In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory

Contention 1: compulsory voting implys that all forms of low and unequal turnout are ethically troubling, though this is not obviously so. There is no reason to suppose that people should be equally interested in politics at all times, or that all people should find voting equally satisfactory.(stoker,2006) Above all, it is morally and politically important to distinguish amongst different types of non-voters. There may be reasons to be troubled by those who do not vote because they are not particularly excited by any candidates, or because they are disenchanted by their favored political Party " as the failure to vote may point to deep-seated weaknesses in the competitive party system, and in the organization and ideology of the main political parties. But these problems, real as they are, seem far less urgent than those of the people who do not vote because voting and political participation of any form seem as alien and remote as university education, stable, well-paid work, decent housing, safe streets, and respect from other members of society. The difficulty in such cases is to see how compulsory voting will address, rather than exacerbate, the alienation of these non-voters, who are typically the objects, not the subjects, of political debate and policy, and who typically constitute the "problems" that politicians are competing to solve. (Irwin and holsteyn, 2005). In this situation compulsory voting would impact the results negatively. Contention 2: compulsory voting takes away rights . 30 The right to abstain, or to refrain from political selfidentification and participation is an important one, symbolically and practically. It captures two ideas that are central to democracy. The first is that government is there for the benefit of the governed, not the other way round. The second is that the duties and rights of citizens are importantly different from those of their representatives, because the latter have powers and responsibilities that the former do not. Citizens do not owe their government electoral support or legitimacy. This is one reason to doubt that citizens have a duty to vote even though, as Rawls claims, people have a natural duty to support just, or nearly just, institutions.(Rawls, 1971) 31 In some circumstances this natural duty might place citizens under a moral obligation to vote and, even, to vote one way rather than another. The point of democracy is to give people choice and compulsory voting takes that right away. Contention 3:penalties for not voting and enforcement. Proponents of compulsory voting tend to say that the penalties for non-voting are, typically, no higher than a relatively low fine. According to Ballinger, "High penalties are often thought not to be appropriate: such penalties disproportionately affect the poor, and can lead to heavy costs on an electoral commission". (11) But even where that is true, it is important to realise that people can, and do, go to prison for failing to pay fines, and that this is the case, as well, for those who fail to pay fines for nonvoting. For example, in 1999 Melissa Manson was sentenced to one day in prison for failing to pay the fines incurred by her failure to vote in the 1993 and 1996 Federal elections. Manson, apparently, believed that there were no candidates worth voting for, and therefore objected both to voting, and to paying the resulting fine, on principle.(Hill, 6 " 7 and 17) Before holding that compulsory voting is justified, therefore, we need to be prepared to make criminals of people who do not pay their fines for not voting " and need to be confident that doing so is consistent with the democratic values and objectives that animate this case for compulsion. If compulsory voting is instituted the aff agrees to inforce laws that infringe on peoples rights. It is for all these reasons that I must negate todays resolution.