Resolved: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory

Thanks Seagull. As I mentioned in R1, we’ve debated before and I look forward to debating him again. Clarification The BOP is solely on Pro meaning that I will not be obliged to provide a constructive case (though I will be making a short argument just to make my rebuttals clearer). In order for me to win this debate I must successfully refute Pro’s case. Pro’s case must be standing by the end of the debate in order for him to win this debate. Democracy is built upon 4 key elements, as described by political scientist Larry Diamond. These elements are “(a) A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections; (b) The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; (c) Protection of the human rights of all citizens, and (d) A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.” [1]. The elements that I will be focussing on in my rebuttals are elements A and C. Application of Democracy’s Key Elements Element A clearly states that election must be “free” and “fair”. How fair something is can be subjective so I’ll be focussing on how “free” elections will be if people are forced to vote. Free is defined as “Not controlled by obligation or the will of another” [2]. By forcing somebody to vote you are controlling them by obligation since they must vote regardless of whether they want to or not. You are also doing what is there will as opposed to what is your will (which also violates the definition of free). Element C states that democracy’s purpose is to protect the rights of all citizens. By forcing people to vote they lose their freedom of choice [3], since they cannot choose whether they want to vote or not and it also violates article 4 and article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights since these rights regard freedom of opinion and freedom from slavery [4] - a slave is defined as a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them, which is the case here since voting will be compulsory. The harm of a low voter turnout I agree that low voter turnout is undesirable however I disagree that my opponent’s proposed measures are necessary. However there are people that have very valid reason for not voting and forcing them to vote would likely distort the interests of a nation further given that are large percentage of people that do not vote are actually undecided [3]. On average, 70% of men are likely to have an idea of who they are voting and 61% of women have an idea of who they are voting for, meaning that 30% of men are undecided and 29% of women are undecided on average [3]. This is a massive figure, showing that by forcing people that are undecided to vote, you are potentially making them vote randomly, without actually assessing the positives and negatives of every campaign. This can and will be detrimental in achieving a fairer society given that these statistics clearly show that people will not be decided. Another major reason is that people often do not like any of the candidates [5] (which is something that I can say for myself regarding the elections in the UK - which is where I come from). This, again, raises the same concerns as above. If people do not like any candidates, then logically, when forced to vote they will most likely not vote properly which will once again negatively impact the result of elections. Robert Montenegro reports that many people don’t care about their vote. If young people do not care about their vote then, in the scenario that they are forced to vote, they will probably waste their vote due to the attitude regarding the issue showing that they do not care about the outcome, meaning that there is no point (when looking at the issue from their perspective) in taking time to analyze the candidates and vote on who you believe in, if you do not care about it from the beginning. [6] So whilst I do agree that a low amount of people voting is bad. And I do agree that if more people voted (of their own free will), then that’d be good. But forcing people to vote will allow undecided voters, people that don’t like any candidates and people that don’t care to have to vote, causing distortion in election results, thus not making democracy any more accurate or fair, as my opponent claims. Impact Of Compulsory Voting In Australia the same things as stated above are likely to be happening. Also, when analyzing compulsory voting we have to consider the bandwagon effect which is a common issue raised against the system. Given the high percentage of people that do not care about their votes, bandwagoning does occur and many case studies have been written on the topic. Compulsory voting does increase bandwagoning on votes significantly and is identified as a major factor regarding it [7][8]. This data collected regarding compulsory voting, as well as the points made above show that Australia almost certainly experiences bandwagon votes, uncaring votes, random votes, etc. [9]. And with that, I hand the stage back over to Seagull. Sources [1] https://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://www.thefreedictionary.com... [3] http://www.scotcen.org.uk... [4] https://www1.umn.edu... [5] http://www.zencollegelife.com... [6] http://bigthink.com... [7] https://nyuad.nyu.edu... [8] http://www.theatlantic.com... [9] https://en.wikipedia.org...