compulsory voting

Tag Archive

Luxembourg: Postal voting gains more ground in Luxembourg | Luxembourg Times

Jul 23 2018
» The Voting News

A growing number of Luxembourg nationals are choosing to cast their votes by post. If at the previous elections, nearly 30.000 individuals decided to elect their representatives by post, authorities expect postal voting to gain even more ground at the upcoming national elections on 14 October. Based on current predictions, nearly 50.000 individuals are set to send their votes by mail. If the estimate turns out to be true, the figure would mark a new record for Luxembourg. Voting is compulsory in the Grand Duchy and one’s failure to exercise this right may be subject to a fine.

Full Article: Luxembourg Times - Luxembourg - Postal voting gains more ground in Luxembourg.

Australia: Senate blocks government attempt to restore compulsory plebiscite for marriage equality | The Guardian

Aug 10 2017
» The Voting News

The government’s attempt to restore the compulsory plebiscite bill has been blocked by the Senate, paving the way for a voluntary postal vote. The plebiscite was to be held on November 25 with the government offering to remove the $15m of public funds for the yes and no cases. On Wednesday morning the government attempted to restore the plebiscite bill to the Senate notice paper. Labor, the Greens and Nick Xenophon Team used their numbers in the Senate to block the attempt to revisit it, with Derryn Hinch voting to allow debate but committing to block the plebiscite. With the compulsory plebiscite rejected again, the government will now attempt to fall back on its Plan B of a voluntary postal ballot to be conducted between 12 September and 15 November.

Full Article: Senate blocks government attempt to restore compulsory plebiscite for marriage equality | Australia news | The Guardian.

Canada: Liberals say no to mandatory and online voting | CBC

Apr 7 2017
» The Voting News

The Liberal government says it will not pursue mandatory or online voting for federal elections. The Liberals had raised the ideas for consideration in their 2015 election platform and tasked the special committee on electoral reform with studying the possibilities. But MPs on the special committee were divided on the merits of mandatory voting and concerned about the security of online voting, and recommended against pursuing either.  In a formal response to the committee’s report, submitted on Monday, Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gould said the government agrees with the committee. “While Canadians feel that online voting in federal elections would have a positive effect on voter turnout, their support is contingent on assurances that online voting would not result in increased security risks,” Gould wrote. “We agree.”

Full Article: Liberals say no to mandatory and online voting - Politics - CBC News.

New York: Don’t vote? Pay a fine (if this bill passes) | Gannett

Mar 21 2017
» The Voting News

Declining to exercise your right to vote would cost you money if a long-shot bill at the state Capitol is approved. Eligible voters who don’t cast a ballot would be hit with a $10 fine under the bill, which was sponsored earlier this month by Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, D-Manhattan. The idea behind the proposal is to make voting compulsory: All eligible voters would be required to turn in a ballot, even if they don’t actually vote for anyone.The purpose of the bill, according to a memo by the sponsor, would be to boost voter-participation rates. READ THE BILL: Compulsory voting

Full Article: Don't vote? Pay a fine (if this bill passes).

Australia: Young voters driving rise in intentional informal ballots, research shows | ABC

Jun 27 2016
» The Voting News

A rise in the number of people deliberately voting informally is likely being driven by the young, many of whom feel disaffected with the mainstream political process, new research suggests. A paper by University of Adelaide researchers, soon to be published in the Australian Journal of Political Science, charted the rise of informal voting at recent elections and cross-referenced those trends with other data. Lead author, politics professor Lisa Hill, said the focus was on the proportion of voters who deliberately handed in blank or defaced ballots, as opposed to those that had made mistakes filling the papers out.

Full Article: Young voters driving rise in intentional informal ballots, research shows - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Bulgaria: The Zero-Sum Game of Bulgaria’s Election Rules | Novinite

May 3 2016
» The Voting News

Bulgarian lawmakers passed so many changes to its election laws in the last couple of weeks that protesters sounded a bit unsure which new rule to slam first. In a rush to go on holiday, they gave the thumbs up on compulsory voting, introduced restrictions to voting abroad (but dropped some of them later), rejected the creation of a “foreign” constituency representing hundreds of thousands of Bulgarian nationals living outside the country, delayed the introduction of online voting, and set a higher preference threshold for the election of mayors and “local parliament” members. They also tried to shorten the election campaign to 21, down from 30 days and to ban the announcement of any opinion poll results within the time, two moves where they backtracked. As these lines are being typed, it is not yet clear whether the version adopted after long political bargaining is final in any way, with the President possibly vetoing some texts or the Constitutional court overturning others, or both.

