By Richard Johnstone | 26 August 2013
Voting should be compulsory for the first election after voting age, the Institute for Public Policy Research has said. The think-tank argued this would address the ‘political inequality’ of different turnout levels that could have led to young people being harder hit by spending cuts.
According to the IPPR, the gap in voting between young and old – which stood at 32 percentage points in the 2010 general election – gave politicians less incentive to pay attention to the concerns of those aged under 24.
It highlighted that the current government’s spending cuts have had a bigger impact on young people. According to today’s Divided democracy: political inequality in the UK report, 16-24-year-olds facing cuts to services worth 28% of their annual household income, compared to 10% of the income of those aged 55-74.
Guy Lodge, the IPPR’s associate director and report author, said unequal turnout rates mattered ‘because it gives older and more affluent voters disproportionate influence at the ballot box’.
He added: ‘Turnout rates among the young have fallen significantly which means there is less incentive for politicians to pay attention to them.
‘Young people who don’t vote today are less likely than previous generations to develop the habit of voting as they get older, which is why first time compulsory voting is so important. Unequal turnout unleashes a vicious cycle of disaffection and under-representation. As policy becomes less responsive to their interests, more and more decide that politics has little to say to them.’
Under IPPR’s proposed reforms, young voters would be required to go to the polling station to vote and would face a small fine if they did not. But it has also proposed the creation of a ‘none of the above’ option, so they would not be forced to vote for a party.
The plan comes after the Labour party announced it would consider reducing the voting age to 16 should it form the government after the 2015 election.
However, the IPPR said that lowering the voting age without making voting in the first election compulsory could actually increase turnout inequality between the young and old.
Britain has one of the largest differences in voter turnout between age groups in Europe, the think-tank said. Only 44% of 18-24 year olds voted in the 2010 general election, compared to 76% of those aged 65 and over.
In this year’s local elections, the disparity grew with only 32% of 18-24 year olds so, compared with 72% of those aged over 65.
The report stated that turnout inequality between age groups had grown at an ‘alarming’ rate in recent years and shows little sign of being reversed. An 18-point turnout gap between 18-24 year olds and those aged over 65 in 1970 grew to 32 points by 2010.
