Last week, Andy Burnham became Labour leader and thus Prime Minister. Labour hope that his leadership will reverse the party’s political misfortunes and poor polling under Keir Starmer, while many hope that his new policy priorities and governing style would bring about vital change. Electoral reform advocates hope that such change will include Proportional Representation, given his past and recent vocal support for it and the proposal of an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill calling for a National Commission on Electoral Reform. However, the latest speculated change, as reported by several outcomes, may come in the form of compulsory voting.
Compulsory voting, otherwise known as universal civic duty or mandatory voting, is the requirement that all registered voters must participate in elections. At present, twenty-one countries have compulsory laws, from free multiparty democracies such as Australia to the one-party dictatorship of North Korea. It may or may not be enforced, with potential penalties (outside the DPRK) including fines, loss of the right to vote, the denial of licenses or passports, or nothing. Registered voters may be exempted because of age, illiteracy, illness, disability, religious objection, occupation, housing status or force majeure (circumstances beyond personal control).
The proposed introduction of compulsory voting under Burnham is disconcerting due to the actions of past Labour Prime Ministers, notably Tony Blair and Starmer himself. They endorsed PR while in opposition, whether during their leadership campaigns or as part of their party’s policy platform. However, once they got into power with huge majorities granted to them by First Past the Post, they either failed to deliver on it citing other priorities or launched make-work activity such as the Jenkins Commission to give the impression that change was coming.
I have previously pleaded a case for why the Liberal Democrats should consider supporting UCDV. In theory, it would help to increase voter turnout and safeguard against voter suppression. While this did garner some criticism from fellow members as being illiberal in principle, it was made with reference to the wider framework of Liberal Democrat policy. Were UCDV to be implemented, it would need to be preceded by other reforms such as PR and automatic voter registration. Additionally, to make UCDV as accommodating as possible, it would need to incur minimal penalties such as a £20.00 fine (reminiscent of Australia’s system), provide understandable exemptions from voting and allow voters the opportunity to express discontentment through spoilt ballots or a None of the Above option.
There is the risk that the implementation of compulsory voting under Burnham will stall the momentum behind the implementation of PR, either papering over or worsening the cracks in our democracy. The domination of two parties, an unresponsive political system, low turnout and a highly polarising political culture is rooted in the FPTP system. With instability within both Conservative and Labour majority governments dispelling the argument that it leads to strong and stable government, voters are increasingly supporting other parties despite the resultant distortion of election outcomes or have decided not to vote. If only compulsory voting were to be implemented, FPTP would continue to distort election results, even more so as discontented voters spoil ballots or back joke or disruptor parties in lieu of not voting. A lack of access accommodation for voters would constitute a form of entrapment of non-voters, while deregistration to avoid voting would still constitute voter suppression.
The possible implementation of compulsory voting by the Burnham Government is, for now, speculative. He may well stand apart from his predecessors and implement PR, or he may follow the same path of inaction. Regardless, we Liberal Democrats should stress that PR is the most effective means of remedying the ills facing our democracy and that compulsory voting under the current system is a poor substitute.
* Samuel James Jackson is the Chair of the Policy Committee of the Yorkshire and the Humber Liberal Democrats and had served as the Liberal Democratic candidate in Halifax during the 2024 general election.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
A vanished island in the Trent near Nottingham
Jeffrey Archer's 'First Among Equals', with Shane Whaley (part 1)
Getting people off the streets is the easy bit, keeping them in their accommodation is much harder
Tory fantasy on net zero
David Allen
Pawel Urbanski
Jana
Peter Davies
David Raw
18 Comments
In a Democratic Liberal society, people should be free from any degree of compulsion in regards to that Democratic process itself.
An awful proposal.
I am opposed to compulsary voting.
There are voters who do not know much about politics and do not know who to vote for. Forcing them to vote means that they will be making an uninformed vote. In addition, they may resent being forced to vote, and decide that when they do vote it will be out of revenge, for an extremist.
I would obviously prefer it if people did take an interest in how the country is governed. However the onus is on us to explain ourselves better rather than try to impose our values on everyone else. In a democracy we all have the right to choose to be ignorant.
I used to be opposed to compulsory voting on liberal grounds, but I’ve totally changed my mind. Declining turnouts have led to the rise of the far right and even when canvassing you see far too many sheepish grins from people who confess they “don’t know anything about politics” as if they were being asked about gardening or the football.
I’d make it compulsory for every election, right down to parish council by-elections.
I am persuaded that compulsory voting would have resulted in a Remain vote in 2016 (“lazy” Remainers who thought the result was in the bag not being as motivated as the Brexiteers).
Australians are no less free for having compulsory voting and large majorities across the political spectrum in that country support it. It forces you to be partial, to take an interest.
I would make the fine for abstaining £250 pounds or 10% of someone’s monthly salary, whichever is greater. It needs to be a crime society disapproves of.
Don’t want to vote? Religious objections? Spoil your ballot paper. Cast a blank vote. Write rude words on your postal vote (spare me the None of the Above silliness, this isn’t a Junior Common Room election).
It is clear that – for voters confused by the political system or unable to choose (for whatever reason) between the options presented to them, there must be a “None of the above” option at the end of every ballot paper, and this becomes essential if a compulsory system (as in Australia) is adopted.
Howevr, a major concern, if proportional representation is brought in, is that it must provide voters with the right to choose between candidates who stand under the same party banner. This is why Liberals, and now Liberal Democrats, have always advocated the STV system as being the only fair model. What is most dangerous is the system which Labour brought in recently for Wales, which allows each party to regulate which candidates stand under their name. This ensures that the party hierarchies retain full control of the nomination procedures (and thus demand loyalty to the whip system) and retain the “old crony” list-making process.
@ Rif Winfield – while I am a unwavering supporter of STV, the idea that it allows people to choose between candidates of the same party is a bit over egged. In theory you can choose between thatcherite or wet, starmerite or Corbynite, in reality not so much.
With a typical 5 member seat, you might expect the result to be 1 Con, 1 Ref, 2 Labour, 1 Green or Lib Dem, with the 2nd Lbaour being elected on transfers from the greens/lib dems. Having ten parties: Lab, Con, Lib Dem, Green, Ref, Restore, SNP, Ind, Your Party, Others means up to 50 candidates to list in order of preference, in Ireland the parties run one candidate for each seat they expect to win plus 1 more, so control remains very much with the parties.
@Ynys Mon Man
“Declining turnouts have led to the rise of the far right”
Can you prove that it is declining turnouts which have led to the rise of the far right and that the main factor is not some other issue?
“and even when canvassing you see far too many sheepish grins from people who confess they “don’t know anything about politics” as if they were being asked about gardening or the football.”
So what do you say to such a person who tells you that? Or don’t you ask them about it?
Are people sufficienctly educated about politics?
I write here as someone who wonders if an appropriate response to someone who tells you they don’t vote might be something like “If you don’t vote perhaps you get the kind of government you deserve”
You can’t force people to vote unless you stand over them in the voting booth and hold the pencil for them. You might be able to force people to turn up at the polling station.
If there is a “non- of the above” option, what do you do if that option has a plurality or – worse an absolute majority.
I think that outcome would be extremely destabilising and should be avoided by not having it available on the ballot paper.
Nonconformistradical 30th Jul ’26 – 9:07am…I write here as someone who wonders if an appropriate response to someone who tells you they don’t vote might be something like “If you don’t vote perhaps you get the kind of government you deserve”..
When anyone moans about an elected government and says that’s why they don’t bother voting, I just say, “It’s like not buying a lottery ticket and then complaining that you didn’t win!”
I was delivering leaflets the other day, on a housing association estate. A group outside their house : mums on sofa, dads & kids kickinag a ball about. If I encounter a resident outside, I always ask “May I leave a leaflet?”. The response was a quite friendly “No, thanks, I can’t be bothered with politics any more”. So I said “The trouble is, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.” And I went on to the next letterbox.
An alternative to compulsory voting which would I believe achieve the same effect of increasing turnout would be to reward people for voting. There are various ways of doing this but to take a simple example if everyone who voted was given a £20 voucher towards their council tax the vast majority of people would turn out to vote.
Before anyone says this would be very expensive the answer is it wouldn’t cost the government or the voting public anything since the government would be taking an extra £20 off everyone in taxation and then returning it back to them after they voted.
The only people who would lose out would be the (probably very small number) who still refuse to vote. Personally, I don’t care about upsetting a few non-voters. I mean, what are they going to do about it?
The Authoritarian wants to make as many things as possible either Compulsory or Forbidden and Liberals want the opposite.
The idea of compulsory Voting isn’t just Authoritarian, it also misses the point. The problem is people who don’t want to Think about Politics, we can’t make Thinking Compulsory, we can’t force people to care or to believe that things can change & that they can change them.
There are lots of useful things we can do to increase Voter Turnout, more Publicity would be a good start.
The turnout in the Scottish independence referendum was 85% – people vote when they believe the result could make a difference to their lives and don’t vote when they believe their vote is unlikely to make a difference.
Rather than making voting compulsory, we need to make democracy more attractive and more representative, and more valued. Rather than reward the voters, I suggest that we reward those that stand up as candidates. If every losing candidate that achieves at least 5% of the vote received £1 a vote as compensation, we might get a broader range of candidates standing, more debate ahead of elections and more engagement in politics at all levels.
The liberal in me is instinctively against making voting compulsory.
Too many people have good reason to feel that voting is pointless, because their vote won’t count anyway, or the outcome of the election won’t make an iota of difference to their lives.
Low turnouts are a failure of politics, not voters. Fix politics so that more people actually want to vote.
I was against compulsory voting until a few decades back when I saw in my then ward the age & assumed income cohorts of those currently voting. If we want those who are currently not present to be present we have to compel them.
Agreed with a lot of the above, “compulsory voting” is just a way to mask the symptom that there’s not much in our current democracy that gets people excited to vote in the first place.
@expats
Ah, but remember the other half of that rhetorical trap – if you voted, you accepted the system, and you can’t complain about the outcome because “your side lost, get over it” or “serves you right for voting for them”. The point is that the other person doesn’t care about your complaints, the voting bit is irrelevant.
We should focus on increasing voter registration rather than compulsory votoing. There is a case for compulsory voter registration though it could be used as a tool for managing migration. Perhaps it would help identify illegal immigrants if politically acceptable.