Today, Explained - What if you HAD to vote?

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

Midterm elections are a tough sell in the United States. Half of eligible voters show up in a good year. On Election Day, we’re revisiting an episode about how things work down under, where “sausage sizzles” and “bathers” make mandatory voting feel like a party. This episode was originally produced by Noam Hassenfeld and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. It was updated by Amina Al-Sadi with help from Efim Shapiro and Matt Collette. New reporting by Amanda Lewellyn, Miles Bryan, Laura Bullard, and Hady Mawajdeh. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy Election Day! Did you vote? Maybe you didn't because you've got kids and little Isabella got that RSV that's been going around. And you were late for work. And your boss wasn't having it. And then you had to leave early to take Isabella to the doctor. Say aww. And when she finally went to sleep, you had to catch up on all the work you missed. And then you passed out on the couch and woke up to the results and felt really guilty about

letting your democracy down. But at least you're not alone. Midterm elections are a tough sell in the United States. Turnout in 2014 was a 70-year low, something like 36%. We did better in 2018 with about half of all eligible voters showing up. Coming up on Today Explained, we'll ask what this country would look like if voting was mandatory.

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Today Explained and today's election day in the United States, so we sent out a bunch of our producers to find out whether y'all plan on voting. We started on the Staten Island Ferry in New York City. I don't plan to vote.

They kind of do their own thing anyway. It's not like what we say is really heard or cared for. Definitely I'm planning to vote. My name's Kirby. I'm going to vote Democratic. I like the rights that they're fighting for, especially the women's rights. That's an important issue right now. I've got a three-year-old daughter.

This affects her. I've got sisters. I've got a mother. This all affects her. Men don't have the right to dictate what happens to a woman's body. And for my students, I just want them to have the opportunity to live in a fair and democratic society. We hit the streets of Philadelphia.

Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. We're in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of brotherly love. I vote every year. I'm a registered voter. I'm 60 years old. Ah, absolutely not, not until we get a black agenda.

We need reparations. We need these police who are killing people in our neighborhoods to face actual, honest-to-goodness consequences. When my people are taken seriously, we will vote. We went out in rural North Carolina. I was just wondering if you are planning on voting later this week. I am not. I don't feel like I know enough about either side to make an educated opinion or an educated vote on anything. So no. I've honestly never voted before, but I was raised

by my grandparents. So I felt like I was always pressured to vote, especially in their way. So it's just like, I don't really do it. Now that I'm on my own, me and my friends talk about it. We kind of want to do it now. We just haven't put any action to our words, honestly. Cool, cool. And then how are you planning on finding out that information? I'm probably going to sit down and have a smoke sesh with my friend. We're just going to go at it. And downtown Dallas, Texas. Do you plan to vote in the 2022 election? No, I'm 40 years old and I've never voted. I honestly don't feel that our voice really counts when it comes to any politics that we have,

especially in our state. I did already. Yes, I have not. And at this time, I'm not planning on it. I typically vote in in presidential election or larger. At the city level, not so much. I've done it once in my life so far. Everywhere we went, we heard Heman and Han. A lot of people were for sure going to vote. Some were on the fence or outright unconvinced. And all this had us asking the question we ask ourselves every election day today explained, what if we made this way easier for people? In keeping with what's now become a tradition, we're going to revisit an episode we made way back in our first ever midterm election year. On election day 2018, we took you all the way down to Australia, where election day is a bit of a party. Election Day in Australia is always on a Saturday. We pioneered Saturday voting. We thought it would be more inclusive. It's a festive sort of occasion. It's usually held in schools. There are sausage sizzles. Sausage sizzles? Here they call it the democracy sausage. Democracy sausage,

the 2016 Australian word of the year. Polling stations have become much more than a place to cast your vote, with families and charities gathering for sausage sizzles and fundraisers at voting booths across Australia. Election happening, hot sausage and bread, away to go with some onion. It's the soundtrack of Australia. We had a lady having two sausages for cats with extra

sauce for her cat. Every polling place, someone's serving sausages and serving them to people as they go in to vote or come out from voting. And it's just part of our routine. It's a barbecue. It's like a holiday occasion. What if you're a vegetarian? Oh, they always have a veggie burger. They have these websites beforehand that sort of advertise where they're going to be and where the best sausage sizzles are going to be and stuff like that, or lentil burgers or whatever. You know, a lot of guys laugh at it. Friends go, you know, it's a sausage competition,

but it's a major part of your business. The queues aren't long. Australians will turn up in their bathing suits, literally just a speedo or their bikini. It's not like you have to get time off work or you have these long queues in the state. They're only in there for 10 minutes or something and then they're out.

It sounds really fun. What if you're elderly or you sprained your ankle and you can't make it to the party? We have mobile polling, postal polling. We can have pre-polling. We can have assisted polling. So we've got electoral commissions here that are very well funded

and they're also scrupulously independent. So their job is to maximise voting inclusion. Whatever, if you're approaching maternity, they'll bring out voting papers to the hospital, they'll take them out to prisons, they'll take them out to remote areas so Indigenous people can vote. 15 electoral offices are crisscrossing the state, covering thousands of kilometres with ballot papers in hand.

We have 95% voting participation here. You just let them know and they will help you. Lisa Hill's a politics professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, a place where voting is a party and they'll literally bring the polling station to you. Gladly. There's nothing they like more than getting your vote. It's not like you have to register as a particular you know a democrat or republican there's no id requirements it's an honor system it's got very low levels of corruption extremely high levels of trust in the outcome so you never sort of have contested outcomes because the electoral commissions are so squeaky

clean and organized extremely organized and extremely apolitical as well. You mentioned Australia has 95% turnout. Has it made government work any better? Yeah. For example, in the 90s there was a terrible massacre, a gun massacre here. One of the most infamous days in Australia's history. Martin Bryant shot dead 35 people at Port Arthur

and changed the lives of many others forever. They tightened the laws on gun ownership much more strictly. Yeah. And then they got all the guns out of the system by buying guns back from people, and Australians got together and agreed that this was a good idea and surrendered their guns. Australia's government confiscated and destroyed

nearly 700,000 firearms, reducing the number of gun-owning households by half. Government's responsive and we expect action and we get it. Sounds nice. Because we vote. Yeah. It's not rocket science. Government's responsive to voters and if everybody's voting, you're going to have a more agile and responsive parliament. And what happens when you don't?

What would it look like if Australia had 50% voter turnout? We look like America, mate. We don't want that. I'm sorry. I know you love your country, but we don't want 50% turnout. We want the poor to vote. We want homeless people to vote. We want indigenous people to vote. We want people with disabilities to vote. We want everyone to vote. What do you think happens in a democracy when, say, half the people aren't voting? Why is voting so important for the entire population? First of all, whenever you've got turnout that dips below sort of 80, even 90, automatically your turnout will be uneven. It'll just be prosperous people voting, homeowners, generally white people, people for whom English is the first language. The worse off you are, the less likely you are to vote in a low turnout election. And we all know the government just directs its attention to voters.

So when the poor don't vote, the government just gives tax breaks to the rich and everything else to the rich and middle class people as well so poverty starts becoming trench certain minorities just can't get out of this vicious cycle of government neglect then they feel that government neglects them so they don't want to vote the more apathetic you get the less likely you are to vote and everyone gets themselves into a vicious cycle sounds like a really good reason to make voting mandatory it is a good reason to make voting mandatory. It is a good reason to make voting mandatory. It's funny you should mention that, because voting is mandatory here. This whole time I thought we were talking about sausage sizzles and bringing your swimming trunks to the voting stations. And I thought it was just a big party in Australia,

but it's totally mandatory too? It's mandatory and a big party, mate. Coming up on the program, how Australia convinced an entire country it had to vote. And could we do that here in these United States? Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family. And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter.

Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself. So setup personalize it. You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because

we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A frames dot com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas.

That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season.

Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling

or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. So, you know, I actually was radio TV, so I can put on my little radio voice for you. Hey, man, do it up. Okay. Wait, what am I saying again? You're listening to Today Explained. Okay. You're listening to Today Explained. Today Explained, revisiting an episode from 2018 with Lisa Hill, political science professor at

the University of Adelaide. She's now going to tell us how voting became compulsory in Australia. It's been mandatory since 1924 in federal elections and earlier than that in state elections. In the 20s, turnout dipped to below 60. We were freaking out. We thought, that is egregious. It was debated for 15 minutes. That's it in the parliament.

That sounds like a good idea. So we introduced compulsory voting and it shot up 95 in the first election or something like that. How did Australia react? Were people upset? Were people pleased to immediately start voting? How did introducing compulsory voting change the voter turnout? I think there was a bit of grumbling. But because we had compulsory voting, then we decided we were going to have really well-funded electoral commissions. So we had these electoral commissions

that made the elections quite pleasant and easy. We already had the Saturday voting. And then when everyone saw how turnout rose, government responsiveness got better and it got more responsive to everybody. People just thought this is not a bad deal. People have to vote. What happens if they don't vote? You can't make people feel like they're criminals when they fail to vote. What happens is the electoral commission sends you a letter and says, I noticed you didn't vote. And if you send a letter back saying, I was sorry about that, I was sick. It's an honest system. They don't check. You don't have to give a medical certificate or I had an accident. But if you don't respond to their letter, then you get a $20 fine.

