The right not to vote

I have only once failed to vote since I became eligible to do so, and that was in a local election when I'd overlooked that I had to be away from Manchester. I love it, whenever there's an election, walking out to vote, going into the booth, placing my mark. I feel the importance of it, even when my own vote makes no difference to the result. For these reasons I, too, regret it when many people who have the right to vote don't use it. It would be better if more of them did.

And yet. I find I cannot work up any passion at the sort of lament put together by Polly Toynbee today: too few people talking about politics or political news with friends; 'only a bare majority - a mere 53% - declare themselves certain to vote'; 'they can't be bothered with how the country is run'.

There are points that can be made on the other side. Even for those of us who do take an interest in political news, this isn't necessarily the thing we want to talk about with our friends, or at any rate the main thing. And for many who don't want to vote, it may be not because they don't care how the country is run, but because they're not altogether dissatisfied with how it is run. There's more than one comparative reference point here. The gloom-inducing comparison is some model of flourishing civic commitment and voter participation. But an alternative model is provided by the evidence we have of the popular desire for democratic rights and procedures where these are denied. This can itself be used, of course, to belittle the attitudes and the conduct of that part of the electorate which doesn't vote. 'Look! You see what it means to those who don't have it?' But it tells you something else: namely, that within established liberal democracies many people feel secure enough about the existence of their democratic rights to think that these aren't proximately imperilled. This they are entitled to feel - unless you suppose that there's some quiet route in these countries back from democracy to some form of political tyranny, by way of the falling off in voter turnout. I think that would be an alarmist fantasy.

The right to vote in most places is a liberty to vote; which means that it is also a right and a liberty not to. That, also, deserves recognition.