This been a year in which this country will hold its national elections, often there is need to reflect on the very processes that precede the actual holding of the elections on voting day. One such processes and a very primary and critical one is the registration of voters, for without anybody registering then there is no voting. The numbers that were reflected after the initial voter registration process were not encouraging for those who believe in the virtue and importance of numbers in any election and that led to legislation of supplementary voter registration that ended this past Sunday. I don’t have the numbers of this exercise but indications are that Batswana did not come in the expected numbers to substantially raise the numbers attained in the initial voter registration process. This then is my reason for positing this item today to try to explore possible reason for why as Batswana we don’t register in large numbers, why we should actually bother to vote and possible exploration of a way to legislate and ensure a high voter turn up.
Let me begin by acknowledging that this issue has been discussed in various fora, both print and electronic media has had numerous discussions on it, political parties had their inputs and so did the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), as well as the public in their varied groupings. I will, therefore, be simply adding my voice to this national concern, that of low voter turnover for registration. First, let’s explore the reasons often associated with people not turning up to register. The first is that voting is personally costly because it takes time to just go and register and presumably most people cannot afford to lose this time, irrespective of whether they actually use this time productively or not. It can be also costly to learn candidates’ views as you have to follow them to freedom squares/rallies and for some having to leave work to go and vote on election day is a cost, in addition one has to stand on long lines, sometimes in harsh weather, in our case it could be raining or very hot. If these are the costs and on the other hand you are somewhat convinced that your individual vote may actually have a zero impact in determining who wins or any envisaged change, then you will most probably choose not to register. That’s the rational human being whose thinking agrees with that of one Paul Meehl (2008) when he said that:
“The probability that I’ll be the deciding vote …….in a presidential election is
Much smaller than the chance that I’ll get hit by a car on the way to the polls”.
It is therefore clear that in our midst are people who think like Paul and to them both registering and voting are essentially irrational ventures hence they choose not to take interest in both. Obviously some of us do not subscribe to this line of thinking and therefore push the political reason for voting and this is that voting is as some put it a “sacred right” that citizens must exercise and enjoy to nurture and enrich the democratic process of a republic such as ours. In the words one great man of the past, when our founding fathers gave us this Republic, our duty is to keep it and ensure its sustained growth as an admirable and preferred political dispensation that we all cherish and zealously protect. Registration for voting and actually going to vote on Election Day is one avenue of how we can protect this republic as a nation.
We hear a lot of complaints about politicians not listening to the public, failing to address public problems, in our case problems of unemployment/underemployment, failing school system/structures, difficulty in accessing services and resources such as land, power and water issues among others. All these require that we elect people whom we believe can making the necessary decisions to make things better and if we don’t vote then we have no reason to complain if those voted take no interest in our problems.
Our elected officials are guided by our patterns of voting, if we don’t vote that’s a clear message to them that we don’t care what they do and that is obviously a very dangerous implicit statement to make.
Besides the above, why should we bother to register and vote? We have to mandate elected officials with the power and authority to represent our interest, aspirations and above all the public good as we socially, economically and politically sanction it as a nation. It is this sanctioning that often defines what type of voters we are, and whether we are likely to register and vote or not.
From the numbers of those registered, at least preliminary as they are, the majority of those who registered could be what are called altruistic and habitual voters whose ‘voter’s illusion” always drives them to registration and voting points. These are people who are convinced rightly or wrongly, that their vote will make a difference. The other minority would then be those who are literally driven by the IEC through its campaigns or are literally ferried to registration points by political parties and their candidates. The latter are those who simply yield to pressure but left alone may not bother to register.
What can be done? Should we follow the route taken by countries like Australia, Belgium, Argentina and others, who have made voting compulsory by law? Voter turn over in these countries is normally very high especially that in some of them after every election those who did not vote must explain themselves and are actually liable to pay a fee if their reasons are not convincing.
This is to try and limit the impact of the known behaviour under voluntary voting and that is, when most people believe that the chance that the result will be determined by any single person’s vote are remote, even the slightest excuse/cost like the time one takes to go and register and to stand in line during voting day, is more than sufficient to make both registration and voting irrational decisions. An yet because most of us follow this line of reasoning, a minority will necessarily decide the fate on our country and in my view when such happens let the majority simply die in their silence because they have abrogated their “sacred right”.
