essay about compulsory voting laws

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Despite an increase in voter turnout during the 2018 U.S midterm election, about half of all eligible voters didn’t cast their ballot on election day.

Political scientist Emilee Chapman says compulsory voting conveys the message that each citizen’s voice is expected and valued. (Image credit: Courtesy Emilee Chapman)

To increase voter turnout in elections, some scholars – including Stanford political scientist Emilee Chapman – have suggested making voting compulsory in the United States. The U.S. would then join countries such as Australia, Belgium and Brazil, which all require universal participation in national elections.

In an article published in the American Journal of Political Science , Chapman builds on existing scholarship to make the case for mandatory voting. Chapman sees voting as a special occasion for all citizens to show to elected officials they are all equal when it comes to government decision-making.

“The idea of compulsory voting is that it conveys the idea that each person’s voice is expected and valued,” said Chapman, an assistant professor of political science in Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences . “It really offers this society-wide message: There is no such thing as a political class in a democracy. Voting is something that is for everybody, including and especially people at the margins of society.”

If everyone votes, it reminds public officials they are accountable to all citizens – not just the most vocal and active, said Chapman, who is also on the advisory board of the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society .

There are many opportunities other than voting for civic engagement: Citizens can petition representatives, donate money to a campaign or even stand for office themselves, Chapman said. But mandatory voting is the simplest way to ensure everyone engages in political decisions, she said.

“When you have these moments where people know that they will be called upon to participate as citizens, it helps reduce the friction that comes with trying to figure out how to navigate what their role as a citizen is – especially given how complicated government is and the many ways to influence policy,” said Chapman. “I think it’s often very hard for people to figure out how to make their voice heard effectively.”

The case against mandatory voting

With such tight midterm races across the U.S., the motivation to vote was high and a sense of civic duty was strong. But if voting was required, some skeptics worry that citizens would no longer vote for these intrinsic reasons but instead vote out of a fear of being punished.

To address this concern, Chapman pointed to Australia, a country that has had compulsory voting in their national elections since 1924. According to one survey Chapman referenced in the paper, 87 percent of Australians said they would “probably” or “definitely” still vote if it was not required.

What explains Australians’ desire to still vote, with or without the law? Chapman said the government is able to offset any fear of retribution by taking a soft approach to disciplining nonvoters. This she said, maintains a positive perception to voting.

“Australia is one of the most effectively enforced compulsory voting systems in the world, but even there, excuses for nonvoting are readily granted and many cases of unexcused abstention are not pursued,” said Chapman in the paper, noting that only about one in four Australian nonvoters actually pay a fine. “Given the low enforcement rate, it seems likely that Australia has achieved its high participation rates because people in Australia see the law as reflecting a moral duty to vote. People are not obeying just because they fear they will be punished,” she said.

An uninformed electorate

Some critics of mandatory voting argue that it would introduce uninformed voters into the electorate, which they say would result in election outcomes not representative of public opinion. But according to Chapman, the evidence supporting this claim is ambiguous.

In addition, there are other challenges that may arise when only people who are interested in politics vote, said Chapman.

“If you allow the electorate to restrict itself to only people who are already interested in politics on its own and ask them for their input, then you are only going to have people who already have a lot of power in society and are familiar with what using that power can do for them,” Chapman said. Officials have an incentive to prioritize the concerns of likely voters over non-voters, she said. “And as a result, you are going to see a real difference in what interests are represented in public.”

A right not to vote?

Others critics have also argued that forcing citizens to vote restricts civil liberties: People should decide for themselves how they want to exercise their citizenship rights. In other words, the right to vote is also the right not to vote.

“The right to vote is based on the idea that we need to make public decisions together,” said Chapman. “I think there is a tendency to construe voting as a form of expression as opposed to participation in a collective decision. Those are very different acts.”

Once those two ideas are disentangled, Chapman said there are ways to structure a system that would not violate civil liberties raised by critics. For example, there could be religious exemptions, formal abstentions or an option to simply select “none of the above” for voters who do not like any of the candidates.

But as Chapman cautions, compulsory voting should not be seen as a one-stop solution to solving problems in democracy. And she is realistic about hurdles to any implementation. For example, there would need to be a secure system that would keep voter rolls up-to-date and registration would need to be streamlined. There are also material barriers that prevent certain populations from voting; for example, the homeless often cannot meet residency requirements needed to vote. These obstacles exist whether voting is mandatory or not, said Chapman.

“Democratic reform is something we should really maintain as an important value for democracy and not just think that opportunity alone is enough when it comes to voting,” she said.

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Should voting be made mandatory in the United States?

By Alaina Perdon

Elm Staff Writer

As Americans, we are privileged to live in a society in which we have the right to decide our country’s political course by casting our vote. Yet, our nation continually faces the issue of low voter turnout, meaning not every community’s voice is well-represented. Mandating voter participation could solve this disparity, ensuring equal opportunities for representation.

The 2020 presidential election saw record-breaking voter turnout; the United States Elections Project reports that almost 150 million people cast a ballot. But this election was a historical outlier.

During the 2014 midterm elections, national voter turnout rates were at their lowest levels since 1942, with less than 37% of the eligible population making it to the polls, according to U.S. Elections Project reports. More striking, voter turnout can be as low as 4% when municipalities hold special elections.

To ensure an effective democracy in which politicians represent the interests of all citizens, it is essential that as much of the population votes as possible. When there is low voter turnout, a small percentage of the population can end up controlling major political decisions. U.S. Censusing data shows these fortunate individuals most often reside in predominantly white, wealthy communities.

“Voting access is the key to equality in our democracy,” former U.S. house representative John Lewis said. “The size of your wallet, the number on your zip code shouldn’t matter. The action of government affects every American so every citizen should have an equal voice.”

Poor voter turnout cannot simply be attributed to inaction on the part of the individual. While the poll taxes and literacy tests of early-1900s America are behind us, voter suppression is still a reality plaguing minority communities.

A joint investigation by Public Religion Research Institute and  The Atlantic found twice as many Black and Hispanic individuals were incorrectly told they were not listed on voter rolls at the polls during the 2016 presidential election compared to their white counterparts. Similarly, twice as many minority voters reported difficulty finding a polling place in reasonable distance from their homes, a statistic further supported from research by NBC indicating that frequent changes to polling-site locations hurt minority voters more than white voters.

