UK Politics

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Mandatory voting, yes or no? (feddit.uk)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Sorry if this is the wrong place for this, It seemed pretty specific but I also understand if this is more a news sub.

Now for the topic at hand, I'm personally not a fan. I think it's a sticking plaster over the top of some significant shortcomings in education and disenfranchisement that fails to get people engaged in politics in a meaningful way.

The end game shouldn't be getting a load of ignorant voters to ignorantly cast a vote; it should be to have an informed, educated and interested electorate going out to perform their civic duty in a way that brings everyone into the process, old, young, rich and poor.

I'd much rather see a focus on teaching our young people how our system works, why it's important and how and why we have a duty as individuals to turn up to vote, hold our elected officials accountable and become a part of the democratic process.

What about you?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I agree with your point about education and communication, but I'd counter that plenty of informed/educated voters assuming an foregone result has caused some unpopular outcomes in the part; a voter who would be otherwise be disenfranchised enough to not bother might as well vote for what they want if they're going to be voting anyway. Having thought about this a bit in the past I'd like to see all of these changes made to the process:

As mentioned, mandatory voting with a fine for nonattendance calculated as a proportion of income.
Postal voting by default. Your polling cars is also postal voting card and can be returned up to four weeks before election day.
In addition to the right to leave the polling card blank or spoil it, specific options for formal protest options along the lines of "No vote due to inadequate candidates" and "No vote due to lack of faith in the electorate system."
Constituencies three or four times bigger than they are at the moment, since people are more travelled and communities are more spread than they were in the past, leading onto:
Single Transferrable Votes with the number of representatives returned calculated based on the population of the constituency; currently the biggest and smallest have populations of 113,000 and 21,000, but both have equal representation.