The more I read this thread, the more I think we need compulsory voting like Australia.
That just makes it utterly meaningless, though. It also blows out of the water any claims that the winning politicians/parties would have of claiming they had people's confidence and support and had been given a clear mandate, as they would never know how many people had actually chosen to vote for them or had just picked them at random to avoid a hefty fine. Remember that Ali G interview where the character claimed he just voted for the person with the funniest name? Can you imagine a reality where Mr Pratt narrowly squeaked it and beat Mrs Smith directly because of people who had no idea what they were both like as people or which policies they stood for?
They might not actually care, as long as they get the numbers of votes in, but would you want to be in a relationship where, instead of your DH meeting you, finding you attractive, developing a close affinity and then falling in love with you, his mum had told him "You need to find a woman to marry" - and then you'd crossed paths, fit the very basic 'brief' and he'd thought "Well, I suppose she'll do, then"?
Not the same thing, I know (and of course, you get an equal say in it too!), but I think compulsory voting causes more problems than it solves.
It's all academic, anyway, as whatever efforts you might make to the contrary, you know that (in England, at least), you will end up with one of two parties - both of whom you may find objectionable for a number of reasons. It's not really a 'choice' as such, when you have to decide which you hate less. You may be content to do that for tactics or the path of least resistance, but if voting were compulsory, that would mean the government forcing you to 'endorse' one of them.
Does hating cats automatically make you an obsessive dog-lover? If you can't stand coffee, does that make you an avid tea-drinker? Detest a lot of what the BBC stands for, so you therefore see no issues at all in how ITV runs its affairs?
If James is really kind to his own children, but beats and controls his wife; whereas Colin is really kind to his own children but abuses other people's children, which of these two men do you think is a good bloke, willingly put your faith and trust in to do the right thing and actually want to get behind and publicly endorse? Come on - you must support one of them, right? Legally, you HAVE TO....
We don't really have democracy in practice. You have two contenders who don't even need a majority of the votes, just at least one more than anybody else. They both tell lies and make promises that never get kept. They will hurl abuse at each other and object bitterly to what the other party does when in government, but how many of these contentious policies do they ever reverse once they get into power? I'm not saying that the smaller parties aren't the same; just that they don't usually have the chance of getting into power (on a UK-wide basis, anyway).
I suppose that only the action of submitting a ballot would be compulsory, so there would be nothing stopping you from spoiling it; but you can do that now, so what would you have actually achieved?