By Frances Russell | June 05, 2013 At first glance, entrenched opposition to mandatory voting in all the English-speaking democracies - Australia excepted - is puzzling. Given all the obligations of citizenship in a democracy -- paying taxes, serving on juries, licencing vehicles and businesses, paying to educate the next generation of citizens -it seems odd to oppose obligatory participation in the most important "have-to-do" of all: electing those who run our municipal, provincial and national governments. Mandatory voting -- all citizens of voting age required to cast ballots enforced by a small fine -- creates a better-informed electorate and produces a more truly representative democracy, in sharp contrast to the first-past-the-post system in vogue mainly in the Anglo-Saxon world. Mandatory voting would also render useless the widespread use of voter suppression tactics that apparently tried to pollute and skew the outcome of Canada's 2011 federal election; tactics like robocalls sending people to distant and wrong polling stations and telling lies about "high voter turnout." According to court documents filed in mid-August 2012 by the Commissioner of Elections Canada, these suppression tactics may have occurred in as many as 247 of Canada's 308 ridings and were recorded in all ten provinces and at least one territory. The allegations received widespread national media attention and led to protests in March and April of 2012 in at least 27 Canadian cities. Such was the outcry that April 29, 2012 was designated a "National Day Against Election Fraud" by protest organizers. Historically, Canada has had a relatively robust voter turnout, an average of 70.7 per cent since Confederation in 1867. But a watershed happened with the 2000 federal election when turnout suddenly plummeted from 67 per cent in 1997 to just 61 per cent. In the four elections since, turnout has never gone above 64 per cent. In fact, it nosedived to 58.8 per cent in 2008, the lowest ever. The last election, May 2, 2011, almost rivalled it with only 61.4 per cent of voters bothering to go to the polls. Low turnout means the election may not be an accurate reflection of the will of the people. Another drag on high voter turnout is the First Past The Post (FPTP) system under which the candidate with the most votes automatically wins even if it is just by one vote, leaving other candidates - some with closely shared platforms commanding majority support - out in the cold. The most compelling argument against mandatory voting is that it is anti-democratic, even dictatorial, to force people to do something, although, as demonstrated above, there's lots of things citizens are " forced" to do now. There are far less compelling, in fact, odious, reasons motivating opposition to mandatory voting. Both FPTP and non-compulsory voting are subtle ways to keep political power in the hands of the political right, the monied elites and the well-educated (read citizens of white European ancestry) and beyond the reach of the poor, the young and the racial and cultural minorities whose attainment of political power could disturb the formers' comfortable lives. Certainly, that has been the history of FPTP in the U.S. for black and Latino Americans, particularly in the South. Political ideology is a corollary to the racial and class motivation in favour of FPTP and against compulsory voting. Two Australian political scientists, M. Mackerras of the University of New South Wales and I. McAllister of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, state that compulsory voting "disadvantages right-wing parties and advantages left-wing and minor parties." In their paper, Compulsory voting, party stability and electoral advantage in Australia, the two political scientists say that if Australia ever abandons its compulsory ballot, "it is likely to be for this reason (left-wing empowerment) rather than because of any difficulties in administering it or because of any philosophical objection to compulsion among voters or politicians." Nevertheless, they continue, "political systems that attract high levels of participation are seen as more legitimate and more responsive to the needs of the electorate compared to systems with lower levels of participation." And they stress that compulsory voting is "a cost-efficient institutional remedy to the problem of low turnout in the advanced democracies." Ekos Research's Frank Graves, one of Canada's leading pollsters, penned similar opinions on mandatory voting in a recent article for iPolitics.ca. "Mandatory voting as practiced in many countries would refocus both democracy and polling on where it should be focused -- everybody," he writes. "Pollsters would poll everyone and political parties would market policies and leaders to all. Vote suppression and the underbelly of the permanent campaign might be replaced (temporarily, at least) with a renewed focus on developing policies for the whole of society... "According to the public, our current democratic health is very poor," he continues. "I therefore think that mandatory voting deserves to be on the agenda for the future...Ending vote suppression, re-engaging young Canadians and moving back from the ledge of effective oligarchy to fuller democracy would be the more profound consequences." Frances Russell was born in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science. A journalist since 1962, she has covered and commented on politics in Manitoba, Ontario, B.C. and Ottawa, working for The Winnipeg Tribune, United Press International, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun and The Winnipeg Free Press as well as freelanced for The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, CBC Radio and TV and Time Magazine. She is the author of two award-winning books on Manitoba history: Mistehay Sakahegan - The Great Lake: The Beauty and the Treachery of Lake Winnipeg and The Canadian Crucible - Manitoba's Role in Canada's Great Divide. Both won the Manitoba Historical Society Award for popular history. She is married with one son and two grandsons and lives in Winnipeg.