Leader: The right thing to do

Newsdesk • Published 6 May 2010 08:00 0 Comments

FOUR years ago the Institute for Public Policy Research suggested that making voting compulsory would be one of the answers to the nation's political apathy.

Whether the electorate would become any less disenchanted with the political establishment were they compelled by law to report to a polling station is a moot point, but most democracies would view using your vote as exercising the right of citizenship, or at the very least an act of civic responsibility.

Indeed voting became compulsory in Belgium in 1892, in Argentina in 1914 and in Australia 10 years after that.

Today if we were citizens of Singapore, Switzerland or Uruguay we would be casting our vote or facing prosecution.

Instead over the past month we've all heard from people who will not be voting because they can't be bothered, they don't understand the issues, the polling station's too far away, or is not open late/early/long enough, or politicians simply aren't interested in their problems.

It is strangely ironic that while British soldiers, including three from this area, are dying in the cause of preserving the frailest of democracies in Afghanistan, some of their countrymen and women are complacently finding excuses for not exercising that democratic right.

It does matter. It does affect your future and that of your children and your grandchildren. Politicians cannot restore the credibility of the parliamentary system unless they have your faith, however wavering.

And if a soldier asks if you voted, can you look him in the eye and say you weren't bothered?

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