Forcing Ourselves to Vote

Editor’s Note: Sometimes events overtake our most careful editorial plans. In mid October, Calgary stunned the country by electing Canada’s first Muslim mayor, Naheed Nenshi, and voter turnout was an impressive 53 percent, up from a lacklustre 33 percent in 2007. Nevertheless, the issues surrounding compulsory voting remain pressing, so we press on.

Voting in elections, most of us would agree, is the absolute basis of democracy, the sine qua non of our form of government. Why, then, did only 59.1 percent of us vote in the last federal election in 2008?

Why did only 40.6 percent of eligible Albertans vote in their last provincial election? And don’t even ask about municipal elections, where a turnout in the low 20 percent range is not uncommon.

Other countries—30 across the globe—have made voting a compulsory act for their citizens, although only 17 of them...