Full Article: The Zero-Sum Game of Bulgaria's Election Rules - Novinite.com - Sofia News Agency.

Australia: Compulsory preferential voting returns to Queensland as Parliament passes bill for more MPs | ABC

Apr 22 2016
» The Voting News

Major voting changes have been passed in Queensland, with Parliament approving four more MPs and a return to compulsory preferential voting. It will now be compulsory to number every square on the ballot box, a move which would have given Labor an extra eight seats and a majority government in last year’s election. In what was a see-saw battle for control of the legislative agenda, Labor managed to force through an amendment to a Liberal National Party (LNP) bill. The LNP’s Electoral (Improving Representation) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill to increase the number of seats from 89 to 93 was set to pass with crossbench support. But in a surprise move, Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath proposed an amendment to also include the reintroduction of compulsory preferential voting. Katter’s Australian Party and independent MPs supported the bill to number all boxes.

Full Article: Compulsory preferential voting returns to Queensland as Parliament passes bill for more MPs - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Bulgaria: MPs Adopt Set of Amendments to Electoral Code | Novinite

Apr 20 2016
» The Voting News

After sitting for more than fourteen hours on Tuesday, members of Bulgaria’s parliamentary legal affairs committee adopted at second reading a set of amendments to the Electoral Code. The amendments, which were discussed at three extraordinary sittings of the committee that lasted for over 28 hours in total, will be subject to final vote in the plenary chamber on Thursday, daily Dnevnik informs. Among the main amendments adopted by MPs is the classification of voting as a civil duty and the introduction of compulsory voting. Voters might be entitled to rewards, which will be determined by the Council of Ministers, while those not casting their ballot will be subject to penalty by being deregistered from the electoral rolls for participation in the next elections. Those deregistered will be able to be signed back on the electoral register by submitting a request to the competent authorities.

Full Article: Bulgarian MPs Adopt Set of Amendments to Electoral Code - Novinite.com - Sofia News Agency.

Bulgaria: Bulgaria takes step towards mandatory voting in elections | Reuters

Mar 11 2016
» The Voting News

Bulgaria’s parliament paved the way for the introduction of compulsory voting in elections on Thursday, passing a draft bill to amend the electoral code at its first reading. The centre-right government believes making it mandatory for Bulgarians to vote will curb electoral fraud and boost the legitimacy of the Balkan country’s political institutions. European Union member Bulgaria has had five governments in less than three years. The last national election in 2014 saw the lowest turnout in 25 years, of about 51 percent, and produced a particularly fractured parliament.

Full Article: Bulgaria takes step towards mandatory voting in elections | Daily Mail Online.

Bolivia: Electoral Tribunal Announces 6.5 Million Will Vote in Referendum | teleSUR

Jan 21 2016
» The Voting News

Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal says 6.5 million people are registered to vote in February’s national referendum. The data shows that there has been a 3 percent increase in the number of new voters since the last referendum in September 2015. It’s compulsory to vote in Bolivian elections. The referendum on Feb. 21 will ask voters whether they want to amend the constitution and abolish the two-term limit for the head of state. If it’s approved, President Evo Morales will be able to seek re-election in the next elections scheduled for 2019.

Full Article: Bolivia Announces 6.5 Million Will Vote in Referendum | News | teleSUR English.

Editorials: A Feasible Roadmap to Compulsory Voting | Nicholas Stephanopoulos/The Atlantic

Nov 3 2015
» The Voting News

Not enough people vote. It’s a perennial source of concern in American politics. There’s no shortage of reforms designed to address the problem, but one idea that seems particularly promising, at least in theory, is compulsory voting. It would produce much higher turnout for the obvious reason that it requires people to vote. It’s long been dismissed, though, as an impossible pipe dream, unlikely to ever happen in the United States. But if reformers were to start at the municipal level, they could set into motion forces that might lead to its nationwide adoption. Start with some statistics: In years with presidential elections, voter turnout peaks at just above 60 percent. In off-year elections, turnout dips to 40 percent or less. In November 2014, only 36 percent of eligible voters went to the polls—the lowest share in more than 70 years. Participation this paltry calls into question the political system’s legitimacy. It also hints that election outcomes might be quite different if more people bothered to show up.

