LETTER: True democracy needs no compulsion to vote
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.From Mr Edward Turnbull
Sir: Compulsory voting ("Can we really afford to grow old?", 25 September) would surely be a disreputable resort to coercion by an unpopular or discredited political system. It would also be against the political principles of those who praise the "freedom of the market" and would be entirely unlikely to endear the political "establishment" to disaffected young people.
Moreover, those who ignore any given election process or who deliberately abstain are, in themselves, an important positive factor in the resulting outcome - ie, they are simply not "non-persons" and I believe that a great offence against human rights and individuality would occur if we treated non-voters as such. Any given abstention might certainly express such perfectly legitimate sentiments as a "don't know" or a rejection of the whole system - thus, often, expressing the positive motives of scepticism or reform respectively. Any system which makes its sceptics and reformers into "outsiders" and which then has to force or corral them into participating on its own terms, and not theirs, as having failed in its very first needs which are universality and mutuality, and I do not really believe that any such self-blinkered system deserves to survive.
Yours sincerely,
Edward Turnbull
Gosforth,
Northumberland
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments