If Canada’s democracy is indeed broken, as Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne suggest, would mandatory voting help fix it?

Frans Hoogeveen

Maybe if instead of forced voting we can have forced truth from the politicians. Maybe if those bums carried out what they promised and not take away with one hand to give to their own other hand we would feel better about the "elected people". What would be fair is if we the voters could sue the liars for misleading the public for their own profit. This would make people feel like their vote was acknowledged as a contract with the politician. The main reason for the low turnout is the low level politicians have sunk to.

Freedom

I think people don't vote in Canada and the States, in high numbers, because in the grand scheme of history, we have it VERY good. People are very generally, happy. People that whine about democracy being broken, want to see something change and it isn't happening no matter how much they stamp their feet. So they get mad at people for not coming out.

To put it another way, I will paraphrase Jon Stewart. "If you want to raise voter turnout, institute the draft."

In other words, when it means something to people they will vote.

Andre Doucet

Mandatory voting will not solve the problem.

We need to educate the people of why it's important to say how they feel about our politicians and their ideas. Start at the high school level and teach them that their future depends on what your government is willing to do for you.

Maureen Patterson

I also believed that in a democracy the will of the majority would be the rule. Sadly this does not seem to be the case. I think that mandatory voting would be a huge mistake. People need to think, take an interest, be responsible, have pride in their country, and those qualities should be reflected in their vote. A lot of people don't want, or have the courage, to be responsible for anything so how could their vote enrich our country.

westcoaster

Instead of forcing a person to vote, intice them instead with lets say a gift card of 100 dollars off on their gst, pst or hst and even maybe a smaller amount off property taxes for local elections. Everyone gets a card and it is loaded at the polling station after you vote. Me thinks this might be a way to get people into the voting booths and give us back some of our tax money.

Barber

If voting is manditory, I suspect that more people will take an interest in learning what the parties and policies are about. However I would really like to turn the whole process upside down – I would vote in my local administration. Those that are elected would then vote in a provincial election and the provincial legislators would select the national govenors. It would be much like shopping – I decide which store I will shop at, they decide which distributor they purchase from and the distributors decide which manufacturer they will buy from .
Each level is best able to choose who they will deal with.

Mr. Canada

Forced voting will not fix the problems in Parliament, it will probably make things worse because of people voting who know little of the candidates/issues. Not to mention, it could be argued that such a law violates section 3 of the Charter.

http://MySpace.com/ElectroPig1 ElectroPig™ Von FökkenGrüüven

“Mandatory voting” is good in theory, but it neglects to even consider the REAL problem with voting. I mean, the problem outside of having a new vote every couple months, of course. That problem is the abject ignorance of the vast majority of Canadian voters.

Canadians are not given enough time to examine our alternatives before being railroaded into our cubcles to mark our X’s in the appropriate location. Most people don’t bother following politics any time other than during the few weeks we are allowed to even know who will be running, so when the time comes, there is a great deal of “smack talking” at the coffee shops and bars, but it all amounts to a skimming of issues which really have nothing important behind them, and the see-saw voting mentality continues unabated.

Most Canadians still believe that the Canadian dollar is backed by gold, even though ALL of our gold reserves have been sold off.

Most Canadians believe that “the drug war” makes sense, even though there are literally only a few drugs which are under modern-day prohibition statutes…and then, only because they are not patentable and disgustingly profitable for major corporations.

Most Canadians believe that we have a need to worry about our energy future, even though 1,000,000% of our energy needs can be easily met with nothing more than solar panels and solar furnaces, and that all of the technologies exist within Canada, as do their manufacturing facilities. We do NOT have to go to any other country for electric power generation, nor have we for several decades. Yet we do.

PREDICTION: If, as assumed, we are about to embark on yet another federal election, I can almost guarantee that the uninformed voters will once again elect one of the three failing parties, and as a nation, we will genuinely be surprised when things keep getting worse.

Forcing the willfully ignorant to vote is like giving crayons to Stevie Wonder…sure he’s going to make his mark, but does anyone honestly expect Leonardo to roll over in his grave at the results?

http://www.andresperspective.blog.com Andre Mollon

the trouble with this question is that it is a two part question what if one feels democracy is broken but does not
believe mandatory voting will fix the problem. If people choose not to vote that's their problem, or maybe people
don't vote cause they don't know the candidates or issues cause they either don't have time or don't care to follow
politics and so they feel it is best to leave the voting to those who do know. What would they do if they made voting
mandatory jail everyone who doesn't vote the jails would get over crowded. Perhaps a transferable ballot and a triple
E senate would get more people out to vote. We need to change the way candidates can raise money by either
banning corporate and union donations or limiting campaign donations so no one person has too much influence.
Maybe public funding of parties so the playing field is leveled and one company or group of companies or industry
do not have too much influence would fix our system. As for proportional representation, or first past the post,
or run off elections like they have in France no system is perfect

http://intensedebate.com/people/NL_Expatriate NL_Expatriate

I would rather go to jail than vote for a national Tyranny of the majority pop party due to our systemically flawed per capita Colonialist democracy.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Deanfro Deanfro

while mandatory voting is not going to fix our democratic issues, it will have a byproduct in that more voters will become informed. Mandatory voting has been in place in Australian for quite some time, and it is time it came to Canada.

Graeme

Democracy is over- rated and some middle ground between the Asian and western models is going to have to be found. Too many uneducated members of society to leave things entirely to the traditional one person one vote system

Frank E. Pronk

To qualify as a democracy, a country needs free elections with reasonably PROPORTIONAL representation. Our Canadian democracy is not broken, it is a dream.

Citizen

Abolish the monarchy nationally and provincially, because it is NOT democratic.

lily

Maybe not mandatory voting, but impose a fine to those who do not vote (Australia does this).