The essay I constructed under the assessment for Critical Thinking and Communication aimed to provide a response to the debate ‘should all citizens be required by law to vote in Australia?’. The principal argument of the essay was centred upon the notion that a primary goal of a representative democracy is to recognise and apply the will of the people; and that elections only have the potential to adequately represent the will of an entire electorate under a compulsory voting scheme. This reasoning is premised on the underlying belief that every citizen should be granted a platform from which their views may be heard, and their needs addressed. Ultimately, the normative conclusion of the paper is that mandatory participation in Australian elections …show more content…
480), the essay adheres to the principle of ‘Social Benefit’. This principle serves as the core of my argument that “compulsory voting serves as tool that can be used to improve the state of inequality of a nation”. Through a case study comparing voter participation in both the United States and Australia, the essay clearly conveyed the notion that in a system of voluntary voting, the citizens least likely to participate in elections are those from the least privileged backgrounds, i.e. low income earners, those from ethnic backgrounds, or those with low level education, which can consequently result in parliamentary focus skewing away from these demographics that arguably require a greater amount of advocacy, to instead favour the more well off voting community as it is they who will elect the nation’s representative. Conversely, in a democracy that enforces mandatory voting, this political inequality does not occur, but rather, compulsory voting indicates that the community is, by law, one; citizenship is a status that is to be enjoyed by everyone, despite economic, employment or residential status, education levels, ethnicity, gender of disability (Hill, 2004). Therefore, it is evident that the principle of social benefit, which acknowledges the extent to which an action produces beneficial consequences for society, is a primary