Should it be the law that everyone has to vote?

[Constellationsofmyheart]

Interesting local election results in my city with no overall majority.

Turnout typically very low for the local elections.

It’s got me thinking, should it be law that everyone has to vote?

A lot of people are very disillusioned with politics and a lot just don’t understand or don’t know who to vote for therefore they just don’t bother.

That means that a minority are making decisions for the majority.

If everyone had to vote then people might be more inclined to do their research, but at least everyone would have their say.

So if people are forced to turn up they could spoil their voting paper, pick any random person or not have enough brain cells to rub together to have any idea what to do or who to vore for

In my area, we heard nothing from any one standing. No door knocks, no leaflets. I had to google to find out names…but then no further info about what they stood for or what they wanted to do in the local area.

Even if I was going to vote, I’d been at work for the 12hrs that day and I went straight home to see my children for the 5mins before they went to bed, all thoughts of voting completely slipped my mind. Should I be penalised in this situation if voting was compulsory?

True- but in my local council we had 41% turn up and vote. How can any party claim a mandate based on that? It's rubbish.

@sparklyblueberry2 most definitely not vote /don't vote comes down to an individuals choice whether that's apathy,laziness etc.

I don't think it should be compulsory but I do think people should be better informed politically. I think schools should educate children specifically in our political structures and about the process of voting, including the history of enfranchisement and what people went through to give us all an equal vote. And I think polling day should be a public holiday, and adults encouraged to take children with them when they go to vote. My parents always took me with them, and I did the same with my own, who are all now politically engaged voters themselves.

Agreed - too many people are too stupid to be allowed to make important decisions & that includes the politicians!

Yes because you can always turn up and spoil the ballot if you hate them all, or they could add a none of the above box. 32% turnout in my area and of course Reform got in… Poor show and particularly poor if you’re a woman.

Yes because you should read the news. You’re on Mumsnet which suggests you have some spare time, read.

Also, it takes a minute to vote and you can also vote by proxy or by post if you’re away/sick or whatever. There’s no excuse.

@SmallTreeDeepRoots No, you are not alone! I have felt the same for years. It’s worse now and I’m not going to be forced to vote when there’s simply no
party acceptable to me. It’s a race to the bottom in awfulness.

I don’t think it would help really and could just make things worse. People who can’t be bothered to look into it and make a decision now aren’t going to suddenly decide to do that if they HAD to in order to avoid a fine- they’d just turn up and stick a tick in a random box.

The problem with spoiling your ballot is that there is no difference recorded between “wasn’t capable of completing the ballot sheet correctly” and “no one worthy of my vote”. I was an observer at a count once and the number of people who marked two boxes, underlined their preferred candidate instead of crossing the box etc, you would scarcely believe. There needs to be a way of saying - I am capable of following simple instructions but do not want to vote for any of these people. Traditionally that was one of the functions of novelty candidates, but not all constituencies have them, and they have moved away from simply being a protest vote in recent years.

What you mean is you don’t think people who would have opposing views to you should vote. Because on here, not voting a certain way is apparently due to lack of intellect

Actually I want to vote for the local councillors that are going to do their best for my local area….an area that has been in the news a lot recently for various reasons, a local authority that is bankrupt. I’m not the only one in this area that was frustrated with the lack of information available….i don’t think we are all in the wrong here. As for postal voting, the details to do this arrived the day after the deadline so no not possible….again our local area is affected by Royal Mail issues. And actually I would have voted in person but after a long 12 hours at work dealing with multiple trauma patients, I wanted to see my little ones for the brief but precious few minutes….i usually miss bedtime as am often late home from work. Voting was the last thing on my mind at that point…again not intentional.

its really not as simple as you think!

Same.

Quite happy if the uninformed idiots don’t bother to vote.

How would that work. I was in hospital all day on Thursday and couldn’t vote. Do I get fined? Told off ?

Yes. And those who don't want to vote put their X in the box marked Abstain.

I'm not sure the system could cope with the entire population queuing at the polling stations on the same day though. There would probably have to be a move towards digital voting or voting being open for several days.

I think that’s a poor excuse to say you were too busy. Presumably, you knew you’d be working and have children. I do a postal vote, it gives you plenty of time to decide then.

How do you have compulsory voting, while also requiring ID to vote, when around 10% of the population do not have any ID.

This stance presumes that everyone who does vote does their research and knows what they are voting for.

I agree, OP, that voting should be compulsory. I think it would drive engagement. But if that happened, I would want there to be an option for “none of the above” or “re-open nominations” because no one should feel forced to vote for people they don’t want to and not everyone wants to spoil their ballot paper because it doesn’t actually represent their stance, i.e. that they think none of the candidates are good enough.

No one would be “forcing” me to vote! They are all bare-faced liars, every single one of them! They promise us the world, then fail to do the basics.
Just in it for themselves and sod the rest of us.

You should prob read my other post which explains why I was not able to do a postal vote this time round. I had every intention of going after my shift but well things happen such as the emotional burden of my shift distracting me from other things. i did not go to work on this day expecting to deal with multiple deaths and extremely traumatic situations.

my point is however that to make voting compulsory there should be more information available to constituents and also in my local area there was controversy with candidates being sacked at the last minute and people in power putting forward their relatives as candidates. I do not wish to tell you what area this concerns but just know that it’s been full of scandal and issues. Voting is not as black and white as you are making it to be.

As someone who deals with the general public on a daily as part of my job - I wouldn't be encouraging it to be mandatory for them all to vote

Can we just allow people the freedom to make their own choices? This is a ridiculous suggestion.