There is a delightful scene in a British movie called the Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer. The movie, released in 1970, starring Peter Cook with a screenplay written by John Cleese among others, should be compulsory viewing in the next week for Prime Minister John Howard, ACT Electoral Commissioner Phillip Green and authorities in Florida where the US presidential election is being decided.
Rimmer is a young Tory whose political motivation is to gain and remain in power. He achieves leadership of his party through machiavellian means and contests an election against a bumbling, pipe-smoking Harold Wilsonesque figure, promising to give the alienated dispossessed a real say. He wins easily.
Upon attaining power he gives every household an interactive television with a red flashing light and siren that activates when a nationwide vote is being sought on issues of national importance. Rimmer bombards the masses until they are sick of the red light and siren. In the final scene, he organises a final vote that would relieve the masses of the obligation to vote on every issue morning, noon and night. Do you agree that President Rimmer can have the sole vote on all issues henceforth so you no longer have to have your lives interrupted by irrelevant matters of national importance? You would never have to vote again. The masses vote overwhelmingly Yes and the movie ends.
It was a pertinent reminder of the importance of voting and voting systems and what they are there for.
Government by the people, of the people and for the people is both a precious and foolish thing. The snap judgment of a majority on complex issues will not lead to good government. They need the time, willingness and capacity to make judgment. Most are too busy for that. So they delegate to representatives to make decisions for them.
But how do you choose the representatives?
Prime Minister John Howard said this week that he preferred voluntary voting. The ACT Government wants to see electronic voting, or even internet voting.
Howard though he thought there was little chance of voluntary voting because a majority of the Liberal Party and the Labor Party were against it. He said, “”Let me make it clear, it’s not on my agenda”. But that might make opponents of voluntary voting shudder, coming from a political leader who promised never, ever to have a GST.
Howard has a point when he says that as a matter of principle he did not think people should be compelled to vote. Democracy is about people’s choice. If they choose not to exercise that choice, so be it.
Proponents of compulsion say people are not being compelled to vote, rather they are being compelled to attend a polling booth, even if they spoil the ballot. Moreover, if attendance is compulsory the percentage of valid votes tends to be very high so the result more accurately reflects public opinion. This, surely, is the aim of democratic voting – to produce a government that has legitimacy because the people consent to it and have chosen it.
Compulsory voting lessens the chance for fraud. If electoral officials are ticking every name, people who might try to vote in another person’s name are more likely to be caught because it will show as a double vote. If up to 50 per cent do not vote there is only a 50 per cent chance of being caught. Every election there are a small number of double votes, but the commission can satisfy itself whether there are enough to affect a result. There never has been.
Voluntarists argue that forcing people to vote can give an aberrant result because those apathetic, ignorant and ill-informed vote, warping the expression of the will of the people.
Often, though, it is not an argument of high principle. It can be principle dressed up as defending political advantage. Malcolm Mackerras once estimated that a switch to voluntary voting would help the conservatives by about two percentage points. Labor has more supporters among the less educated, economically poorer part of the community, the argument runs, and these people are more apathetic so are less likely to vote.
Small wonder conservatives like voluntary voting. Indeed, a ginger group of Liberals in South Australia has been plugging away at voluntary voting. Legislation has been put up three times unsuccessfully at state level and federally, Patrick Secker, the Liberal Member for Barker has pushed it nationally.
A lot of MPs do not like it, though. In 1924 compulsory voting was introduced unopposed. MPs on all sides find campaigning gruelling enough, without having first to persuade people just to turn up, so they selfishly retain the compulsory system.
But did you notice after last year’s republic referendum that people who ordinarily would support compulsion (because it favours their side) suddenly favoured voluntary voting, at least in referendums? Only those who take an active interest and want to vote should vote, they argue, with the unspoken thought that that way the unthinking unwashed would not mess up the republican agenda.
The American experience with a 50 per cent turnout shows how major parties rule out the concerns of the demographic that is less likely to vote so the whole process gets taken over by big money.
But it is unlikely that Australia would suffer the US experience of only a 50 per cent turnout. In Britain the turnout is usually around 70 per cent. In Australia it would be higher because we have elections at the weekends, the weather is better, elections are used as a public event at schools so people use the gatherings for non-political fund-raisings outside polling booths (usually public schools).
The ACT is likely to have a trial of electronic voting next election. It should give a quicker and more accurate count. There have even been calls for internet voting, but I cannot see how you could prevent stand-over tactics within families. The only way to prove the vote is secret is if the secret vote is cast in a public place. Furthermore, internet voting would enable vote buyers to ensure the vote-seller voted in the required way.
As Michael Rimmer showed, home-based voting could have disastrous consequences. And as Rimmer and this week’s counting in America show, every vote counts so you want a system that gets as many in as possible supervised by independent public servants – without political interference.