MOVES to make it compulsory to vote in UK elections are unlikely to be replicated in Jersey despite the Island’s poor voter turnout figures, an influential backbench politician has said.
Deputy Carina Alves, chair of the Privileges and Procedures Committee, expressed her view in the wake of news that senior figures in the Labour Party had urged UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to follow the example of countries like Australia and Belgium in making voting mandatory.
Former party leader Lord Kinnock and ex-Home Secretary Lord Blunkett have both declared that they will back a House of Lords amendment on the subject, with Lord Kinnock, who lived in Brussels for ten years, stating that “democracy and citizenship in the UK would benefit greatly” from such a system.
Having been a member of PPC throughout her eight-year career in the States Assembly, including a 17-month stint as chair prior to the 2022 election, Deputy Alves was chosen to take charge of the committee again after the election earlier this year.
The St Helier Central representative said that she was not inclined to pursue the matter as a priority on PPC.
“There’s been lots of change to the system in Jersey, with automatic voter registration and the issue of third party groups getting involved in elections, and I think our main goal should be to address those and make sure our legal framework is as tight as possible,” she said.
Deputy Alves added that she had reservations about the idea of fining those who failed to vote.
“I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’d like to see more work on political awareness and education in order to increase engagement,” she said. “If you did bring in fines, they’d need to be meaningful, and there’d need to be an admin process as part of it.
“Maybe it’s my teaching background, but I’m not a fan of using fines as a way of trying to change people’s behaviour.”
Voter turnout in this year’s election dropped to 32.4% compared to 41.6% in 2022, although this was largely driven by the shift towards automatic voter registration which meant all eligible voters were placed on the electoral register.
In 2022, prior to the new system’s introduction, only 75% of the estimated 81,000 who were eligible to vote opted to register, with 25,334 votes cast – 31.3% of those eligible to vote.
The proposed UK amendment will be to the Representation of the People Bill, which was introduced in the House of Commons earlier has currently reached the committee stage in the House of Lords.
