What are the advantages of making voting compulsory in the UK? (10 Marks)

As evidenced in liberal democracies where compulsory voting is a federal law, this has had a positive impact on political participation and has been proposed by campaigners such as Graham Allen MP so long as there is a none-of-the-above option on the ballot paper as a way to combat a perceived democratic deficit amongst the electorate. For example, under Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, Australia has compulsory voting in local and national election; in the federal elections of 2013 turnout was 93.23%, those who did voted suffered a fine of $20 AUD. Compulsory voting giving the government greater democratic legitimacy and can claim a stronger mandate to pursuit its manifesto commitments and is held to account by a larger percentage of the electorate. For example, in the 2015 General Election the turnout was only 66.4% and Cameron was able to form a majoritarian government having 50.8% from only 36.9% of the vote. This calculates that those who voted for another party other than the Conservatives or didn’t vote all accounts for 77.4% of the population of the UK. Arguably, if voting was made compulsory in the 2017 General Election, Theresa May may have been able to win the 9 seats she needed to form a majority administration. 
Furthermore, compulsory voting emboldens citizens and encourages greater social justice. This is because under voluntary voting, the system can effectively disadvantage the most vulnerable demographics in society, namely the poor and less educated, those who are least likely to vote and thus have the chance of being denied personalised representation in Parliament. This can be evidenced has only 58% of 18 to 24 voted in 2017 General Election compared to 84% of over 70s according to YouGov.