“It would be transformative if everybody voted,” former President Barack Obama said in a March 2015 public address. “The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities.”

It should already be the responsibility of the federal government to ensure all citizens have reasonable access to a polling location, an efficient voter registration process, and other election resources; however, the U.S. has clearly failed its citizens in these respects. The barriers placed to curb minority votes are an obstruction of democracy, benefitting only the fortunate few while marginalized communities continue to go underrepresented.

Mandatory voting, or civic duty voting, would eliminate some of these barriers, allowing fair representation of currently marginalized communities.

“Casting a ballot in countries with civic duty voting is often easier than it is in the United States. Registering to vote is a straightforward and accessible process, if not automatic; requesting a ballot or finding your polling place typically does not require calls to your local supervisor of elections or constantly checking online resources to ensure that your polling location has not changed,” Brookings Institute research analyst Amber Herrle said in a proposal for a nationwide voting mandate.

Civic duty voting shifts responsibility from the voter to the state, forcing the government to provide these necessary resources to its citizens. After adopting a civic duty approach to voting, Australia began using mobile polling facilities in hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and remote Aboriginal communities to ensure that those who are unable to get to a polling location can still vote, according to a 2015 report by FairVote researcher Nina Jaffe-Geffner.

Prior to Australia’s implementation of mandatory voting, the voter rate had reached a low of 47% of registered voters, according to Jaffe-Geffner. Once voting was legally mandated, turnout rates increased, with over 80% of the eligible population participating in the last election.

One of the major arguments given by those against compulsory voting is that it leads to a greater number of uninformed voters.  Roll Call columnist and stringent advocate for mandatory voting Norman Ornstein notes that, “those who choose not to vote are generally less educated on political issues.”

While uninformed voting is a valid concern, Ornstein argues this would incentivize federally regulated political outreach and education, making all citizens more politically informed.

Implementing mandatory voting may not be a feasible change for the U.S. without years of planning, but facing in that direction, even on a municipality level, would begin a positive shift in U.S. voter turnout.

To uphold our democracy, the U.S. should consider changing policies to make voting easier and more accessible for everyone. More voters at the polls means fair representation of every demographic, guaranteeing actual liberty and justice for all. 

Featured Photo caption: With countries like Australia enforcing mandatory voting laws, many wonder if similar policies should be enforced in the United States. Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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U.S. Constitution.net

Constitution and voting rights.

The history of voting rights in the United States demonstrates the nation's commitment to refining and expanding the principles established by the Founding Fathers. From early restrictions to significant amendments and legislation, this journey reflects both progress and ongoing challenges in ensuring every citizen's voice is heard in our constitutional republic.

Historical Evolution of Voting Rights

In the 1700s, voting was generally restricted to white male property owners, with varied rules among states. By the early 19th century, property restrictions began to ease, yet significant barriers remained for others.

After the Civil War, the 14th and 15th Amendments extended citizenship and voting rights regardless of race. The 19th Amendment , ratified in 1920, granted women the right to vote. The 24th Amendment, passed in 1964, prohibited poll taxes in federal elections. The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was pivotal legislation designed to enforce the 15th Amendment's promise. It aimed to eliminate various legal barriers at state and local levels that prevented African Americans from voting. Key provisions included:

• Federal oversight of voter registration in states with histories of discriminatory practices
• Requiring certain jurisdictions to obtain federal approval before changing election laws

Efforts persist to safeguard and enhance the integrity and inclusivity of the voting process, illustrating the ongoing evolution spurred by constitutional amendments and federal legislation.

The Role of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a transformative piece of legislation addressing systemic racial discrimination in voting. Key provisions included Section 5, requiring federal preclearance for voting law changes in certain jurisdictions, and Section 4(b), outlining the coverage formula for preclearance.

The Act's effectiveness was immediate, with increased voter registration among African Americans and greater representation in elected offices. However, it faced challenges in the 21st century through judicial scrutiny.

"The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has proven to be the most effective civil rights statute enacted by Congress." 1

The Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) weakened the Act's enforcement mechanism by declaring Section 4(b) unconstitutional. This effectively nullified the preclearance requirement of Section 5, leading to a resurgence in laws that critics argue disenfranchise minority voters.

Further challenges arose with Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), which made it more difficult to challenge voting laws under Section 2 of the Act. These decisions have altered the landscape of voting rights, prompting ongoing debates about federal versus state control over elections and the protection of individual voting rights.

Advocates continue to push for new legislative measures to restore and strengthen the protections once guaranteed by the Voting Rights Act, asserting that continued federal oversight is essential to prevent discriminatory practices.

State Constitutions and Voting Rights

State constitutions play a crucial role in establishing and protecting voting rights, often extending beyond federal Constitutional protections. While the U.S. Constitution provides a foundational framework, state constitutions frequently address specific details of electoral regulations and voter protections.

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, 49 of the 50 state constitutions explicitly affirm the right to vote. They often mandate that elections be "free," "equal," or "open," and include provisions to protect voters while voting.

State constitutions articulate specific duties for public officials in safeguarding voting rights and address the infrastructure supporting elections. They often provide detailed guidelines for redistricting to ensure fair representation and prevent gerrymandering.

Key Features of State Constitutions:

• Explicit affirmation of voting rights
• Detailed electoral regulations
• Provisions for voter protection
• Guidelines for redistricting

The interplay between state and federal constitutions in shaping voting laws underscores the complexity of the American electoral system. While the federal Constitution sets broad principles, state constitutions provide the detailed, practical measures necessary to implement and uphold these rights effectively. This layered approach allows for adaptability and responsiveness to local needs, ensuring that the fundamental democratic principle of voting remains strong and dynamic in our constitutional republic.

Redistricting and Gerrymandering

Redistricting is a vital process in ensuring proportional representation, occurring every decade following the census. Both the U.S. Constitution and state laws provide the framework for this process. However, the integrity of redistricting has often been challenged by gerrymandering, where district lines are manipulated to favor a particular party or group.

Federal oversight of redistricting draws authority from the Constitution, particularly the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has historically played a significant role in protecting minority voting rights during redistricting. However, recent Supreme Court rulings have weakened federal oversight, placing more responsibility on states.

