Voting.
Archaic, problematic, time-consuming and old; those are the complaints about our system for electing our representatives to government, and it may be all of those things. There are upgrades evident or on trial in many different jurisdictions around the globe, and in our digital age, those fixes are appealing. The long lines at polling stations, the identity checking, the signatures, the instructions, the number of people involved: all of those things can be frustrating and may account for poor voter turnout, a percentage figure that seems to worsen with the significance of the level of government involved. The improvements suggested have for the most part been some form of at-home voting on cell phone or of button pressing at a virtual polling station. As efficient as those systems may appear, they lack the one component that makes a democracy work — community.
We need to see our neighbours at voting time, and even if on election day we can’t proselytize for a particular candidate, we want to know that we as a collective voice are saying how we choose to be governed for the next period of that governance. It can be speeded up perhaps with the use of voting machines, an electronic scanner to read our bubble sheet ballot, fingerprint or retina scanners to confirm identity, but the community polling station in school gym or recreation centre, even with lineups out the door, even in rain or snow, fulfils a function unavailable to stay-at-home cellular data entry. We see one another. We physically confirm the process as visible and participatory. The people checking off our names and managing the ballots are our neighbours.
There may be fraud behind the scenes where digital records can be tampered with and we do need to eliminate that, although the test of the fraud possibility was tested as rigorously as it could be in the 2020 US election and even the possibility let alone the proven incidence was so low as to be almost non- existent. We should not do away with the involvement of people we know. It is the voting day equivalent of marching in the demonstration or parade rather than watching from the sidewalk. It is a time for all of us to be in our own local pageant.
The outcome of the 2016 presidential election in the US was influenced by Russia. Politicians in Canada had their personal data infiltrated and the extent of that infiltration and the uncovering of it is ongoing. That much has been made clear. The possibility for simple computational error with voting machines has also been demonstrated. Those issues can and must be addressed. Spot checking of paper copies against electronic totals will deal with most; the swaying of public sentiment by social media hackers from other nations or political allegiance is more difficult both to detect and to combat, but it can be discovered and exposed. What often goes undetected and unexplained are the reasons for not voting.
Some countries require all citizens of age to cast a vote, and fines are levied on those who fail to discharge this civic obligation. In nations with low literacy rates, the ballot contains pictures or party logos and voters press a finger into an ink pad and make their mark on the icon of their choice. We have seen citizens in Chiclayo, Peru coming out of a voting station proudly holding up an ink-stained finger to display their participation. The presence of police with machine guns on shoulders was a bit unnerving at first until we saw them holding ice cream cones in a free hand. What could possibly threaten the democratic process if law enforcement had ice cream? But there are some factors, or excuses, that deter voters from doing their civic duty.
In Australia, the fines are too low to act as deterrent and one can be excused from the process fairly easily. $20 is the current amount and the merits of each excuse will be considered by the district electoral returning officer. Friends in Oz who would like to see the penalties increased, nevertheless noted that excuses for not voting are easy to obtain and range from illness to business exigencies.
The beliefs that "My one vote won't make any difference" or "None of the candidates has anything to offer" or "I don't care about this level of government" all presuppose the ineffectiveness of an individual, the impotence of the solitary vote. And it's true. When five million people cast a vote, the individual ballot has a miniscule influence. If one has so little information about a candidate or the party platform represented by that candidate, the vote really seems to be a throwaway; however, the process is not.
There is something about the activity of entering a polling station and confirming your identity and being in the presence of the hospitable but serious demeanor of electoral workers that brings out the best in us. Even if it may be simply deciding to vote for a name associated with a party that has some positive recollection for the voter, it is a start. All the serious lectures delivered by serious people are not as significant in the motivation of an electorate as that personal realization of participation in a process bigger that oneself. There will be a next time. And a next. And our neighbours will be there too.