On Voting (in Representative Democracy)

Questions aside regarding preferability of direct democracy rather than the liberal representative democracy currently institutionalized, let us firstly canvas the virtue of compulsory/mandatory voting:

Voting is a civic duty and should be mandatory and encouraged. The adult individuals who make up the mature body-politic have a responsibility to elect the most competent officials and representatives of the state (state elections) and country (federal or national elections) one resides in. Just like taxation is a duty enforced justly, so is voting.

Singer has good arguments for compulsory voting. These are that compulsory voting ensures that the majority of the populace has some say in the future direction of a country’s politics; and that it establishes a culture of voting where it is seen more as an important civic duty and selects for greater political engagement. People are more likely to talk about political issues and concerns if required to vote.

Indeed, it is a pressing issue that more constituents in electorates need to become better politically engaged.

A problem with liberal representative democracy, in Australia and in the First World, is navigating ‘the two-party system (or “the two-party dictatorship” to give the hyperbole) or political duopoly. This duopoly connives to rig the electoral process in favour of their own re-election (whether nominally in power or as opposition wherein centre right and centre left switch between being in power or as the opposition party):

Regarding Australia’s two-party system, the “[e]lectoral system…encourages the bipolarity of the system. The use of a majoritarian form of voting method, combined with single-member electorates makes it difficult for challenger parties whose support base is not geographically concentrated, to garner sufficient support to win seats in the lower house” (Miraglotta, Errington, and Barry, 2010, p. 200).

Due to the corporate political lobbying rife in liberal capitalist representative democracy, the vast majority of the populace’s needs become secondary to the wants of large corporations, leading to a form of corporatism – special treatment and favouritism for large corporations, in the forms of subsidies and commercial contracts.

The mainstream corporate media is also complicit in ‘manufacturing consent’ (Chomsky). Manufacturing consent operates in a clandestine fashion in public relations promoting war and imperialism. It does this through appealing to perverse forms of patriotism and other insidious socio-politico phenomena such as jingoism, xenophobia and bigotry. In addition, it manufactures consent for pro-capitalist ideologies, generally.

To utilize the extant liberal representative democracy, we need a mass democratic socialist party in each country. This is needed to coordinate political agitations. These agitations must be against exploitation, against war, and against the impending climate catastrophe. It must have a very sophisticated political template and program to transition as smoothly as possible from regulated capitalism to ultimately an anarcho lib-com society (with all the in-between stages) engendering a radically different political socialization of its subjects. This is to realise the latent power and importance of suffrage (- the vote). Through party organizing and grass-roots activism, and engaged scholarship, reconciling gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ethics, socio-economic class consciousness will allow us to become masters of a sophisticated politics, improving voting expedience – making the vote count.