State laws and constitutions often provide a more detailed framework for redistricting. Many states have established independent or bipartisan commissions to draw district lines, aiming to reduce partisan influence. Some states have stringent anti-gerrymandering provisions in their constitutions.

The impact of gerrymandering can be profound, potentially skewing political representation and policy outcomes. Efforts to combat gerrymandering continue to evolve, driven by technological advancements and increased public awareness.

Maintaining vigilance and promoting reforms in the redistricting process is crucial to upholding the integrity of our constitutional republic and the foundational promise of equal representation.

Current Challenges and Future Directions

Voting rights in the United States face ongoing challenges, including voter ID laws, voter purges, and restrictions on absentee voting. These issues have significant implications for electoral integrity and accessibility.

Voter ID laws, which require photographic identification to vote, are a subject of heated debate:

• Proponents argue they prevent fraud
• Critics contend they disproportionately affect marginalized communities

Studies suggest these laws can suppress voter turnout among certain groups, raising concerns about electoral fairness 1 .

Voter purges, the process of removing ineligible individuals from voter rolls, present another challenge. While maintaining accurate registration lists is important, aggressive purging practices have been criticized for potentially disenfranchising eligible voters. Critics argue that these purges can be used for partisan advantage , targeting demographics that typically favor one party over another.

Restrictions on absentee voting have gained attention, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some states have sought to limit absentee voting by imposing stricter requirements. Opponents of these restrictions argue that absentee voting is crucial for many voters' participation, especially those with health concerns or disabilities.

Efforts to Protect and Expand Voting Rights

• The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
• Grassroots movements and advocacy organizations
• Litigation challenging restrictive laws

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act aims to restore key protections from the original Voting Rights Act of 1965. This proposed legislation seeks to reinstate federal oversight in jurisdictions with histories of discriminatory practices and addresses modern challenges in election administration.

"As voting rights continue to evolve, vigilance remains necessary to uphold the integrity of the United States' electoral system."

By addressing contemporary challenges and advocating for comprehensive reforms, we strive to create a more representative republic in line with the principles enshrined in the Constitution.

The most crucial takeaway from this examination is the enduring importance of protecting and enhancing voting rights within our constitutional framework. The Founding Fathers' vision of a representative republic remains a guiding light, urging us to continually strive for a more inclusive and equitable electoral process. By honoring this legacy, we uphold the fundamental principles that make our nation strong.

Lift Every Voice: The Urgency of Universal Civic Duty Voting

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July 20, 2020

• 16 min read

The following is the preamble to “Lift Every Voice: The Urgency of Universal Civic Duty Voting,” a report from the Working Group on Universal Voting convened by The Brookings Institution and The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School. Download the full PDF report here.

Imagine an American democracy remade by its citizens in the very image of its promise, a society where the election system is designed to allow citizens to perform their most basic civic duty with ease. Imagine that all could vote without obstruction or suppression. Imagine Americans who now solemnly accept their responsibilities to sit on juries and to defend our country in a time of war taking their obligations to the work of self-government just as seriously. Imagine elections in which 80 percent or more of our people cast their ballots—broad participation in our great democratic undertaking by citizens of every race, heritage and class, by those with strongly-held ideological beliefs, and those with more moderate or less settled views. And imagine how all of this could instill confidence in our capacity for common action.

This report is offered with these aspirations in mind and is rooted in the history of American movements to expand voting rights. Our purpose is to propose universal civic duty voting as an indispensable and transformative step toward full electoral participation. Our nation’s current crisis of governance has focused unprecedented public attention on intolerable inequities and demands that Americans think boldly and consider reforms that until now seemed beyond our reach.

“Our purpose is to propose universal civic duty voting as an indispensable and transformative step toward full electoral participation.”

We see voting as a civic responsibility no less important than jury duty. If every American citizen is required to participate as a matter of civic duty, the representativeness of our elections would increase significantly and those those responsible for organizing elections will be required to resist all efforts at voter suppression and remove barriers to the ballot box. Civic duty voting would necessarily be accompanied by a variety of legislative and administrative changes aimed at making it easier for citizens to meet their obligation to participate in the enterprise of self-rule.

Our intervention reflects a sense of alarm and moral urgency, but also a spirit of hope and patriotism. Members of our working group undertook this work to fight back against legal assaults on voting rights guarantees and the proliferation of new techniques and laws to keep citizens from casting ballots. We did so mindful of the public’s declining trust in our democratic institutions. We joined together to end a vicious cycle in which declining trust breeds citizen withdrawal which, in turn, only further increases the sense of distance between citizens and our governing institutions.

It would, however, be a great mistake to see only negative portents in our current situation. If some states have engaged in voter suppression, others have enhanced voting rights through automatic voter registration, same day voting, increased opportunities for early voting, and mail ballots. These reforms have had a measurable and positive impact on participation—and enjoyed enthusiastic citizen support.

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Our nation’s struggle to realize the fullness of the franchise began in the battles for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution after the Civil War that constituted our nation’s Second Founding. 1 It continued with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Native Americans were not granted full citizenship until the passage of the Snyder Act in 1924 and were not fully granted voting rights until Utah did so in 1962, the last state to formally guarantee the franchise to indigenous peoples. Nearly a decade later, amidst the Vietnam War in which the youngest Americans were drafted but could not vote, the 26th Amendment extended the franchise to 18-year-olds.

In calling for what has been known as mandatory attendance at the polls (the phrase makes clear that no citizen would be forced to vote for anyone against his or her will), and might now, with the spread of mail voting, be called mandatory participation in elections, we hope to underscore that rights and duties are intimately related. During Reconstruction and the Civil Rights eras, few reforms were more important or more empowering than the right of Black Americans to sit on juries. They demanded that they be included in the pool of those who might be required to sit through trials because their own liberties depended upon being included in the process of judging whether a fellow citizen would be jailed, fined, or set free. In the case of jury service, the right and the duty are one in the same. The same can be said of voting. The franchise, said a voting rights advocate of the Reconstruction era, is “an essential and inseparable part of self-government, and therefore natural and inalienable.” W.E.B. Du Bois saw voting as central to the larger aspiration of being treated as an equal, “a co-worker in the kingdom of culture.” 2

We also believe our proposals would pass constitutional scrutiny. Our report includes a careful and detailed legal analysis because the issue of the constitutionality has regularly arisen in debates over the idea. Knowing that it would face legal challenge if adopted, we examine the constitutional implications of various implementation and enforcement policies at every level of government. Universal civic duty voting, we argue, should survive legal challenges. It is consistent with our Constitution’s guarantees of free speech, robust forms of collective action, and effective government.

