Henry Riley 7am - 10am
Darren Adam Uses Football To Argue Against Compulsory Voting
11 May 2017, 15:14
It is sometimes suggested that if people were forced to vote we’d get more representative governments. Darren says that far from improving things, such a move would make things worse.
Quite simple, Darren says, “compulsory voting would lead to the wasting of votes.”
He uses a football analogy to explain why this would be the case.
“The analogy I always use is that if someone said to me ‘you have to be interested in football, you have to come along, Darren, to a football game and watch it for 90 minutes, otherwise I’ll fine you £100.’ You could drag me along but you couldn’t make me care.
"You couldn’t make me give a damn about what was happening on this pitch.”
Without that basic interest and engagement with the issues and the process of voting, Darren says the democratic process doesn’t work.
“Why should someone who’s been dragged along, on pain of a fine, have the same voice, or rather why should their disinterested, uninterested, uninformed voice, have the same electoral heft or weight as mine or yours?
“That’s my problem with compulsory voting.”