Following the battering the government has received in recent weeks, it is no doubt looking for ways to change the subject. The unfinished business of constitutional reform, particularly Lords reform, is one obvious candidate. The local elections of 4th May also point to another policy theme—compulsory turnout. Turnout in the elections was estimated at a dismal 36 per cent—a drop of around 10 per cent from the early 1990s. In some poor inner city wards, less than one in five residents voted.
Why do people vote? This question has always puzzled economists and rational choice theorists, and rightly so. After all, while the "costs" of voting are slight, the "benefits" are even slighter. The chance that any individual's vote will make any difference to the outcome is vanishingly small.
The question becomes less puzzling once you jettison the rational choice assumption that people only do something if they perceive the benefits to outweigh the costs. People vote for the same reasons they do so much else—because there is an established norm to which they feel obliged to conform. People vote not because they see it as in their interest, but because they see it as an obligation to vote and are surrounded by people who expect them to. (That's why so many non-voters, when asked by pollsters if they voted, lie.)
Understanding the role that norms play in voting not only allows us to understand why people vote, but also why they don't. Turnout goes down when people no longer feel obliged to vote. A range of factors have contributed to the record low turnouts in Britain over the last decade. These include the relative closeness of the programmes of the main parties, that one party (Labour) has been seen as having had it "in the bag," declining identification with political parties and a diminishing interest in capital "P" Politics. But survey evidence shows that the belief in voting as a duty has also fallen—especially among low turnout groups: young people, poorer people, and most of all among poor young people. Nine out of ten Britons under Attlee believed that a person had a duty to vote. That figure has fallen to less than five out of ten today. And only around two out of ten poor young people believe in the duty to vote.
What then can be done to reinvigorate the voting norm and get people back into the habit? Schools have a role to play in getting children and teenagers to see voting as both an important right but also a duty, not least by holding elections themselves. Most importantly, if we are going to have state funding for political parties, we need to find ways of ensuring that it funds grassroots activity and not centralised campaigns—people who have been canvassed on the doorstop are much more likely to turn out. One option would be to link funding to levels of local membership.
Nevertheless, by far the most effective way of reinforcing the voting norm would be to make turnout compulsory. Countries like Australia or Belgium that oblige citizens to turn out—and note that they oblige them to turn out, not to vote: they can spoil their ballot—have turnouts of more than 90 per cent. And the voters who turn out in such high numbers do so not, for the most part, because they want to avoid being punished (the fines involved are modest and sparsely levied) but because the law itself establishes voting as a civic obligation—much like doing jury service, paying taxes or tolerating the expression of views with which we disagree.
But wouldn't the British public deeply resent being forced to turn out? Not necessarily. The little polling that there is suggests that we are fairly evenly divided on this issue, with about half inclined to endorse compulsory turnout and about half to oppose. And there are a number of things a government could do to help win support for the measure. First, it could give the decision over to the public themselves—by setting up a citizen's assembly to deliberate on the matter, or by holding a referendum. Second, it could couple compulsory turnout with new powers for voters—by establishing an elected House of Lords, a reformed voting system for the Commons or new powers of petition. Compulsory turnout could thus become part of a classic New Labour "rights and responsibilities" deal—and perhaps even an unexpectedly significant part of Tony Blair's legacy.
At the very least, the political class needs to begin taking compulsory turnout seriously. Everyone knows that turnout has fallen over the last few elections. But it is less widely recognised that it has fallen fastest among young and poorer groups, further marginalising them from democratic life. Moreover, all the indicators are that voting will continue to fall over the next decades: studies show that the non-voting generations are not picking up the habit as they get older.
With the battle for the franchise still fresh in national memory, it was only natural that throughout the 20th century, the voting norm would be left to take care of itself. That is clearly no longer the case. Compulsory turnout may be the only way to resurrect it.