“A large majority of Americans share our view that voting is both a right and a duty.”

In the course of our report, we present public opinion data, gathered explicitly for this study by the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project. We freely acknowledge that—for now—there is far more opposition than support for the idea of requiring everyone to vote. At the same time, a large majority of Americans share our view that voting is both a right and a duty. Our conclusion from the data is that while nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose mandatory electoral participation, about half the country is at least open to persuasion, a significant opening for a novel concept that has never been advanced in an organized and energetic way. To begin this process, this report seeks to answer legitimate criticisms and practical objections. We propose, for example, that all who have a conscientious objection to voting and all who present any reasonable excuse for not doing so would be exempted from the obligation and any penalty. Voters would be free to return a blank or spoiled ballot, and a ‘None of the Above’ option would also be included.

We also address equity concerns related to penalties. Even small fines could be discriminatory against poor people, and immigrants’ rights activists raise legitimate concerns that inadvertent voting by noncitizens could subject them to unfair penalties. These concerns shaped our recommendations which make clear that the fine for not voting be very small and be set aside for those willing to meet a very modest community service requirement. The fine would be limited to no more than $20, it could not be compounded over time, nor would civil or criminal penalties be imposed for not paying the fine. If the experience in Australia and other nations with versions of compulsory voting can be taken as a guide, most nonvoters would never face a fine. We also detail protections for noncitizens to prevent exploitation of the system by public officials hostile to immigrants.

Our emphasis is not on imposing sanctions but on sending a strong message that voting is a legitimate expectation of citizenship. Nations that have embraced carefully implemented versions of universal civic duty voting have enjoyed dramatic increases in participation. “Compulsory voting makes democracy work better,” concluded Lisa Hill of the University of Adelaide, “enabling it to function as a social activity engaged in by all affected interests, not just a privileged elite.” 3

“Nations that have embraced carefully implemented versions of universal civic duty voting have enjoyed dramatic increases in participation.”

The country’s politics typically places the interests of older Americans over the interests of the younger generations—which, by definition, makes our system less forward-looking. This problem is aggravated by the under-representation of the young in the voting process. Their participation is held down by rules and requirements that are easier for older and more geographically settled Americans to follow and to meet. As part of our proposal to declare that all adults are required to vote, we propose many ideas, beginning with election day registration and an expansion of voting opportunities, that would welcome the young into full participation. Since the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is placing particular burdens on young Americans, especially those just entering the workforce, their engagement in the democratic project is more vital than ever.

Universal civic duty voting would also help ensure increased political participation in communities of color that have long confronted exclusion from our democracy. With the reforms that would necessarily accompany it, civic duty voting would permanently block voter suppression measures. The reprehensible police killing of George Floyd shocked the conscience of the nation and forced its attention to entrenched racial injustice. Floyd’s death, and those of Rayshard Brooks and Breonna Taylor, called forth large-scale protests around the country against police violence that has long been an enraging fact-of-life in Black neighborhoods. The new movement is demanding a thoroughgoing overhaul of policing but also a larger confrontation with racism. The demand for equal treatment has been reinforced by unequal suffering during a pandemic whose costs to health, life, and economic well-being have been borne disproportionately by communities of color. Voting rights, equal participation, and an end to exclusion from the tables of power are essential not only for securing reform, but also for creating the democratic conditions that would make social change durable. Police brutality, as an expression of systemic racism, is not merely about how Americans are policed but whose voices are heard on policing. Universal voting could amplify long voter-suppressed voices so that long-denied solutions to systemic racism are represented in the voting booth and enacted in legislatures.

“Universal civic duty voting would also help ensure increased political participation in communities of color that have long confronted exclusion from our democracy.”

“Give us the ballot,” Martin Luther King Jr. declared in 1957, “and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.” 4 As our nation opens its mind and its heart to forms of social reconstruction that were far removed from the public agenda only months ago, we believe that transformative adjustments to our voting system are now in order.

The new activism points to the need for a renewed civic life, and universal voting would assist in its rebirth. Citizens, political campaigns and civil rights and community organizations could move resources now spent on protecting the right to vote and increasing voter turnout to the task of persuading and educating citizens. Media consultants would no longer have an incentive to drive down the other side’s turnout, which only increases the already powerful forces working to make our campaigns highly negative in character. Candidates would be pushed to appeal beyond their own voter bases. This imperative would raise the political costs of invoking divisive rhetoric and vilifying particular groups. Low turnout is aggravated by the hyper-polarization in our political life that is so widely and routinely denounced. Intense partisans are drawn to the polls while those who are less ideologically committed and less fervent about specific issues are more likely to stay away. Of course, democratic politics will always involve clashes of interests and battles between competing, deeply held worldviews. But by magnifying the importance of persuasion, universal voting could begin to alter the tenor of our campaigns and encourage a politics that places greater stress on dialogue, empathy, and the common good. 5 And some citizens, initially empowered by their votes, would be drawn to deepen their participation in other aspects of civic life.

To say that everyone should vote is the surest guarantee that everyone will be enabled to vote. Stressing the obligation to participate will, we believe, expand the freedom to participate. As we will detail in these pages, civic duty voting must be accompanied by other voting reforms. They include automatic voter registration at state agencies; restoration of voting rights for citizens with felony convictions; early voting; expanded mail-in voting; and no-excuse absentee voting.

