"You can send me to college, but you cannot make me think."

Sarfraz Manzoor, columnist for The Guardian, cites the above (his favourite T-shirt slogan) in response to the Australian policy of compulsory voting.

I used to feel the Australians had the right idea when they made voting compulsory. Now I am convinced that in the end all the media and the parties can do is put the facts, issues and information out there - what you cannot do is make people think.

With the election date confirmed, the media (apologies for the totally non-Saidian use of the generic category) has focussed its attention on voter apathy. Only 59% of those eligible to vote did so last time round.

Manzoor distinguishes the apathetic from the strategic non-voters:

For those voters who are resigned to an inevitable Labour victory, or who want to give Tony Blair a kicking but cannot bring themselves to vote Liberal Democrat, or who find all three parties unpalatable, not voting is a wholly understandable and justified action...For them, withdrawing from the electoral process does not imply that they do not care about politics; instead they are choosing to express their priorities and concerns in other ways. These voters may decide that there are more effective ways to get their voice heard than through the ballot box: they might join a pressure group, get involved in local politics or, if they really want to make a difference, watch Jamie's School Dinners.

Timothy Garton-Ash in the same paper, goes further in suggesting that it's not due to the palatability of the main parties' policies (or lack thereof) but the actual lack of any significant difference between them:

In this post-ideological age, mainstream politics is not about systemic alternatives. It's about minor variations in the management of democratic capitalism - a system which, for the time being at least, faces no major ideological challenge in Europe. Unlike, let us remind ourselves, for most of the 20th century.

The voters' choice is now more like that of shareholders (or is it stakeholders?) deciding which of two or three competing management teams seems more competent to run the company. Or, to adjust the metaphor slightly, it's about management teams pragmatically and opportunistically assembling rainbow coalitions of voters, by calculated appeals to specific interest groups, generations and so on.

As for Sarfraz Manzoor's other group of voters,

...there is another section of apathetic voters - the ones who are just not interested, and not interested in becoming interested. It's this group who the politicians and the media are most desperate to reach. The argument is that these non-voters reflect the extent of public disenchantment with politicians and politics. The media and politicians, it is argued, need to do more to help connect politics with people's experiences.

All of which brings us neatly to an analysis of liberal western democracy by none other than Winston Churchill:

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

Or in Sarfraz Manzoor's dystopian view:

For those not bothering to vote, meanwhile, and who are dreading the saturation media coverage because they yearn for an election that has charismatic candidates, where their votes can make a real difference and which genuinely speaks to their hopes and fears, they can always look forward to this: three weeks after election day sees the return of Big Brother.

Read Sarfraz Manzoor's article here.
Read Timothy Garton-Ash's article here.