In my opinion, I feel voting should not be a thing that is made mandatory through criminal law, and the distinction that keeps coming back to my thoughts on this is the one between a crime and duty. These are two different policy policy questions that keep colliding together as if they were interchangeable.
When we look at this ideally, I think treating voting as a civic duty is not something I will accept because it sounds so unreasonable to me and maybe some of you too. I know of some countries that have made voting compulsory for their citizens, and failures to vote will result in paying some fines, not jail time or capital punishment. There's this saying I heard somewhere that when it comes to democracy, it will function better when it reflects everyone and not just the people who are zealous or motivated about it. And that is why on election day, the small turnout of the motivated ones always determines the outcome for the rest of the people.
But as soon as those who do not go out to vote are arrested or tried by criminal court, that has gone away from normal civic duty and has now become a punishment, something the state or country always fail to conduct or do in a proper way. Anyone who has gone to a polling unit to vote and seen how rough it can get sometimes, when people stay under the sun, material arrives late, they are stopped from voting by intimidation from thugs, or they decide to stay indoor because of trouble in the area will understand non voting here is rarely pure apathy. Because at first, our system has failed us. Criminalising that response, rather that rebuilding and finding a solution to the failure, punishes the wrong party.
Will the implementation allow people to turn out for political involvement? I am not sure of that. Because when it comes to forcing people to compulsorily be at the polling unit, most of them will be less concerned about who to vote for, let alone the results. That course of action can only lead to different things like resentful compliance, spoiled ballots, and people just going to the polling unit just to only obey the law while their hope keeps reducing less than before. Real and passionate involvement in politics and voting comes from the heart, when people believe that casting their votes matters. And mandating them to forcefully vote only destroys that and increases the problem.
And looking at my country's conditions, currently a lot of people don't vote, and if the government say they want to punish them, that means they will have to build another prison because most prisons are already filled up and our judiciary is stretched thin; doing that will just give more room to government critics, while those with upper hands and strong legs will quietly avoid it entirely.
What I think will actually be a solution is finding a solution to political apathy, eradicating the thugs that scares people, giving maximum security to all polling units, giving credit results that everyone will trust, making everyone's vote count, and logistics that works on time. Transmit the counting live without anyone trying to manipulate the results overnight. And trust me, this works better than forcing the people which only makes things worse.
Thank you for reading.
Images created by Gemini AI
