this, but often in an utterly cynical anti-politics context. It does happen in Parliament after the election has been held, but if democracy and elections are to empower the citizen it should happen before polling day not after. I believe that the way to make sure that politicians cannot ignore the people who disagree, take on the opposition, are forced to answer difficult questions and have proper debates is to end the advantage given by just generating turnout.
I want to restructure the election so that everyone votes, even if that vote is a protest designed to register opposition to everything on offer. A substantial registered abstention would itself be a powerful message which could not be ignored in the way that abstentions are at present.
There are a number of reasons why people do not vote. They include but are not confined to ignorance and apathy, they reflect the public's dislike and distrust of the options on offer, and propensity to vote is directly affected by whether the outcome seems predictable or not. But what is certainly true is that poorer people are less likely to vote than prosperous ones, and that this gap is worsening, from a 7-point difference in the 1960s to 13 points in 2005. It is no coincidence that the most deprived area in England contains the constituency with the lowest turnout - Liverpool Riverside had turnouts of 34% in 2001 and 41% in 2005 So the effect of disenfranchisement is unequal. As in so many other areas of life the educated and middle class still wield disproportionate influence. Compulsory voting would fix this aspect of inequality. In fact the highest turnout at the last election, in West Dorset, at around 75%, is lower than the norm in coutries which have some element of compulsion.
Now while it is true that doing politics better would increase the turnout, I do not believe that this on its own is sufficient. Suzy implies that I am opposed to a more radical and honest politics and implies I am smugly complacent about the state of politics today. I have written elsewhere (in Parties for the public good) about some of the things which I think might help us to do politics in a better and more engaging way, and I have all my political life argued for a bolder, more inspiring politics to reach beyond those who feel engaged by it at present.
I believe that the fact that we have such poor turnout of itself actively operates against doing politics in an inclusive and inspiring way. A critical part of my case for compulsory voting was that it is necessary but it is not sufficient to remedy the malaise in our democracy which means that only some one in five adults actually voted for the Labour government. I wholly endorse the call to have a livelier, more differentiated politics, I also support proportional representation, and giving young people direct experience of controlling things and a right to vote at an earlier age.
But I cannot see any in-principle objection to making voting an enforceable duty. I pointed out that I do not think the penalities should be onerous. In Austalia in 1993 some half a million voters did not attend the polling station, of those 94% offered an acceptable excuse, including absence abroad or membership of a religious group which prohibits voting, around 23,000 paid a twenty-dollar fine (£7.20) and some 4000 went to court and were fined fifty dollars (£18). Although other countries such as Greece have the power to imprison people, they do not enforce it, and I would not want us to deploy heavy penalties to force people to vote.
While Suzy cites opinion research evidence from the Electoral Commission that 49% of people oppose compulsory voting she omits the fact that in the same survey 47% supported it. And this was before any public debate or exposition of the issue so I have little doubt that it could become an idea which was supported by the public. I have asked people who do not vote what they would do if voting were to become compulsory, overwhelmingly they have said that if it were to be they would vote. The group includes people who do not vote because they think others are better qualified to decide, because they cannot be bothered, because they do not know how and because they think politicians are rogues who should not be encouraged.
Compulsion would, therefore, change election campaigns from being primarily about mobilisation and instead focus them on persuasion and conversion. In turn, this would almost certainly have an educative effect: If everyone knows that they are obliged to fill in a ballot paper and vote, some may prove more diligent in finding out more about what the parties and candidates stand for and what their policies are. The education would not only be of the voter. Politicians would be educated by the people they have so far tended to avoid, either because they don't bother to vote or because they generally vote for another party. They may have to produce an offer which would prove attractive to them.
And one thing I know about power is that people who have had some usually want more. I think we need a foundation of shared civic experience of voting if we are to be able to generate widespread participation through innovations in democracy, like citizen involvement in budget setting. A big mistake of the early years of Labour government was to seek public engagement outside democratic routes, through initiatives such as participation on panels by local residents who have no mandate or duty to consult with others. It tended to leave power in the hands of the professionals and has coincided with a calamitous decline in participation.
The first low turnout generation - the one that came to age in 1992 - has experienced a faster decline in voting than among older generations. In 1992, 70% of 20 year olds voted, but by 2001 turnout among the same generation, now in their late 30s, had fallen to less than 40%. This is a problem so serious that it needs urgent action to fix. I want politicians who will inspire, but I cannot wait to fix our broken democracy, because as its authority dribbles away we will face questions about whether there are other better less bothersome ways of running a country than democratically. And that is a road I do not want to go down.
Comment on Fiona's argument (but read Suzy's first!) here on OurKingdom
