Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Australia’s compulsory voting rules may be driving voter apathy and shallow political discourse, locking in a system resistant to real change.

Australia likes to pat itself on the back for being a model democracy. But there’s something deeply wrong about a system that punishes you for not voting. Worse still, that very system is dragging our politics into a swamp of apathy, bribery, and hollow promises.

Australia sits alongside countries like the Congo and Nauru when it comes to compulsory voting. That’s not a club to be proud of. About 85 percent of the world’s countries don’t force their citizens to vote. Of the few that do, most don’t even enforce it. In Australia, you can be fined, and yes, even jailed, for refusing to participate in a process that, for many, offers no real choice.

There’s something inherently undemocratic about being systemically frogmarched to a polling booth under threat of financial penalty or deprivation of liberty. What if you don’t want to vote for any of the mugs on the ballot? That should be your right. Being forced to spend an hour out of your day just to turn in a blank or informal vote is lunacy.

And it’s more than lunacy, it’s hurting the country.

In fact, it may be a core reason for the political malaise we find ourselves in today.

Compulsory Voting Makes No Sense

Most Australians simply don’t care about politics. One federal politician told me just this week that, in his view, if voting were voluntary, the turnout would drop to 25 to 30 percent. He’s probably right. That means our democracy is in the hands of the 70 to 75 percent of voters who would otherwise sit it out, people who don’t follow the issues, who vote out of obligation, not conviction.

In other words, our democracy is hostage to the disengaged.

And when that’s your electorate, what do politicians do?

They promise “free stuff.” Labor throws your taxpayer money around like confetti in a wedding hall, hoping to win the hearts of the disengaged with handouts and gimmicks. The Coalition, instead of rejecting this vote-buying circus, tries to match it. It’s not about inspiring the public. It’s about bribing the bored.

This stinks to high heaven.

A number of Liberal politicians I spoke to this week confessed their reluctance to challenge sacred cows like Net Zero. Not because they believe in the policy, many of them don’t, but because of how it’s perceived by this disengaged bloc of voters who parrot whatever the media tells them.

One of them admitted it directly: “It’s the perception… and perception is reality.”

But that’s not true. Reality is reality.

And believing that Australia can cool the planet from Canberra is as absurd as Greta Thunberg claiming she can see carbon dioxide particles in the air.

The Real Damage of Compulsory Voting

This is the real damage of compulsory voting. It keeps our political debate shackled to the lowest common denominator.

The electorate has been softened, dumbed down, and sedated by institutions that push them leftward. Schools. Universities. The mainstream media.

It’s why the only real choice we’re ever given is between Labor and Labor-lite. Some Liberals I spoke to this week didn’t put it quite so bluntly, but they may as well have.

What one MP did say is that compulsory voting cements the old Labor/Liberal duopoly. He’s right. That’s not because the major parties are delivering results though. It’s because they’re the only names voters recognise as valid when they’re forced to show up and tick a box.

The majority of people are locked into the same parties their parents voted for. For others, the media drums it into them that there are only two “credible” options. So they stick with what they know. No matter how much it fails them.

And because of this, the possibility of a third political force, something that could genuinely shake up the system, is snuffed out before it even begins.

Addressing the Compulsory Voting Problem

So what’s the answer?

I won’t pretend this is an easy fix. Scrapping compulsory voting is seen as political heresy in Australia. Like Net Zero, it’s another sacred cow. Question it, and you’ll be shouted down by elites who act like it’s some divine pillar of democracy.

But maybe we start with this: remove the penalties. Who wouldn’t be in favour of not fining or jailing someone who either conscientiously or unwittingly fails to vote?

If we do that then we can let the people choose. If you care enough to vote, you will. And if you don’t, why should your apathy be given equal weight to the informed decisions of others?

I would suggest serious Liberals start thinking about adopting this as policy going forward. Some might ask, “Why would a Liberal support that if it risks giving rise to a third conservative force?” But the answer’s obvious. Because it might also strengthen the Liberals, by forcing them to reconnect with their conservative base, by pushing them to offer something worth voting for.

Things like axing Net Zero and pulling out of the Paris Agreement. Slashing immigration and restoring a strong Australian identity. And ending the woke indoctrination in our schools and universities once and for all.

Voluntary voting wouldn’t kill democracy. It might just save it.

___

Republished with thanks to Nation First. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.