Here's a good discussion starter for the new year
Should voting be mandatory?Peter Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University who thinks about more than animal liberation and the ethics of eating. He also thinks philosophically about voting.
Why Vote?
"As an Australian citizen, I voted in the recent federal election there. So did about 95% of registered Australian voters. That figure contrasts markedly with elections in the United States, where the turnout in the 2004 presidential election barely exceeded 60%...
"There is a reason why so many Australians vote. In the 1920’s, when voter turnout fell below 60%, parliament made voting compulsory...
"When voting is voluntary, and the chance that the result will be determined by any single person’s vote is extremely low, even the smallest cost – for example, the time it takes to stroll down to the polling place, wait in line, and cast a ballot – is sufficient to make voting seem irrational. Yet if many people follow this line of reasoning, and do not vote, a minority of the population can determine a country’s future, leaving a discontented majority...
"If we don’t want a small minority to determine our government, we will favor a high turnout. Yet since our own vote makes such a tiny contribution to the outcome, each of us still faces the temptation to get a free ride, not bothering to vote while hoping that enough other people will vote to keep democracy robust and to elect a government that is responsive to the views of a majority of citizens.
"But there are many possible reasons for voting. Some people vote because they enjoy it, and would have nothing better to do with the time saved if they did not. Others are motivated by a sense of civic duty that does not assess the rationality of voting in terms of the possible impact of one’s own ballot.
"Still others might vote not because they imagine that they will determine the outcome of the election, but because, like football fans, they want to cheer their team on. They may vote because if they don’t, they will be in no position to complain if they don’t like the government that is elected. Or they may calculate that while the chances of their determining the outcome are only one in several million, the result is of such importance that even that tiny chance is enough to outweigh the minor inconveniences of voting.
"If these considerations fail to get people to the polls, however, compulsory voting is one way of overcoming the free-rider problem. The small cost imposed on not voting makes it rational for everyone to vote and at the same time establishes a social norm of voting. Australians want to be coerced into voting. They are happy to vote, knowing that everyone else is voting, too. Countries worried about low voter turnout would do well to consider their compulsory model."
Labels: concepts, participation, pedagogy, political culture
posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:31 AM
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