Full Article: How Compulsory Voting Can Become a Reality in the United States - The Atlantic.

Editorials: Should Voting Be Compulsory? | William Galston & E.J. Dionne/Newsweek

Oct 2 2015
» The Voting News

When we receive a summons for jury duty, we are required to present ourselves at the court. Should we treat showing up at the polls in elections the same way? Although the idea seems vaguely un-American, it is neither unusual, nor undemocratic, nor unconstitutional. And it would ease the intense partisan polarization that weakens both our capacity for self-government and public trust in our governing institutions. It is easy to dismiss this idea as rooted in a form of coercion that is incompatible with our individualistic and often libertarian political culture. But consider Australia, whose political culture may be as similar to that of the United States as the culture of any other democracy in the world. Alarmed by a decline in voter turnout to less than 60 percent in the early 1920s, Australia adopted a law in 1924 requiring all citizens to present themselves at the polling place on Election Day. (This is often referred to as mandatory voting, although Australian voters are not required to cast marked ballots.)

Full Article: Should Voting Be Compulsory?.

Bulgaria: President makes case for national referendum | The Sofia Globe

Jul 29 2015
» The Voting News

There is no more powerful tool to increase citizens’ confidence than a referendum, Bulgarian head of state President Rossen Plevneliev told the National Assembly on July 28, making the case for a referendum on three questions on electoral reform proposed for October 25. The proposal is to hold the referendum on the three questions along with scheduled mayoral and municipal elections, the first round of which will be held on the last Sunday in October. Plevneliev has long been campaigning for a referendum on electoral reform, but his proposals were blocked by the previous parliament, at the time of the now-departed ruling axis of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and Movement for Rights and Freedoms in 2013 and 2014.

Full Article: Bulgarian President makes case for national referendum | The Sofia Globe.

Editorials: Why Americans should vote less often | Matt Bai/The Washington Post

Jun 12 2015
» The Voting News

The United States is notorious for having one of the lowest voter participation rates in the industrialized democratic world, and there is no shortage of proposals for increasing it. President Obama recently floated the idea of compulsory voting. Hillary Clinton, running to succeed him, has a plan for national automatic voter registration and expanded early voting. To the extent that Democrats are targeting actual discrimination against African Americans and other minorities, more power to them, and shame on those Republicans who would raise obstacles to turnout in a purported fight against phantom fraud. As for substantially increasing overall participation rates, however, there’s only so much that can be achieved through measures like those Obama and Clinton recommend. If we really wanted people to vote more, we would have to ask them to vote less. One of political science’s better-established findings is that “the frequency of elections has a strongly negative influence on turnout,” as Arend Lijphart of the University of California at San Diego put it in a 1997 article.

Full Article: Why Americans should vote less often - The Washington Post.

Bulgaria: President eyes referendum on voting rules to build trust | Reuters

Jun 5 2015
» The Voting News

Bulgaria’s president on Wednesday proposed a referendum on voting rules to try to restore public trust in the Balkan country’s politicians after years of instability and scandals. The referendum, which if approved would be held alongside local elections in late October, would ask voters to choose whether they want to elect some lawmakers directly rather than from party lists, whether to make voting compulsory and whether to allow electronic voting. Voter frustration, especially with rampant corruption and organised crime, erupted in months of street protests in 2013. The country has had five governments in two years, and the last election, held in October, drew the lowest turnout in 25 years and a particularly fractured parliament. A recent poll by Gallup International showed a small improvement in trust in public institutions since the centre-right GERB government took office. Nevertheless, more than two-thirds of respondents said they do not trust parliament.

Full Article: Bulgaria eyes referendum on voting rules to build trust | Daily Mail Online.

National: Mandatory Voting? Obama Says It Would Be ‘Transformative’ | Associated Press

Mar 19 2015
» The Voting News

They say the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes. President Barack Obama wants to add one more: voting. Obama floated the idea of mandatory voting in the U.S. while speaking to a civic group in Cleveland on Wednesday. Asked about the corrosive influence of money in U.S. elections, Obama digressed into the related topic of voting rights and said the U.S. should be making it easier — not harder— for people to vote. Just ask Australia, where citizens have no choice but to vote, the president said. “If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country,” Obama said, calling it potentially transformative. Not only that, Obama said, but universal voting would “counteract money more than anything.”

