| An analyst with a Winnipeg-based think tank is
pushing for a mandatory voting law that would require all eligible
voters to cast a ballot – or else.
Dennis Owens, a policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public
Policy, says enforcing a mandatory vote – as proposed in a bill
introduced in the Senate in 2004 – would help boost Canada's falling
voting rate. The proposed bill would have punished non-voters with a
$50 fine.
Voting is compulsory in more than 30 countries around the world,
including Australia. In that country, Owens says, voter turnout hovers
at over 90 per cent – far above the 60-per-cent turnout in Canada's
last federal election.
"The mere fact that the law is in place means a lot of people just
comply and vote," he said, adding that citizens could be excused from
the fine if they have a legitimate reason for not voting.
Owens says having more citizens cast a ballot would also prevent
"special interests" from having too great an effect on election results.
For example, he says, his own research into local school-board
elections suggests voter turnout averaging around 17 per cent of all
eligible voters – but of people who work in education industry, such as
teachers and others who work for school boards, voter turnout is much
higher: around 90 per cent.
That skews the results in a way that might not represent the opinions of the general population, he said.
Random voting?
Critics of the idea say it's contrary to democratic principles to force
people to vote, and that doing so would result in uninformed people
going to the polls and simply guessing or choosing a candidate randomly.
Others, such as Nancy Powderhorn, a committed non-voter who has never
cast a ballot in a federal election, say it simply wouldn't work.
Powderhorn, a 47-year-old aboriginal university student, says she
doesn't vote because she finds it pointless, saying governments never
uphold treaty promises to aboriginal people.
"I've never benefited to date from any of these campaigns or parties
that promise all these things. I just find that people as myself that
are way out of distance from society we don't benefit nothing," she
said.
The idea of mandatory voting appals her: "They've never done anything for me, and now they want to make me pay?"
Owens says mandatory voting could provide a solution for Powderhorn: an
element of the mandatory voting bill would allow people to select "none
of the above" on their ballot.
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