And that actually works. That's enough to make it work. Yeah. I mean, because it's kind of symbolic. It's symbolizing that it's the law. If you don't follow up, it doesn't work, but you've got to follow up in a way that's not alienating people and making them feel like they're a criminal. It's not criminal activity failing to vote, but you do have to vote because we all have to pitch in. What happens if you don't pay that $20 fine? Then it goes up to $50. And then if the third fine you don't pay, then you get summons to court. But so there's people that are exempt. For example, if you're homeless, you're exempt from being required to vote. And also you don't get fined if you're registered and don't vote.

But usually doesn't. People just usually just pay the $20 fine. Is there any chance you could go to jail for not voting in Australia? A couple of people in the past have spent like a day in jail. You know, I think that's a bit much myself. That hasn't happened for decades. But it has happened a couple of times. And some people have deliberately got themselves put in jail. That's the thing. You mentioned earlier that the government is more responsive in Australia, maybe as a result of compulsory voting. But it's not like compulsory voting will fix all your problems, like poverty and corruption, right? We've got poverty, we've got corruption,

but just not as much as you, that's all. I mean, I'm very sure if we didn't have mandatory voting here, we'd have turnout levels in the 60s. It's not like we're these awesome super people that are better and nicer than everyone else. But the law has created these norms around civic duty and responsibility. It's just like a nudge. In the same way, like you're made to wear your seatbelt, you feel that it's paternalism, but in retrospect, after you have a smash, you can see that wasn't a bad idea. Because if you ask people how they feel about it, between 70% and 75% of Australians, no matter what's going on,

they'll still say that they think compulsory voting's an OK idea. And there's always going to be around 30% that don't like it. But the feeling isn't strong enough to want to get rid of it because people aren't 100% sure they would like the results, I think. Do you think implementing a system like that would work here the way it seems to have worked in Australia in the 1920s? Yes, it would work extremely well. And I've written a paper on this and in the paper I've argued and I think I've shown that there's no reason why you couldn't have it because some

people say there are constitutional impediments or all kinds of other impediments. You can say that all you like, it's not unconstitutional, but there'd be so much resistance because it seems like such an alien idea to people that haven't grown up with it. Your rights culture is more pronounced than us. We're not so big on our constitutional rights and our individual rights because we're more of a parliamentary culture. It's like it was easier to take guns away from us as well. I think it could work very well in the States and it would solve so many of the problems you're having there, to be honest. Your problems would be solved if minorities voted, if the poor voted. Not all problems can be solved by voting, who are we kidding? But

a lot of problems would be at least ameliorated if everybody voted. I can see a lot of people, if the United States federal government, for instance, was to impose compulsory voting, saying, you can't tell me what to do. This is America. The federal government does not tell me where I supposed to be about freedom. It's supposed to be about voluntarism. But, you know, I always say, well, first of all, voluntary activity is not the defining feature of democracy. Self-government is the people being sovereign and the people really can't be sovereign if they're not all there. And then when they're all there, you get these other kinds of freedoms unleashed. Freedom to be treated without discrimination by a government, instead of government pork barrelling and pandering to the well-off. Freedom to have a decent standard of living. Freedom to have free schools.

A good example is taxation, which of course is quite a big infringement on personal freedom. Sure. Much more so than voting. But we sort of recognise that we need to pay our taxes if we want to go on a road or get anywhere. It's no point in having all your own money if you can't go anywhere, you know. And it's not safe. You don't have security or you don't have basic services or jury duty or compulsory school education. more burdensome impositions on personal autonomy, but most people sort of accept them because they see that there's a collective benefit from it and they couldn't really live a decent life unless they gave up some freedoms and contributed the tax or contributed to the jury system or sent their children to school or whatever. This is how you get democracy to work. I wonder, you know, one thing I feel like compulsory voting wouldn't fix is the fact that a lot of people in this country, and I'm sure that country, don't know a whole lot about their candidates who are running for office or the positions and platforms of their candidates. Has compulsory voting in Australia done anything to fix or

