Compulsory voting

Quick fix or long term solution?

Four decades and nine elections later and the statistics for political engagement among the populace of this country present a bleak picture. For the eight elections which have been conducted in the present state of Pakistan, without its eastern wing, the average voter turnout has been a lowly 44.78 per cent, as gleaned from statistics gathered from IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) and 45.3 per cent according to the ECP, placing Pakistan in the lowest rungs of voter participation.

A voter turnout this low is not the most frantic nod of legitimacy a government could ask for. Compare the same with Bangladesh, which having conducted the same number of elections since its independence has managed to bring up its rate of voter participation to an average of 63.70 per cent, with a significant 85.26 per cent of registered voters coming out to vote in the last general elections held in 2008, compared to 44.58 per cent in Pakistan for the same year. The contrast is disturbing. For a democracy, the status quo must change, the voter turnout must increase to give coming government’s greater legitimacy and be held accountable by a greater number of people. Many have touted compulsory voting as the solution to our chronically low voter turnout, but is it really all that and does it have its own downsides?

Commentators cite a host of reasons for this abysmally low voter turnout. A lack of ownership of government and government decisions felt by the population at large has often been cited as instilling a sense of political apathy among Pakistanis. A people who, time and again, feel that while their vote might help people get elected to the legislature, their voices certainly do not ring loud in the same legislatures. The feeling that the ruling classes do not have the interest of the masses close to their hearts has set in among Pakistanis, spurring a sort of lazy apathy towards democracy, which tends to manifest itself through a low voter turnout.

Poll day violence too is often an important deciding factor in voter turnout. However important the vote might be, it is still not as important as life and limb.

Then of course there is the lack of female participation in the political process in Pakistan. Having been to a number of political rallies and gatherings in the past few weeks, I have noticed an almost unnerving lack of any women at such gatherings. Pakistan’s male chauvinism is on full display in the marked difference in participation among genders in the political process.

What then can be done to fix this very fundamental problem facing the budding democracy in this country? One solution on offer is the imposition of compulsory voting as is the case in a number of countries around the world. Proponents of compulsory voting often cite the high voter turnout in countries such as Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands where for all three, voter turnout is higher than 90 per cent. To apply the same to Pakistan, however, would be a failure in comparisons and more importantly, intelligence. Six out of the seven countries with compulsory voting which have voter turnouts greater than 90 per cent have a GDP per capita higher than $20,000, the seventh being Uruguay which is close to that number at $15,786. A higher GDP, correlates strongly with strong institutions, which are necessary for implementing any sort of punishment for not voting. As it is, institutions are to Pakistan what honesty is to thieves, an oxymoron.

A country where the writ of the state is shaky at best, implementing a mechanism to penalize Election Day offenders would be difficult at best. In that regard, Sindh and Punjab might be easier nuts to crack than KPK or Balochistan, both provinces which are in the grips of civil war. I would imagine trying to get the penalty out of someone in Loralai might present some minor inconveniences to the person assigned the said task.

An important question that arises from this this is that whether the state has any right in the first place to force people out of their houses on Election Day? Would it be an infringement of our right of choice for the government to force our vote out? Or does greater legitimacy offered by a greater turnout outweigh any such minor infringement of our choice to stay away from the polling booth?

From that concern stems another one. Forcing people to vote will mean bringing to the booth those people who have an absolute zero interest in politics or governance. The politically uninformed person is not a rarity, people harbour all sorts of interest and it is only fair if someone holds very little interest in the political process. Although, to be fair, for something that touches our lives in so many ways, we ought to be fairly well informed about the political process but that is still choice at the end of the day. Bad, uninformed choices are bound to be made when you bring the political zombie to vote. Who is to say that a nice bit of fiery rhetoric near Election Day won’t be the deciding factor for such a voter and if that is indeed the case, we ought to look at compulsory voting with some caution.

With regards to statistics, the world’s average voter turnout for countries with a parliamentary system of elections and which also practice compulsory voting stands at around 78 per cent, compared to an average voter turnout of 70 per cent for countries without compulsory voting. The payoff from implementing compulsory voting, on the average is quite low, around seven per cent. Instead of looking at this option which provides such a small dividend, we ought to look at and try to fix the fundamentals that result in Pakistan’s low voter turnout rather than looking for quick fixes such as compulsory voting.

Hopefully, this time around, given the charged political atmosphere, the voter turnout will increase substantially. Should that not happen, we must pause and reflect and not have a knee jerk reaction that might bring such a drastic change to our voting process.

The writer can be contacted at [email protected]. Tweet@Ahshafi