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Many will cite the positives of the Australian experience. My roommate, who is Australian, tells me all about the sense of community on voting days where you see your neighbours in line, and there are bake sales at polling locations, and everyone feels more engaged in the process because they have a stake in it by being forced to vote. And that’s great. But if you look a little closer into the other metrics of the health of Australian politics, it shows the same kind of disconnect that we see here in Canada. The clearest example is political party membership, which is a means by which the grassroots public has a direct engagement with the political process. A decade ago, those membership rates in Australia were about as low as they are in Canada – around one or two per cent of the population – and it has been in free-fall since.

The deeper problem, whether in Australia or Canada, is that the voting public remains ignorant of the broader process, and the way in which the system is designed. We’re taught almost nothing about our democracy other than that we cast ballots every few years, and that in Parliament, bills go through three readings before the Senate gives it a pass and the Governor General gives royal assent. We’re given so little else when it comes to civic education in this country that it’s no wonder that people feel so disengaged from the process and don’t turn out on voting day.

How many people are taught about the importance of political party membership? About the candidate nomination process? About grassroots policy engagement and biennial policy conventions? Vanishingly few, I would say. We’re taught about the importance of the vote, but not about the fact that our system demands bottom-up input, not only for ideas but for accountability. In the absence of that input, we have seen the weight shift toward top-down control by leaders’ offices, because there aren’t enough members at the bottom of the system pushing back. Mandatory voting won’t change that. In fact, it will make it worse because these leaders will loudly proclaim the weight of their democratic mandates, and continue their heavy-handed rule.