address that? Yeah, it makes people more alert. People actually do know more about their candidates here, and not just here, but in other compulsory voting regimes so living in a compulsory voting regime makes you more politically sophisticated because they know they're going to have to vote they just pick up a lot of incidental information jill shepherd who's a political scientist here someone i know she's done a study that's shown that as well so it makes you smarter and more informed as well but the standards of comportment around elections, I think, are a bit higher here. I'm sorry. I don't mean to insult your country. I'm not really insulted, but somehow I feel like you're not done insulting the United States. But what other countries have tried compulsory voting? It's not just Australia, is it? No, I mean, the Netherlands had it and they went along very merrily. Then they got rid of it. God

knows why. And then I think a lot of people regretted it. Belgium still has it, Costa Rica. Vanuatu and Samoa are just moving to it to fight corruption. There's lots of different places that have had it at various times, but, you know, it's a bit hard to say unless it's sort of enforced. The two best examples would probably be Belgium and the Netherlands who did enforce it but they had high levels of satisfaction with it as well. You've got to do it a certain way. Otherwise, you're just going to alienate people. You said the Netherlands had it, but then got rid of it. Why did they get rid of it?

Oh, they just had a brain fart. I mean, there was no good reason. What usually happens is a party on the right gets into power, and then they just maneuver to get rid of it. It's under threat here all the time by different parties thatuvre to get rid of it. It's under threat here all the time by different parties that try and get rid of it. Really? Yes, because they want to control the sort of people that might vote. But here the parties on the right aren't 100% sure it would work

for them, but in other places they feel secure that if they got rid of compulsory voting, less poor people would vote, which is true. It's not that hard to do if it's not enshrined in the Constitution, which it is in here, and I don't think it was there. It's just an act of Parliament. But then once you get rid of it, it's very hard to bring back in. Are there any other ideas out there, alternatives to compulsory voting that would increase turnout?

Yeah, there's a million things you can do. You can move voting to a Saturday. You can put polling booths in shopping malls. You can give people incentives to vote, although that's constitutional in most states and here too. But some American states have tried it, free donuts or free chiropractic adjustment to vote. But all the things that I could make a list of to stimulate turnout, if you did them all at once, you still wouldn't get the same effect that you get just with compulsory voting. That's the only thing on its own that can raise turnout

into the 90-plus percentage range, and it's the only thing that will keep it there. It certainly sounds like a great idea, and it certainly seems intrinsic to democracy, and yet so many democracies were built without compulsory voting. Why do you think that is? I don't know. I mean, it's actually a good question. I don't know why, but democracy is crumbling. I mean, look outside your window, mate. Yours is really in a bit of a, I'm sorry, it's not in very good shape.

And so this is something that can save a democracy. Democracy is not a constitutional form, it's an activity. It's performative and we all have to perform it because what people forget is to be a real democracy, a true democracy of the people, by the people, for the people, has to be performed by the people. And democracy requires work. Not much work, just a little bit of work. And if everyone does their fair share, you just do it, 10 minutes, off to the beach. That's all there is.

A sausage sizzle. A sausage, your bathers. I swear to God, I've got pictures of people in their bathers or in the sarong. It's hilarious. It's something we all have to do so we can all then enjoy the benefits of living in a true democracy. So it's kind of a paradox. You have to give up a little bit of freedom to live in freedom. Thanks, Lisa. Wish us luck today, huh? Good luck.

You're going to need it. Thanks. Yeah, I hope there's high voter turnout. I hope there's high turnout. Do you think there will with these elections? The last turnout was 36%, brother, and I don't mean to make fun of you, but that is pretty piss-weak, don't you think? Professor Lisa Hill, University of Adelaide, the piss-weak turnout she was mocking was from the 2014 midterm election. That was the most recent midterm when I spoke to her in 2018. Her mocking must have worked, though, because in 2018, we got the highest voter turnout in a midterm in a century. Here's hoping

it's even higher today. Thanks to Amanda Llewellyn in New York, Miles Bryan in Philadelphia, Laura Bullard in North Carolina, and Hadi Mawagdi in downtown Dallas for going out and talking to voters for our episode today. The episode was originally produced by Noam Hassenfeld, who now hosts the Unexplainable podcast for Vox. We sometimes use his music on this show, as well as music from Breakmaster Cylinder. Our show today was updated by Amna Alsadi with help from Afim Shapiro and Matthew Collette. The rest of our team includes Abishai Artsy, Halima Shah, Victoria Chamberlain, Paul Robert Mounsey, and Siona Petros. Noelle King hosts the show with me. I'm Sean Ramos. For him, Today Explained is on the radio across these United States in partnership with WNYC. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

If I want to see changes in this world, in my community, in my area, then I have to vote.