There is a strong case for compulsory voting as it means an end to tactical voting, votebank politics and can lead to stronger democracy
Compulsory voting is an effect of laws requiring eligible citizens to register and vote in elections and impose penalties on those who fail to do so. Presently, 22 countries provide for compulsory voting, and 11 democracies—about 5% of all United Nations members—enforce it.
Athenian democracy held that it was every citizen’s duty to participate in decision-making, but attendance at the assembly was voluntary. Sometimes there was some form of social opprobrium to those not participating. Belgium has the oldest existing compulsory voting system. Compulsory voting was introduced in 1893 for men and in 1948 for women, following universal female suffrage. Belgians aged 18 and over and registered non-Belgian voters are obliged to present themselves at their polling stations. If they fail to vote in at least four elections, they can lose the right to vote for 10 years. Non-voters also might face difficulties getting a job in the public sector.
Australia introduced compulsory enrolment for voting at federal elections in 1912. Voting for Indigenous Australians was introduced in 1949, but enrolment and having one’s name marked on the voting register was not compulsory for Indigenous Australians until 1984. Venezuela and the Netherlands are countries that have moved from compulsory voting to voluntary participation. The last compulsory Dutch and Venezuela elections were in 1967 and 1993, respectively.
Compulsory voting is increasingly resented by citizens in some countries such as Brazil, the largest country where compulsory voting is enforced: at the last presidential election in 2014, some 30 million voters, about 21% of registered voters, did not vote, even though Brazil has some of the most severe penalties enforced against non-voters.
It was a phenomenal initiative for India to launch its democracy with a universal adult franchise on the morrow of independence. It has to be borne in mind that in 1947, up to 80 per cent of our people were illiterate. Our country was predominantly rural, with many a village not easy to drive into. North India had been drenched with blood between 1946 and 1948. Partition, in any case, had a disrupting effect not only on people but also on the administration. Until the second Battle of Tarain in 1192, Prithviraj Chauhan had been the last Hindu monarch to rule Delhi until 1947. In other words, Hindus did not have the experience of governance at the top for the best part of nine centuries. As for voting rights for citizens, even the United Kingdom, widely accepted as the mother of modern democracies, introduced cent per cent adult male voting as late as 1918; women were granted the right to vote only by 1928.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had a pragmatic mind. The universal adult franchise had been announced as part of the electoral policy. It is more than likely that the Sardar would have gone to the logical conclusion of such a franchise. And that is the introduction and implementation of compulsory voting. In everything he managed, he was thorough. For example, the integration of princely states into India was so thoroughly done that all of them except Hyderabad were committed to accede to India by Independence Day. Patel could not do anything about Jammu & Kashmir since Jawaharlal Nehru had taken charge of the state, he being originally a Kashmiri; Sheikh Abdullah was his close friend.
Several other countries practice compulsory voting. Argentina since 1912; Australia since 1924; Brazil, Ecuador (since 1936); Peru (since 1933), Uruguay (since 1970) and Singapore are among the prominent ones. If Sardar Patel did not have time enough to implement such a policy, hopefully, his pragmatic successors would have done so. It is only that party that favours a vote, that would disapprove of compulsory voting because that would make tactical voting meaningless.
This is of particular significance for India. We have been plagued by the phenomenon of what we refer to as the vote bank, particularly the “minority vote bank”. Put simply, this refers to the religious minority communities voting in large numbers whereas the majority Hindu community is usually either disinterested in voting and does not take much interest in political issues, but feels aggrieved when policies are not its liking. The situation has seen a significant change after the 2014 elections, but by no means can we assert that political consciousness as voters has settled on the majority of the country’s voters.
Politics that is servile to the vote bank, especially of a religious nature, is also a serious long-term security threat to the nation, something India has sordidly experienced in previous decades. Cross-border terror attacks instigated by our neighbouring country with impunity were allowed to remain unpunished because of the fear that retaliatory action might aggrieve voters belonging to a particular religion and thereby hurt the ruling party’s prospects in future elections. This led to India justifiably being known as a soft state and therefore brought us little or no global sympathy in the face of unrelenting terror. Only after the 2014 elections have we seen a sea change in both voting behaviour and the government’s policies emanating thereof. That makes the case for compulsory voting even stronger.
(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author, and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal)
