One against all
What exactly to do about the continued disengagement with politics and collapsing voter turnout  now almost the lowest in Western Europe?
Come the weekend, expect plenty of hand-wringing and a barrage of familiar ideas to reverse the decline that puts us well below even similar polities like New Zealand, miles down the OECD voter turnout average (23rd out of 30), but still ahead of Canada (just) and the US.
Expect just over 60%, and the usual remedies: PR to cut down on wasted votes, Australian-style compulsory voting, maybe even radical Commons reform of the kind proposed by Chris Lightfoot, demand-revealing referenda, citizenship lessons in schools, and a new role for ideology in British political debate. All interesting ideas, all with drawbacks.
But there is one I haven’t heard yet. It’s used in Russian Duma elections (I know, getting lessons in democracy from Russia isn’t usually a good idea). Electoral law in Russia requires every ballot paper to have an ‘Against All’ option at the bottom. This allows voters to express their frustration and dissatisfaction with the choice, without having to indulge in the hollow gesture of spoiling or abstaining. It treats conscience-abstainers as legitimate, like the rest of us. It even allows compulsory-voting proposals to skirt the accusation of illiberalism  an accusation Australia’s current compulsory system can’t answer.
Of course, there’s a problem. In the 2003 Duma elections that saw a massive victory for Putin-friendly United Russia, the ‘Against All’ party polled 3 million votes nationwide, even though it is illegal to campaign for ‘Against All’ unless you yourself are also a candidate. They were the 5th placed ‘party’ across Russia and even ‘won’ 3 constituencies.
Such anti-system feeling probably isn’t unique to Russia. One wonders how many votes an ‘Against All’ party would get here. More than Veritas, probably. Which is ultimately why the proposal won’t find support from politicians. The blame for low voter turnout is easily spread around. A massive ‘Against All’ vote would drop the ball directly on their doorstep.
Hmmm, the Russian idea just sounds like compulsory voting by another name to me. The decline in voting participation runs alongside the decline of participation of all kinds, with the membership of trade unions, friendly societies, charities, clubs, churches, clubs etc. all in decline. In contrast, highly individualised forms of participation, like participation in single-issue campaigns consistently breaks records. The problem is individualism; a kind of Thatcherism of the soul.
Politician say – or felt obliged to say – that the parties need to engage with The Public. I came across a novel argument that postulated the opposite: politicians’ desire to ingratiate themselves with the electorate results in them being degraded in the public eye and people are turned off the process altogether.
Because I’m not a politician, I feel free to blame the public to some extent. For intance, before the election, an ICM/Guardian poll showed a higher figure for peole claiming their MP wasn’t doing a good job than people who actually knew who their MP was! In other words, there’s a whole lot of people saying, in effect, “Dunno who my MP is – but he/she’s doing a crap job anyway”.