Disclaimer: The idea in this blog is not original. This is completely inspired and derived from a couple of Dan Carlin’s podcast “Common Sense”. I have provided the link to those two, if you are interested. Other podcast’s of his can be found at dancarlin.com
Should voting be made mandatory? Is it a civil duty? And if you didn't vote, are you failing in your responsibility as a citizen in making your democracy work? Really? Well, what if you are not well informed about the candidates who are contesting for your vote and what their agenda is? And what if you are not aware of current affairs and how the policies of a candidate affect your interests.
If you are well informed of all that, then probably it is a good idea to go down to the voting booth and exercise your franchise.
But if you are NOT... and if you vote for someone without understanding how their election affects your own interest or that of the constituency (as you see it), then you are probably harming yourself by voting for that candidate. Or you are probably harming your community against its interest (as you see it) by voting for a candidate of whose policies and intentions (and their impact thereof) you are not aware of.
You may be a tree hugger and you may vote for someone whose policies are not. You may be secular but you may vote for someone whose policies aren’t. Your views may be socialistic and you may be voting for someone whose economic policies are capitalistic. You may be conservative and you may be voting for someone whose ideas are liberal. And, so on and so forth.
This is a real problem in a democracy. You never know if your own vote is going to harm you or not. With the power to vote, has come to responsibility to know who you vote for. By simply voting, you do not complete your duty to the democracy. You got to know what you are voting for.
But that’s easily said that done. In today’s hectic lifestyle, it’s not that easy to understand all that your vote will bring. First of all, you don’t get the time. Even if you did, you probably don’t want to spend it on understanding politics, economics and current affairs (as irresponsible as that sounds, all of us live in our own world and our own version of ‘the world’. And we should). Even if you did, probably you don’t have sufficient knowledge and understanding to analyze the candidates. You can only trust the experts. And if you wanted to trust the experts, then there are so many. And most often than not, the experts don’t agree with each other. And to top it all, the experts are themselves biased. So, how do you judge who your vote should go to? You probably can’t. It’s probably a mixture of your own judgment, guess work, trust, track record… and of course, emotions – which usually overrides everything else. And at the end of it, your vote might still harm you.
So, if you are not sure, are you better off by not voting? Yes, I think so. But isn’t voting the foundation of a successful democracy? Yes. So, should everyone cast their vote for the success of the democracy? Yes. Then, how do you handle this double ended sword?
The answer is “None of The Above”. Every voting ballot should have an option to vote “None of The Above”. Then in that case, voting can be made mandatory. And voters can vote “None of The Above” when they are not sure. If they are certain of their judgment, then they can always vote for the candidate of their choice.
This can probably become the most transformational change in our democracies. First of all, this will certainly result in better voters’ turnaround. Most of the non-voters would run out of their most major excuse for not voting. Second of all, even the candidates who get elected would officially know that the majority did not vote for them – though they were elected by having more votes than the other candidates, they would know that the majority voted for candidate “None of The Above” (NOTA). And, if a candidate had more votes than NOTA, then we will all know that he is definitely the people’s choice. And when such candidates form the government, we will know that it is truly a government “of the people”. Then, we’ll at least know that we’ve got cover on one side of the democracy triangle – “Of the people”, “For the people” and “By the people”.
Inspirations:
