Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey guys, welcome back to What In The World on the BBC World Service. I'm Iqra Farooq. Now, Australia's just had an election. Over to you Aussies then. How'd you find it? Entertaining. I think it's been pretty boring. Ordinary. Chaos. Underwhelming. Weird. Really annoying. I think I've seen a bunch of the major parties use rap lyrics, like they're trying to be hip.
I don't know how I feel about rapping politicians. Anyway, don't worry, that's not what we're talking about in this episode. Instead, we're going to chat about one specific aspect of Australia's election process. The fact that voting is compulsory. Everyone over 18 has to vote. We're going to look at how Australia and other countries enforce voting and how this impacts who gets elected.
So I'm joined by the BBC's Australia correspondent, Katie Watson. Hey, Katie. Hello. So, Katie, let's get straight to it. Australia has just had an election. Can you tell us three things we need to know in 30 seconds? Ready? Go. So, number one, the Labour Party won. Anthony Albanese's running for a second term and they did way better than expected. Today, the Australian people have voted for Australian values. CHEERING
For fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all. Number two, it was a dreadful night for the coalition. In fact, the leader of the Liberals, Peter Dutton, even lost his seat. And number three, well, the elections were upended by Donald Trump. So talk of trade wars, tariffs, it got people thinking a little bit beyond just the domestic policies like cost of living.
What happens if you don't vote? So there's a 20 Australian dollar fine. That's about 13 US dollars. So technically, it's actually an administrative penalty rather than a fine. Effectively, you've got to give a valid and sufficient reason why you didn't vote and
That's at the discretion of the Electoral Commission. But from what my Australian friends say, it's really not hard to justify. And I know you mentioned you've been speaking to Aussies on the ground all across this election campaign. What do they make of compulsory voting? Well, it feels like a real event here. I mean, I was at the voting centre's
in the couple of weeks running up to the election. And the queues were big the day before I was in Melbourne. And there were well over 100 people consistently in the queue waiting to vote the day before the actual election day itself. And when you turn up to the voting centres, it feels like people, you know, want to vote. They make it something that they do, especially on a Saturday morning. And, you know, yes, there's a $20 fine if you decide not to vote.
but people want to do it, it feels. It feels there's a sense of occasion. You've got the sausage sizzle, people offering up the democracy sausage afterwards, making a thing about it. It's definitely an event here. Thank you so much for coming on and explaining all of that, Katie. Cool, thanks for having me. Thank you.
Australia isn't the only place that has compulsory voting, though. Interestingly, lots of these countries are in Latin America. Well, here to tell us more is Maria Clara Montoya from the What's in the World team. Latin America is the region with most countries with compulsory voting. There are 33 countries in the region and 13 in total make voting compulsory.
Some have that on paper in their constitution, but they don't enforce it, for example Mexico or Honduras. Whereas in some other countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay and Paraguay, if you don't provide a valid reason for not voting, you can be fined between $2 and $80. This can also bring some difficulties, including finishing paperwork, getting official documents or even working for the civil service.
But how can they check if you've voted or not? Well, people in Ecuador, for example, get a voting certificate. And in countries like Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil, people are locked in a digital registry that shows that they have voted. Argentina has the longest tradition of compulsory voting. It introduced it over 100 years ago.
Data shows that participation is higher in the countries that enforce voting. For example, Uruguay had a 90% turnout in its last election and Bolivia had an 88%. But some experts say that participating in elections doesn't necessarily mean that people are more politically engaged.
OK, so let's hear more about the advantages and disadvantages of compulsory voting. I'm speaking to Shane Singh, a professor at the University of Georgia in the US and someone whose work focuses on compulsory voting.
Shane, how are you? I'm good, thank you. So let's get into it. What are the main arguments for compulsory voting, Shane? Well, the main argument is the most obvious one, and that is that compulsory voting increases turnout, and it has been demonstrated to increase turnout quite robustly.