But we also need to recognize the disparities in American society that affect participation. This has been put in sharp focus in the 2020 primaries. The high turnout and willingness of voters to adapt to the changes in elections in the face of the pandemic deserves to be celebrated. But we must also recognize that barriers to voting were often concentrated in lower income and Black or Latinx communities, where turnout was suppressed by dramatically curtailed opportunities for in-person voting and distrust of voting by mail. “Long lines are voter suppression in action,” election lawyer Marc Elias observed—one reason the 2014 bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration insisted that no voter should have to wait more than 30 minutes to cast a ballot. 6

And while the polemics around easier voting have often taken on a partisan cast—the recriminations around the April 2020 primary and State Supreme Court election in Wisconsin in the midst of the pandemic are an unfortunate example—we would note that a number of Republican secretaries of state and many conservatives support mail ballots and other reforms to ease access to voting. Writing in National Review in support of broad participation through no-excuse absentee and drive-through voting during the pandemic, Rachel Kleinfeld and Joshua Kleinfeld warned: “The United States is already at high levels of polarization and historically low levels of trust in government and fellow citizens. We cannot afford an election our people don’t believe in.” 7 This captures the spirit behind our proposals.

“[Civic duty voting is] a full embrace of democracy: It insists that every citizen has a role to play in our nation’s public life and in constructing our future.”

Essential as these various enhancements and repairs to our system are, we believe that civic duty voting itself is the necessary prod to the changes we need because it would clarify the priorities of election officials at every point in the process: Their primary task is to allow citizens to embrace their duties, not to block their participation. We see it as a message to political leaders: It will encourage them to understand that their obligations extend to all Americans, not just to those they deem to be “likely voters.” And we see it as a full embrace of democracy: It insists that every citizen has a role to play in our nation’s public life and in constructing our future.

Our hope is that this report will spur national discussion in two spheres: the need to make our system more voter-friendly, and the obligation of citizens themselves to embrace the tasks of self-government. Ultimately, we hope our country as a whole can embrace this idea as a decisive step in our long struggle to ensure that all Americans are included in our Constitution’s most resonant phrase, “We, the people.”

This report was authored by the Universal Voting Working Group. The members of our Working Group have participated in meetings, conference calls, drafting, and editing in an 18-month path to this final report. While we may not all agree on every word in the report or every item in the recommendations section, we are all in agreement that the concept of making voting a universal civic duty in the United States would significantly enhance our democracy by broadening civic participation in all communities. We believe it is worthy of a broad public discussion, which we hope to initiate with this report. (Organizations are listed for identification purposes only.)

• E.J. Dionne Jr., The Brookings Institution
• Miles Rapoport, The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School

Working group members:

• Michelle Bishop, National Disability Rights Network
• Cornell William Brooks, Harvard Kennedy School
• Nick Chedli Carter, Resilient Democracy Fund*
• Allegra Chapman, Chapman Consulting and Common Cause
• Cheryl Clyburn Crawford, Mass VOTE
• Joshua A. Douglas, University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law
• Anthony Fowler, The University of Chicago
• Archon Fung, The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School
• William A. Galston, The Brookings Institution
• Amber Herrle, The Brookings Institution
• Cecily Hines, The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School
• María Teresa Kumar, Voto Latino
• Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, National Institute for Civil Discourse
• Thomas E. Mann, The Brookings Institution
• Terry Ao Minnis, Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
• Janai Nelson, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
• Nick Nyhart, Nyhart Consulting
• Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute
• Andre M. Perry, The Brookings Institution
• Whitney Quesenbery, Center for Civic Design
• Ian Simmons, Blue Haven Initiative*
• Shane P. Singh, University of Georgia
• Tova Wang, The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School
• Dorian Warren, Community Change
• Brenda Wright, Demos

An asterisk denotes organizations that contributed financial support.

Brookings, Harvard, and the working group members are grateful for the financial support provided for this project by the Carnegie Corporation, the Resilient Democracy Fund, and the Blue Haven Initiative. This report reflects the views of its authors and not those of the Brookings Institution, the Ash Center, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, or Harvard University.

• See Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (New York: Norton, 2019).
• Foner, p. 94-95.
• Lisa Hill, “Compulsory Voting Defended,” in Jason Brennan and Lisa Hill, Compulsory Voting: For and Against (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 197.
• King quoted in Barbara Arnwine and John Nichols, “Martin Luther King’s Call to ‘Give Us the Ballot’ Is As Relevant Today as It was in 1957,” The Nation, January, 15, 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/martin-luther-kings-call-to-give-us-the-ballot-is-as-relevant-today-as-it-was-in-1957/tnamp/.
• This section draws on William A. Galston and E. J. Dionne Jr., “The case for universal voting: Why making voting a duty would enhance our elections and improve our government,” The Brookings Institution Center for Effective Public Management (September 2015).
• Marc Elias tweet is available here: https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1273616769706602496?s=21.
• Joshua Kleinfeld and Rachel Kleinfeld, “How to Hold Elections during a Pandemic,” April 7, 2020, https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-response-holding-elections-during-pandemic/.

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'Should Voting Be Compulsory? Democracy and the Ethics of Voting'

The ethics of voting have received relatively little attention from philosophers and political scientists, though they are far more complicated than one might have supposed. It is hard to draw a sharp line between the principles that might justify adopting or rejecting compulsory voting, and the evaluation of individual and collective behaviour within those rules. Resolving disputes about compulsory voting, therefore, requires us to decide when, if ever, people are morally entitled to vote on sectarian identities and interests, rather than for the ‘common good’ of their fellow citizens; when, if ever, they are morally entitled to vote on altruistic, rather than self-interested, concerns; and when, if ever, they may vote strategically, rather than sincerely. We do not yet have good answers to these questions. Above all, it is difficult to resolve disputes over the ethics of voting in general, and compulsory voting in particular, without relating the conceptions of rights, duty, freedom and equality involved to those in other areas of moral and political philosophy, and to more empirical work on voting, on comparative public policy and political economy. This chapter explains why this is the case.

