25. Everyone Can Vote

This is guest post from Dr Toby James from the Department of Political and Cultural Studies, Swansea University:

Idea 18 suggested that making voting compulsory couldimprove local democracy.  Turnout is low in local elections in most democracies, commonly flat lining in the 30-40% range.  Fining people who don’t vote would be one fix.
 

One reason that people may not vote, however, is that they lack the time.  We have many competing demands on us.  Sometimes we don't have a babysitter, we work long shifts, need to get to a friend's party etc.  Citizens can easily be distracted from participating in our democratic institutions.  It is not that they necessarily do not wish to be involved in local democracy or do not want their views to be heard. 

In some countries voting and registering to vote can be very bureaucratic and time consuming. Citizens often have to visit a polling station to cast their vote, which may involve considerable travel.  They may be required to present special forms of photographic identification to vote.  Sometimes citizens may find that they need to register to vote a long time in advance of an election and provide intricate personal information such as social security numbers to be included. 

The more intricate and bureaucratic the requirements imposed on voters, the more likely that some will slip up and not make it onto the register.  In the UK, citizens wanting to cast their vote by the post have had to provide a date of birth and signature on their application form for a postal vote and their eventual ballot paper.  The two are then compared.  But some votes are often deemed invalid because citizens make administrative errors like providing the current day as their day of birth. Asking citizens to provide a social security number is even more burdensome.  Do you know yours off the top of your head?  One election administrator recently gave me the example of a citizen who wanted to vote, but who she could not add to the electoral roll: 

‘We had one woman every year would give you her national insurance number. Every year you’d write to her and say “That’s not your national insurance number.” It turned out it was her gas mask number from the war but she was convinced that was her national insurance number and there’s no way you could get any other number out of her.’

The procedures for voting and registering to vote are not always so out of tune with modern lifestyles.  In some elections voting and registering to vote is very convenient.  Some states in the US allow citizens to turn up and register on the day of election.  In Estonia and Norway citizens could cast their vote over the internet.  The UK has experimented with all postal elections and these provided an enormous boost to voter turnout.  In the US you can register to vote when you apply for your driving license.  Making the polling station closer to the voter increases the chances that they will vote.  Extending election day over two days, or even a week, helps too.

We are increasingly a Facebook/Twitter/XFactor generation.  We are used to everything being a click away.  Why should we have to travel to the village hall to let government know our views?

For an overview of the research on how election administration can increase turnout, and a broad brush tool for practitioners to identify some reforms, see my article in Representation (which is free to download).

Also see: http://www.tobysjames.com/election_laws_1.html

23. Ostracic Voting

OK, the phrase ‘ostracic voting’ sounds strange.  This may partly be because I have probably just made it up.  Yes, it is connected to the idea of ostracism which, like many of my favourite democratic ideas, goes back to classical Athens.  I wondered whether it might be something that could be applied to the practice of modern local democracy.

Agora Museum in Athens

I got the idea after a visit to the rather beautiful Athens Agora Museum, where, as well as coming face to face with a real life kleroterian as they used for sortitions, I came across some ostraca (ostracons?).  Now these wonderful little broken pieces of clay or shell where used for the process of ostracising (expelling) unwanted politicians.

Ostracism in Classical Athens

The Wikipedia page about ostracism, which is well worth read, explains it like this:

Each year the Athenians were asked in the assembly whether they wished to hold an ostracism...  If they voted "yes", then an ostracism would be held two months later. In a section of the agora set off and suitably barriered, citizens scratched the name of a citizen they wished to expel on pottery shards, and deposited them in urns. The presiding officials counted the ostraka submitted and sorted the names into separate piles. The person whose pile contained the most ostraka would be banished...

Banishment would be for 10 years although, as property rights were essentially unaffected this constituted a political suspension rather than any more significant – you could get the death penalty for political crimes back then.  Once the term was up the victim could resume their place in the political order as before – in special circumstances people could even be brought back early.

The benefit of ostracism for the Athenians was that it provided a countermeasure against tyranny and could also help decide issues of policy where particular positions were strongly associated with individuals.  With the rise of organised factions, however, its use declined.

Ostraca in the Agora Museum in Athens

Ostracic Voting in Local Democracy Today

Thinking about this I wonder if there are at least four ways ostracic voting might be used in local democracy:

1.         Committee Meetings

Committees could be given the option to decide whether to have an vote and the ability to expel a member of the committee for any period of time. This might improve the performance of the committee and keep individual members on their toes.  It would not affect political balance as a replacement would come from the same party. However, party motives may come to the fore and with a small group, the secret nature of the voting might not be sufficient protection against these motives dominating.  On the other hand, where the committee members are genuinely concerned about the effectiveness of the group it gives them the ability to remove unproductive, disruptive or uninterested individuals.

2.         Council Meetings

Council meetings could be given not so much the power to recall, as the power to eject.  Council as a body would have the option to remove any unproductive, disruptive or uninterested individuals and force a by election in their wards.  Again, this procedure could be subject to group politics but, with a secret vote, that would be more difficult to arrange.

3.         Recall Elections

The procedure of recall elections gives voters the chance to remove unwanted representatives. Ostracic voting provides a different way to organise this. Every year voters would have the chance to nominate a councillor they would like to see ostracised (this could be done on a ward or council wide basis), the councillor with the most votes, perhaps with a minimum threshold would be ostracised, and a by election held.

4.         Local Elections

Finally, ostracic voting might be applied to the local election procedure itself. Voters could rank candidates, not in their order of preference, but in their order of disapproval. Selection could take place on the simple basis of the candidate least disliked being elected or after a series or rounds similar to the alternative vote or single transferable vote.  

All of this might sounds weird but perhaps it is not as weird as all that as this method is already popular.  Just look at any number of reality TV shows such as Big Brother to see ostracic voting in action.

18. Everyone Must Vote

I recently came across an interesting paper by Heather Lardy entitled 'Is there a Right not to Vote?' in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.  It deals forensically with arguments against compulsory voting in a general sense but got me thinking about what local democracy might be like in the UK if voting in local elections was made compulsory.

Of course turnout is a big problem for local democracy in the UK.  At around 40% (when there is not a general election at the same time) it is significantly lower than national elections and also lower than in other European countries.  It doesn't help the legitimacy of local government when less than half of those eligible to vote chose to do so.

But what is the alternative?

Well,  voting could be compulsory for all local citizens, fines or even short prison sentences could follow for failure to comply.  It's an idea as ancient as the Greeks and such schemes operate today in countries such as Australia.  Is it really so difficult to embrace?  Citizens have a duty to pay tax, to serve on juries, so why not vote?

There are many ways in which concerns could be dealt with.  So, for example, you could add an 'abstain' option to the ballot, give people the option to vote 'none of the above' or even provide a blank space for people to add in their own preference. 

One idea I like is to pay people to vote.  A surcharge could be placed on the Council Tax to fund a £10 'reward' for every voter.  It would (more or less) act like a deposit scheme for Council Tax payers and redistribute a little wealth for those who are not.

One important benefit of compulsory voting is that it would improve the functioning of local politics.  Parties would need to revisit their electoral strategies and ensure that their policies appealed to all voters - not just those might be expected to vote voluntarily.  Hence politics should be more inclusive and promote a fairer society.

update: another article here but I haven't read it yet...