The Debate About Compulsory Voting‪.‬

In 2004 Liberal Senator Mac Harb sponsored a bill in the Senate calling for the introduction of compulsory voting in Canada. The Harb bill on mandatory voting is one of only two to have been debated at any length in Parliament since Confederation. Over a century ago the same question was deliberated by the House of Commons as a result of private members" bills introduced by Guillame Amyot. As was also the case with Senator Harb's proposal none of the Amyot bills made it beyond second reading. This article compares the Harb and Amyot bills. Their arguments and analyses are revealing for what they tell us about the electoral politics of the time, the changed language of political discourse, and kinds of evidence that politicians more than a century apart employed in support of, or in opposition to, the proposals. In the 1890s compulsory voting was seen as a way of ending "electoral corruption;" in the early 21st century it was aimed at reversing declining voter turnout and at ensuring greater "political engagement." In terms of substantive argument the earlier debate was almost entirely without comparative reference points. That was not true of the later one. Even the titles given the bills by their respective sponsors may tell us something about the age in which they were introduced. The 1890s bill was called "An Act to make Voting Compulsory," in contrast to the arguably gentler form of obligation that was signaled by "An Act to make Voting Mandatory" in 2004. **********