There's also a lot of arguments for compulsory voting beyond turnout. One of them is that it's going to help reduce political inequality. And the idea here is that when you mandate voting, you're going to help level out disparities in the voting rate across different societal groups. So for example, less educated people, people of racial and ethnic minorities are going to vote at higher rates, and that's going to
lead them to voting at similar rates to people who are maybe more highly educated of racial majority groups.
And so then once you level out these disparities in the voting rate that, you know, trickle through into legislation, which should then be crafted in ways that are more reflective of the needs of the entire society. Another argument in favor of compulsory voting is that it increases political knowledge and engagement beyond voting that
people get more interested in politics and that people care more about democracy. And then finally, there's a pro-compulsory voting argument that would suggest it leads to political moderation, whereas parties are less likely to take extremist positions because they have to cater to the entire electorate rather than just the people who are, you know, more passionate and therefore voting voluntarily. OK, so those are some pro examples. But what about against? Yeah.
Right. So for every argument for compulsory voting, there's often a counter argument against. And so no one's arguing that it doesn't increase turnout. It clearly does. But at the same time, it increases turnout.
but compulsory voting increases the number of blank and spoiled ballots, right? When you have a requirement to vote, you also have a higher proportion of these invalid ballots. You see these in Australia, for example, where you have a lot of individuals who are just crossing out their ballots or writing something ridiculous or voting for a candidate like Mickey Mouse or something.
You also see this in places like Brazil, Argentina, where they also have compulsory voting. And so, yes, you do get a higher level of valid ballots, but you also get this increased proportion of invalid ballots. And so then on to the argument that compulsory voting reduces political inequality.
It may, and it certainly does level out disparities in the voting rate across different groups. But at the same time, certain types of penalties might actually lead to widening disparities among different groups. So, for example, in a country like Brazil, one of the penalties for non-voting is not being able to renew your passport. Well,
Poor people don't really care about passports as much as more educated, richer people. And so therefore, if you have these types of penalties, you can actually increase the gaps in the turnout rate between higher educated, higher income and lower educated, lower income people. Onto the argument about compulsory voting increasing knowledge and engagement.
First of all, there's not a whole lot of empirical evidence for this, but just more theoretically, this idea is countered by the suggestion that rather than incentivizing people to get excited about politics and informed about politics, compulsory voting can actually lead people to become a bit irritated that they have to take part in this system that they might not necessarily want to take part in. And rather than inducing engagement, people might actually withdraw further or start
developing attitudes that are anti-democratic. And then finally, there is this argument that compulsory voting induces political moderation. Well, the counter argument here is that rather than incentivizing politicians to
to appeal to everybody by moving to the center, compulsory voting might actually incentivize politicians to move to the extremes. And here, the idea is that when you mandate that people vote, you're going to bring out to the polls a lot of people with extremist views that may have stayed home under a system of voluntary voting.
But when these people are forced to vote, all of a sudden their voices are part of the process. And so politicians, especially those from minor parties, will have an incentive to move out to the extremes to try and capture the votes of these newly participatory people. It's all fair and well coming and increasing the turnout in this way. But what about what people actually like to do? Is there any evidence that people actually kind of really enjoy compulsory voting and really engage with it?
Yeah, great question. So, you know, there's this American movie Field of Dreams, and they say, if you build it, they will come. And it's, you know, about a baseball field. Well, there's some, if you build it, they will come aspect to compulsory voting as well. And so what I mean is that in a place like Australia, which has had compulsory voting for, I think, 101 years at this point,
there's high support for it in the public. And so if you ask the same questions about support for compulsory voting in a place like the United States or even Canada, which have never had compulsory voting at the national level, the general pattern is that support is very low in places that have never had it.
And it's quite robust in places that have had compulsory voting. An exception, though, would be some of these Latin American countries, particularly Brazil, which have had compulsory voting for several decades, but it still has a relatively low level of support. Shane, so much knowledge. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Thanks for listening to this episode of What's in the World on the BBC World Service. What do you think about compulsory voting? We'd love to get your thoughts on this. All the details are in the description box. I'm Mick Riffaroog and we'll see you next time. Bye.