Related Papers

PhD Dissertation

Anthoula Malkopoulou

My doctoral dissertation examines the political and conceptual arguments on compulsory voting in French, Belgian and Greek parliamentary debates from 1848 onwards. The constitutional, legislative and scholarly discussions under consideration feature a mélange of ideological views and party interests, which bridge the gap between formal political thought and everyday political practice. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (1870-1926), growing electoral abstention, caused partly by the extension of franchise, led to the search of an effective tool of political inclusion. More specifically, compulsory voting was meant to integrate mainly the demotivated conservatives, but also to prevent forced abstention of workers, organized election boycotts and other problems specific to the historical context. Proponents of the reform in the three countries drew on ideas such as the organic principle of voting function, the ideal of 'mirror' representativeness (Belgium), the educative aspects of electoral participation, civic responsibility, political solidarity and the need for parliamentary stability (France), as well as the ancient ideal of participatory self-government (Greece). Opponents, on the other hand, emphasized the involuntary nature of such a binding obligation, their contempt for disinterested citizens and the manipulative potential of such a measure. Moving forward to the late 1990s, contemporary debates have underlined the tension between, on one hand, the individual freedom to abstain and, on the other, the need for democratic inclusiveness and effective equality of voting chances, especially with respect to disadvantaged groups in society. The question of compulsory voting remains a matter of endless political and ideological dispute: from a theoretical point of view it is linked with the inherent liberty-versus-equality paradox of democratic representation, while in practical terms it relates to electoral-system design and partisan interests, which are embedded in their specific political and social contexts.

American Journal of Political Science

Emilee Chapman

In this article, I defend compulsory voting on the grounds that it reinforces the distinctive and valuable role that elections play in contemporary democracy. Some scholars have suggested that mandatory voting laws can improve government responsiveness to members of poor and marginalized groups who are less likely to vote. Critics of compulsory voting object that citizens can participate in a wide variety of ways; voting is not important enough to justify forcing people to do it. These critics neglect the importance of voting’s particular role in contemporary democratic practice, though. The case for compulsory voting rests on an implicit, but widely shared, understanding of elections as special moments of mass participation that manifest the equal political authority of all citizens. The most prominent objections to mandatory voting fail to appreciate this distinctive role for voting and the way it is embedded within a broader democratic framework.

British Journal of Political Science 40.4 (2010) 897-915

Annabelle Lever

Should voting be compulsory? This question has recently gained the attention of political scientists, politicians and philosophers, many of whom believe that countries, like Britain, which have never had compulsion, ought to adopt it. The arguments are a mixture of principle and political calculation, reflecting the idea that compulsory voting is morally right and that it is will prove beneficial. This article casts a sceptical eye on the claims, by emphasizing how complex political morality and strategy can be. Hence, I show, while there are good reasons to worry about voter turnout in established democracies, and to worry about inequalities of turnout as well, the case for compulsory voting is unpersuasive.

Political Research Quarterly

Alexandru Volacu

In this article I aim to show that compulsory voting cannot be defended on democratic grounds. In pursuing this task, I first offer a generic account of the democratic argument in favour of compulsory voting, drawing on some of the most salient recent defences of a moral duty to vote. I then offer an overarching objection which defeats both the generic form of the democratic argument for compulsory voting and its various operationalizations. The crux of the objection is that the democratic justification of a moral duty to vote is parasitical upon the existence of a moral duty to vote well. This decisively undermines the democratic argument for compulsory voting, since the latter can only be deployed as an enforcement mechanism for a duty to vote, regardless of the substantive content of that vote.

adem caylak , Murat Kaçer

Compulsory voting is a law, enacted against low turnout rates in elections in modern democracies and political inequality in society. However, the fact that voting is closely related to nature of sovereignty has brought questions about whether it is a right or a duty to vote at this point. It is expressed that it is not democratic to force an individual to use something that his or her right, and therefore it is an interference with the freedom and will of the individual and compulsory voting is being opposed. On the other hand, it is argued that voting is a duty and responsibility, such as payin taxes, and that compulsory voting is justifiable in democracies when considering its role in educating individuals, democracy and legitimacy. This study deals with compulsory voting which has not been examined in Turkey itself, as far as known. In this context, the definition and historical development of compulsory voting, and the arguments for and against it will be analyzed comparatively. It will also be discussed compulsory voting in the world, how it is enforced and what sanctions are foreseen, what alternative practices are envisaged instead of compulsory voting. In addition, the development of the electoral system and compulsory 1 This study was produced from a section of master's thesis titled " Voting: A Citizen's Right, or Duty? Legitimizing Compulsory Voting " written by Murat Kaçer under the supervision of Prof. Adem Çaylak

British Journal of Political Science

Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory, Vol. 15

In the late 1990s, the debate on compulsory voting came back again, after almost a century of silence. Postwar democratic theory had focused on the dangers of demagogic manipulation of mass participation and often portrayed citizens as ignorant and self-interested. This elitist critique of elections has been coupled with arguments from the side of participatory democracy, which describe elections as a ritualistic formality that is unfrequent and insufficient in capturing the will of the people. Drawing on this original pool of arguments against elections, opposition to compulsory voting has been dominating in the last decades. To challenge the status quo, this article presents the normative arguments in support of the idea through the discussion of four main principles: 1) political liberty 2) equal representation 3) civic literacy and 4) democratic legitimacy. At the core of each of these categories lie certain concepts whose content and relevance are challenged from opposing viewpoints.

Public Policy Review responses, Sept. 2009

In the last issue of Public Policy Review Sarah Birch argued that Britain should make voting compulsory, and that the law should actively enforce legal duties to turnout at elections. She argues that ‘governments need to have democratic legitimacy to pull countries through difficult times’, and that low turnout threatens that legitimacy. Moreover, she claims, ‘economic stress exacerbates perceptions of social inequality’, and suggests that if alienated groups do not see Parliament as a means to improve their lot, they will turn to extra-parliamentary ways of doing so. These arguments rest an enormous weight on high levels of voting at elections, and overlook the fact that if enough people vote for the opposition, high turnout may undermine, rather than enhance, the legitimacy of a government. Fortunately, the crux of Birch’s argument is that commitments to political fairness, social fairness and procedural fairness require Britain to adopt mandatory voting, and these look more plausible. Nonetheless, as we will see, they fail to justify compulsory voting or turnout.

Julia Maskivker

Paul Sheehy

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Column: What if every American were required — by law — to vote?

Proponents of mandatory voting say it would strengthen democracy and make America’s politics less awful.

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What if everyone in America had to vote?

No lame excuses like all politicians are the same, or one person’s vote really doesn’t matter, or the dog ate my ballot.

There are roughly two dozen countries requiring what is gently called “mandatory attendance at the polls” and two would-be reformers would like the United States to join those ranks, though they readily concede the odds of that happening are exceedingly steep.

