Resolved: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory

Hi LD buddy! (I'm also preparing for a competition soon.) I will be AFF for Resolved: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory. Value: national interest Criterion: duty I decline the burden. First off, I'll refute the opponent's contentions. Then I will present my own arguments. To the opponent's first contention, "Democracy in other countries", he mentioned "For Australian citizens voting is not merely a right, but also a duty." I agree; voting is a duty. Voting is something that comes out of obligation. Under the social contract, governments protect our rights, and in return, citizens have the obligation to vote. The opponent also mentioned that turnout rates for Australia (not falling beneath 90% since 1924) is simply quantitative, and "the fact that more people go to vote is not a better thing for democracy". However, the opponent does not explain or support this point, and merely goes onto Contention 2. Why is it bad that "more people go to vote"? Doesn't that decrease voter apathy and encourage civic participation? To the opponent's second contention, "Moral and Technical Flaws", he brings up political bias. He writes " the new system creates political advantages for certain political groups". However, I think it is quite on the contrary. In our democratic system currently, which is not a compulsory voting system, political bias is very strong. Just think about it. Where there is the most representation among people, that's where the political parties go. People go to the nearest voting poll and they are deciding which political party to vote for. They will choose the political party that shares on the same issues these people care about, the political party that they can identify most from. So, these political parties shape their ideas to try to attract the people who show up to polls, leaving the outliers unrepresented. And then it becomes this cycle. If outliers are unrepresented, why should they show up to polls? Onto the other part of the opponent's second contention: he mentions compulsory voting is expensive to enforce. Could I ask the opponent to support his claim by writing up the specific statistic of money that is spent on compulsory voting? Alright. Now onto my own contentions. Contention 1: Voter obligation. As I have mentioned already, under social contract, because governments provide us with security and protection of our rights, we owe duties to the government. One such duty is to vote. And it is important because the leaders we elect are the ones providing the security and protection. So, connecting back to my value, it is under our national interest to have leaders that the entire democracy voted for, instead of having some groups or people underrepresented. In order to achieve that national interest, we need to feel that duty to vote. Under the current system, as I have already talked about in the refutation of my opponent's arguments, some people do not vote because they are being underrepresented. By making voting compulsory, these people would get a say in what government they want. Faced with the entire country instead of just the people who showed up at polls, political groups would shift their views to acknowledge the entire population, making their claims and views in the overall interest of all groups. Contention 2: Government legitimacy. If right now, there's a struggle to reach 60% voter turnout in Western countries, what does that say about our government? That means only 60% of people showed up to vote, and out of that 60%, a certain percentage voted for a political group, a certain percentage voted for another political group, and so on. Can our government be legitimate if only such many percentage of people voted for the current government? By switching to a compulsory voting system, we can encourage civic participation while making it so that our government was indeed chosen under the voting circumstances that everyone could vote. (Certain people, such as minorities or people with disabilities, may not be represented as well under the current system.)