“At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper.” This was Winston Churchill’s assessment. But what if the little man (or woman) is no longer walking into the polling booth? What happens to democracy then?
The third reading of the Representation of the People Bill, which would lower the voting age to 16 and tighten campaign finance rules, has been postponed until after parliament’s summer recess. This has prompted speculation that Andy Burnham might want to push the legislation further. Top of the amendment list is a call for a national commission on electoral reform, which has nearly a third of MPs signed up. Less popular but more intriguing are two amendments from the Labour MPs Antonia Bance and Bell Ribeiro-Addy on introducing a “compulsory duty to vote”.
While around 20 countries have some form of compulsory voting, proponents point to one in particular: Australia. Having introduced the rule in 1924, Australia now enjoys turnout rates of 90 per cent. In contrast, turnout for the 2024 UK general election was below 60 per cent – which the Institute for Public Policy Research estimates falls to 53 per cent when people who are eligible to vote but not registered are included.
You might ask: so what? The right to vote contains within it the right not to vote. Which is true to a point, except that the people choosing not to exercise their democratic rights are not distributed evenly across the population. According to the Constitutional Society’s 2025 report Universal Suffrage?, turnout in 2024 was significantly higher among voters who were white (by 13 percentage points), wealthy (22), older (34) and outright homeowners (36), compared with their ethnic minority, poor, younger and renting counterparts. The little man isn’t voting; the big man is.
This matters because politicians respond to incentives. Decisions are rarely made in the interests of people who don’t vote. That in turn has an impact on public faith in the democratic process. As the Universal Suffrage? report says, “Low and unequal turnout can no longer be seen as merely a symptom of democratic malaise, but must now be understood as a contributing factor – one that warps the incentives of the political class, and contributes to skewed, inequitable and ineffectual policymaking… undermining political trust.”
This is a particular issue on the left, because it’s the left that loses out when higher numbers of voters stay home, while progressive agendas require a higher turnout. (The Australian budget in May introduced tax changes to make property less attractive to investors and to cool the housing market – the kind of policy that only flies politically if wealthy homeowners don’t dominate the electorate.) But even some on the right accept the arguments for compulsory voting, including the former Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who recently argued it “disincentivises politicians from speaking to a narrow sector of the population”. More generally, anyone invested in the concept of democracy should care about increasing participation, wherever they sit on the spectrum. Politicians get their mandates from voters, and the strength of that mandate disintegrates if half the population zones out. Low-trust, low-engagement societies are not healthy democracies.
The Campaign for Compulsory Voting has assured me the idea isn’t to penalise non-voters. They just want voting to be the default, rather than something to opt in to. In Australia, the fine for not voting is a modest A$20 (around £10), and can be waived if you offer a valid reason. Nor are Australians compelled to vote for a party; they just have to have cast a ballot paper. If they want to spoil it or leave it blank, that’s their choice.
In Britain, we could start by reducing the friction and making voter registration automatic. But if the little man still doesn’t make it to the polling booth, we might have to get radical.
[Further reading: The truth about “the Burnham Bounce”
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This article appears in the 22 Jul 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The Take Over
Join the debate
Subscribe here to commentIt’s all very well to want to make voting compulsory; the arguments for compulsion are persuasive. But the other side of the coin is to make sure voters know what they are voting for, whether in local or general elections or even referenda.
I would suggest accompanying the ballot paper with a short multiple-choice questionnaire covering the subject of the vote, including party manifestos. If a response doesn’t reach a predetermined threshold, that vote gets binned.