“If it’s hard to get people vaccinated to save their lives, you might imagine it might be hard to get them to accept this,” said E.J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of several prescriptive books on politics. Still, he said, it’s well worth trying.

His partner in advocacy, Miles Rapoport , is a longtime promoter of good-government initiatives, a liberal activist and former Connecticut secretary of state.

Together, they produced a slim volume, “100% Democracy, The Case for Universal Voting,” which makes their case for why every eligible American should have to take part in elections, from the local level to the White House. While no cure-all, the change would go a meaningful distance toward strengthening our democracy and making our politics somewhat less awful , they suggest.

Column: ‘It’s a calling.’ It’s also scary. That’s why so many election officials are quitting

A new poll finds a growing sense of menace as Trump and followers press the “big lie” of a stolen 2020 election.

March 15, 2022

“Why do we have required jury service?” Rapoport asked. “Because we want the guilt or innocence of people and the appropriate punishment to be decided by a jury of their peers. Meaning... a representative sampling of all the people.”

Why then, he went on, shouldn’t government decisions that affect our lives be based on the broadest consensus — that is the highest number of voters choosing our elected leaders — as possible?

As part of a barnstorming tour, the two recently swung by UC Berkeley, where, on an unseasonably warm afternoon, they settled into red leather chairs in a stuffy campus library to pitch an audience of roughly 25 students and academics.

Dionne, who combines keen intellect with an impish wit, went first.

Think of elections, he said, as “a fancy dinner party” with A-list, B-list and C-list guests. The A-listers are those voters who reliably show up every election and receive the overwhelming majority of attention from candidates and their campaign strategists. The B-listers are occasional voters and C-listers are the unregistered and habitually inattentive. They get table scraps.

“There is a vicious cycle there,” Dionne said, “because if the political system never reaches out to you, it is much more likely that you will not participate.”

One result of that segmentation and stratification is what the authors called “enrage to engage,” or stoking anger among a party’s most ardent supporters to ensure they turn out while, at the same, working to keep backers of the other side from voting.

Increased polarization is one insidious consequence. Candidates would behave differently, Rapoport said, if they knew every eligible voter was going to participate in an election.

“You can’t just do your messaging to gin up your base and discourage the other people’s base,” he said. “You’ve got to make an appeal to all of the voters and I think that would be extremely healthy.”

The two argued that mandatory voting would also dispense with efforts to suppress turnout, which has become a strategy in some Republican-run states.

“Our view is that making voting a civic and legal duty is the best way to defend it as a right,” Dionne said. “Because as soon as you make voting a duty, like jury duty, that everyone has to engage in, it becomes incumbent on the entire political system to make it as easy as possible.”

(As for the notion that higher turnout necessarily benefits Democrats, the two pointed to November’s election in Virginia, where a surge in turnout helped lift Republicans, including underdog Gov. Glenn Youngkin, to victory ).

On to the details.

The two propose a $20 fine for those who fail to cast a ballot, a manner of “light touch enforcement” they said has proven more effective in Australia, among other countries with mandatory voting laws, than heavier-handed tactics.

Elections would include a none-of-the-above option, sparing voters from having to choose one or another truly off-putting candidate.

Those with genuinely sincere reasons for refusing to vote, such as religious belief, could claim “conscientious objector” status and do some form of community service to make up for their election day absence.

Questions from the audience were friendly, if somewhat skeptical. They mainly ran along the lines of how to force people to vote when, during a pandemic that has killed nearly 1 million Americans, so many pitch a fit over covering their nose and mouth to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Their answer: Start small. Try it at the local, then state levels before working up to a national voting requirement.

Column: Alaska just changed its election system to weed out hard-liners. Maybe other states should too

Ranked-choice voting is an effort to reduce political polarization. Let’s see if it works.

Jan. 28, 2022

Admittedly, the concept of mandatory voting seems radical, Dionne said. But so, too, did many things Americans now take for granted, including the rights of women and Black Americans to vote, as well as the cherished right to cast a secret ballot. (It was only around the 1890s that the practice came into widespread use.)

“At the beginning of our republic, only white men with property could vote,” Dionne noted. “It was a radical notion to keep expanding suffrage, but we did and it was good for democracy. We think our proposal is the next logical step in our great national tradition of expanding access to and participation for democracy.”

The idea is to make people work a little harder at being a good citizen and force politicians to quit dividing to conquer. That’s got my vote.

One in an occasional series on proposals to fix our politics and strengthen democracy.

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Get the latest from Mark Z. Barabak

Focusing on politics out West, from the Golden Gate to the U.S. Capitol.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Mark Z. Barabak is a political columnist for the Los Angeles Times, focusing on California and the West. He has covered campaigns and elections in 49 of the 50 states, including a dozen presidential contests and scores of mayoral, legislative, gubernatorial and congressional races. He also reported from the White House and Capitol Hill during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.

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Tim Walz is a car guy — and works on his own 1979 Scout SUV. Will it help him with voters?

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2 The Consequences of Compulsory Voting

• Published: August 2021
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This chapter reviews the growing literature on compulsory voting’s consequences. Compulsory voting has an unsurprising upward impact on voter participation, which lessens the impact of many socioeconomic and demographic forerunners of turnout, thereby making the composition of the voting population better reflect the distribution of eligible voters. Further, invalid balloting tends to be more common under compulsory voting. Compelled voters are also less likely to cast ballots that correspond with their preferences. Many studies indicate that mandatory voting has an educative effect and can socialize people into political engagement, with others casting strong doubt on this possibility. A small number of studies have assessed whether compulsory voting shapes attitudes, election outcomes, the behavior of political parties, policy characteristics, and income growth and inequality, with few clear patterns yet established. Compulsory voting laws have the greatest impact where sanctions for abstention are enforced and meaningful.

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A Feasible Roadmap to Compulsory Voting

The policy has been dismissed as an impossible pipe dream, but, if applied at the municipal level first, that could change.

Not enough people vote. It’s a perennial source of concern in American politics. There’s no shortage of reforms designed to address the problem, but one idea that seems particularly promising, at least in theory, is compulsory voting. It would produce much higher turnout for the obvious reason that it requires people to vote. It’s long been dismissed, though, as an impossible pipe dream, unlikely to ever happen in the United States. But if reformers were to start at the municipal level, they could set into motion forces that might lead to its nationwide adoption.