Full Article: Mandatory Voting? Obama Says It Would Be 'Transformative' - ABC News.

Bulgaria: President resumes campaign for referendum on electoral system | The Sofia Globe

Feb 25 2015
» The Voting News

Bulgarian President Rossen Plevneliev is to send Parliament a request for the holding of a referendum on the country’s electoral system – formally resuming a campaign that was defeated in the previous parliament. Plevneliev tabled a request in the now-departed 42nd National Assembly for a referendum on issues including compulsory voting, electronic voting and a majoritarian element to the electoral system, but this was blocked by the then-ruling axis of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and Movement for Rights and Freedoms. In an interview published by mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa, Plevneliev was reported to have confirmed that his proposal was similar to the one he had made previously, to hold the referendum simultaneously with scheduled elections – in the case of 2015, the municipal elections to be held in the autumn.

Full Article: Bulgarian President resumes campaign for referendum on electoral system | The Sofia Globe.

United Kingdom: MP Chris Ruane examines question of compulsory voting | BBC

Feb 6 2015
» The Voting News

It could be time to consider forcing people to vote because more than 20 million do not take part in elections, a Welsh MP has said. Labour Vale of Clwyd MP Chris Ruane is a member of a Commons committee whose members were split on the question of forcing people to vote. A report published on Thursday calls for a consultation on the issue after May’s general election. The UK government said it had no plans to introduce compulsory voting. The report, by the Commons’ Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, was published to coincide with national voter registration day.

Full Article: BBC News - MP Chris Ruane examines question of compulsory voting.

Editorials: Compulsory voting, much like democracy, beats the alternatives | Lisa Hill/The Conversation

Jan 29 2015
» The Voting News

Queenslanders will soon head to the voting booths to either oust or re-elect the Newman government and no doubt some will be wondering why. “Why must I vote or be fined? Why must I be forced to choose who leads my society when I’d rather save myself the trip and stay home?” Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn criticised Australia’s compulsory voting laws after the Victorian state election in November. He said: To force people to vote who don’t want to be there, who don’t know what they are doing, is frankly quite ludicrous. While, at first glance, Finn’s claims might ring true, many experts consider Australia’s electoral system to be one of the finest in the world. The majority of Australians apparently share this view: 70% approve of compulsory voting. For decades, compulsory voting has done what it was supposed to do: maintain high and socially even turnout levels that are the envy of the industrialised voluntary-voting world. Prior to its introduction at the federal level in 1924, turnout was hovering in the 50–60% range (of registered voters). Since then, it has remained steady for many decades at around 93%.

Full Article: Compulsory voting, much like democracy, beats the alternatives.

Editorials: Mandatory Voting, Killing Electoral College Would Diversify Electorate | Stephen Wolf/The New Republic

Dec 26 2014
» The Voting News

The demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, over white police officer Darren Wilson’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, brought attention to a curious disparity. While two-thirds of the St. Louis suburb was black, its local government was almost entirely white. One culprit was simple: voter turnout. In the preceding local election, 6 percent of black voters cast ballots, compared to 17 percent of white voters, narrowly yielding a white-majority electorate. The resulting racial disparities on the city council were as predictable as they were dire. Two generations after the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other Great Society reforms, America’s electoral system still suffers from the legacy of Jim Crow: Our political officials and public policies don’t represent the diversity and interests of the country’s large and growing share of non-white citizens. Improving voter turnout is the most obvious solution to this problem, but doing so will require uncharacteristic boldness from our politicians. One of the biggest structural factors keeping turnout low is that the majority of cities nationwide—Ferguson included—hold elections at times that don’t coincide with federal or state elections. Since non-white voters skip non-presidential elections in higher numbers than white voters, moving local and state elections to the quadrennial presidential cycle would painlessly, efficiently increase turnout and produce a more representative electorate across the ballot. As a bonus, holding fewer elections would save money.

Full Article: Mandatory Voting, Killing Electoral College Would Diversify Electorate | The New Republic.