THE main cause of low voter turnout in the event of a state or general election is simply due to the internal contradiction of democracy in allowing the freedom of both to vote and not to vote.
If people have the right not to vote and they exercise this particular right, there is nothing you can do to force them to vote.
However, if voting is made compulsory, then this contradiction disappears. The law needs to be amended to make way for compulsory voting.
Making voting compulsory doesn’t mean those who are “guilty” of not voting will face a hefty fine or long imprisonment term.
The way it is practised in Singapore, which is one of the few countries in the world that implements compulsory voting, as explained by some of my Singaporean friends, is if you do not vote in an election, nothing really happens to you in the immediate term.
But when the time comes for the next election and when the country’s Election Commission (EC) is updating its electoral register, your name will appear as someone who did not vote in the previous election.
A show cause letter is then sent to you on why you should remain in the electoral register. If you ignore this letter by the deadline given, nothing will happen to you except that your name will be taken out from the electoral register, which means you cannot vote in the coming election.
It’s like you are voluntarily disenfranchising yourself by remaining quiet. But if you respond to the letter by stating the reason for your absence in the last election, and the Singapore EC accepts your reason, your name remains in the electoral register as a voter for the upcoming election.
Some of the acceptable reasons are working overseas (including being on a business trip) at the time of the poll; studying overseas at the time of the poll; living with their spouse who is working or studying overseas; overseas vacation; suffering from illness, or delivering a baby.
If the reason for your absence at the poll is rejected by the EC, then you will be taken out of the register and you need to pay a nominal sum to reinstate your name in the electoral register.
For as long as you don’t pay this nominal “fine”, you can no longer vote.
But at any time after voluntarily disenfranchising yourself, if you miss voting, all you need to do is to pay the nominal “fine” for your name to be reinstated in the electoral register for you to take part in voting at the poll.
With this compulsory voting, Singapore has never faced a low voter turnout. At the same time, the democratic freedom of opting not to vote is allowed because no one is subjected to hefty fines or imprisonment for not voting.
Of course, the Singapore EC will do its part via an education programme to encourage citizens to vote because a fundamental right of citizenship is the civic responsibility to be exercised by citizens to choose and elect their leaders in a democracy.
The two greatest democracies of the world – the US and the UK – have not made it compulsory for their citizens to vote to this day.
Considering that the US is willing to go to war to spread democracy, it is indeed hypocrisy of the highest order for it to not make voting compulsory among its citizens.
Some scholars in the US prefer to replace the term “compulsory voting” with “universal voting” because “compulsory voting” is seen as a proposition that is forcing citizens to choose a candidate or party, which might legitimately be construed by the courts as compulsory speech.
In universal voting, voters would be free to cast a blank ballot. And to stress the freedom not to make a choice, these scholars propose including a “None of the Above” option, which in our part of the world is deemed as spoilt votes.
Universal voting in the US is seen by some as a game changer to move on from vacillating between inclusion and exclusion, and between embracing democracy and retreating.
As of January 2020, of the 36 member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), only three had forms of compulsory voting which is enforced in practice: Australia, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Additionally, Greece, Mexico and Turkey have compulsory voting theoretically, but it is not enforced.
As for e-voting, it will face the same problem of the internal contradiction of a democracy because there is only so much that you can do to encourage people to vote when their right of not to vote is always there.
The only advantage of e-voting is the hefty lower cost of organising an election and the relatively hassle-free voting for the voters.
State polls in Malaysia since the 14th general election (GE14) have cost the government RM420 mil, with the recent Johor elections accounting for nearly RM100 mil of the bill.
The EC total expenditures for the state polls were RM130 mil in Sabah, RM45 mil in Melaka and RM149 mil in Sarawak.
Election expenses include the rental of equipment, vehicles, technology development, logistics solutions, allowances for EC staff, and items needed to adhere to COVID-19 standard operating procedures (SOPs).
The recent Melaka and Johor elections cost RM13 mil and RM35 mil more respectively than the last time the states elected a new state assembly in 2018.
As some experts have said e-voting can cut the cost of organising an election by more than half, e-voting should then be implemented for this purpose, together with making voting compulsory for the purpose of preventing a low voter turnout. – March 29, 2022
Jamari Mohtar is the Editor of Let’s Talk!, an e-newsletter on current affairs.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