Start with some statistics: In years with presidential elections, voter turnout peaks at just above 60 percent. In off-year elections, turnout dips to 40 percent or less. In November 2014, only 36 percent of eligible voters went to the polls—the lowest share in more than 70 years . Participation this paltry calls into question the political system’s legitimacy. It also hints that election outcomes might be quite different if more people bothered to show up.

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There are many policies that, if implemented, would increase turnout. Extended early and absentee voting would lengthen the period for casting ballots. Automatic voter registration would add drivers to the rolls when they apply for licenses. And moving Election Day to Saturday would make it easier for full-time employees to participate. But the most obvious way to get more people to vote doesn’t attract nearly enough attention. It’s to oblige people to vote.

Compulsory voting isn’t as draconian as it sounds. No one is dragged to the polls against his or her will, and no one is thrown in jail for refusing to cast a ballot. Instead, a modest fine (about $20 in Australia) is levied on people who fail to show up and have no good excuse for their absence. There also isn’t any danger of political speech being compelled—a no-no under the First Amendment. People are free to do what they like with their ballots, including turning them in blank.

To find out what effect compulsory voting has on turnout, I used data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance to compare participation rates in countries that do and don’t require voting. Between 1945 and 2015, turnout hovered around 85 percent in compulsory voting countries (like Australia, Belgium, and Brazil). But it fell from 75 percent  to 65 percent in countries with voluntary voting. Results like these may be why President Obama recently said, “If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.”

Turnout in Countries With Compulsory vs. Voluntary Voting

There is an air of unreality, though, to proposals to import compulsory voting to the United States. They resemble, at first glance, several other ideas favored by goo-goo reformers but by few others: proportional representation, public financing of elections, and the like. It’s hard to imagine a gridlocked Washington, vote-suppressing red states, or even risk-averse blue states, passing any of these laws.

But compulsory voting actually has a viable path to enactment. The trick is to harness the partisanship that runs through U.S. politics, and to exploit the system’s multiple levels of government. First Democrats and then Republicans, first at the local and then at the state or federal level, could be induced to support the policy.

To start, a blue city in a purple state—such as Miami, Florida, Columbus, Ohio, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—would have to adopt compulsory voting for its own elections. Its elections would also have to be held on the first Tuesday in November, allowing voters to cast ballots in municipal, state, and federal elections at the same time.

Why would the city make this switch? Partly to save money; it’s cheaper to administer one election than two or three. Partly because higher participation is itself a democratic good. But also for the sake of partisan advantage. Registered non-voters lean substantially more Democratic than registered voters. If they were required to go to the polls, election outcomes would shift markedly to the left.

At this point, redder jurisdictions would face enormous pressure to follow the blue city’s lead. Not doing so would award the Democrats an electoral bonanza: a surge in turnout in their urban stronghold unmatched by greater participation in suburbs and exurbs. To get a sense of how strong the Republicans’ incentive would be, think back to the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, both of which came down to a single swing state. Bush prevailed in Florida and again in Ohio. But he likely wouldn’t have won if Miami and Columbus had required all their eligible voters to go to the polls.

Importantly, it’s easier for a single city to adopt compulsory voting than for myriad suburbs and exurbs to follow suit. This collective action problem is why compulsory voting probably wouldn’t stay at the local level for long. Red states, in particular, would find it in their interest to impose statewide voting mandates. By requiring all eligible voters to participate, they would stop a few blue municipalities from benefiting at the expense of the many red ones. And once red states jumped on the bandwagon, it’s unlikely that blue states—or the federal government—would lag far behind.

Are there problems with this plan? Sure. For one, blue cities may not want to switch to compulsory voting. Higher turnout may be good for Democrats in the abstract, but it’s not necessarily good for current incumbents. For another, red states could respond to the blue city experiments by banning compulsory voting. From their perspective, statewide bans may be preferable to statewide mandates since lower turnout tends to favor Republicans.

But these issues aren’t deal breakers. Mayors and city council members are reelected at extremely high rates . So some of them might be willing to tolerate a bit more electoral uncertainty for the sake of reduced cost, enhanced legitimacy, and partisan gain. If local officials remain reluctant to roll the dice, Democrats in state and federal offices (who have the most to gain from compulsory voting) could assuage their fears by dangling the usual rewards for political cooperation: campaign funds, endorsements, appointments, and the like.

And if red states were to ban compulsory voting, they might run into constitutional problems. In recent cases, courts have been skeptical of states’ efforts to eliminate local policies aimed at increasing turnout. It would also take unified Republican control of the state government for a ban to be feasible. Such control is absent in swing states like Colorado, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. And many states grant “home rule” (or broad policymaking authority) to their towns and counties. State interference with local electoral choices is suspect under this regime.

Compulsory voting, then, is not as far-fetched an idea as it might seem. For it to take root in America, all that’s necessary is for a single city (in the right state) to take the plunge. Partisan forces would then promote the policy’s rapid spread. And the same dynamic would apply not just to compulsory voting, but to any turnout-boosting policy a city might adopt. So to transform American politics, the best advice might be to forget about the national picture—and instead, think local.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Voter Turnout — The Importance of Compulsory Voting

The Importance of Compulsory Voting

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Democracy and voter turnout, promoting equal representation, encouraging civic engagement.

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The Importance of Protecting Voting Rights for Voter Turnout and Economic   Well-Being

By Chair Cecilia Rouse, Matthew Maury, and Jeffery Zhang

Since January 2021, 18 states have enacted 30 separate laws that many analysts believe will make it more difficult to vote. In addition, over 400 bills that would make voting more difficult are being considered in State legislatures. These enacted and proposed laws include vote-by-mail restrictions, restrictions on early voting, and broader authority for purges of voter rolls. An often-cited reason for these bills and laws is voter fraud, yet voter fraud is extremely rare . Insidiously, these laws disproportionately undermine the ability of people of color to vote. Moreover, voters’ waiting times in predominately Black neighborhoods are already 29 percent longer than in predominately white neighborhoods. In this blog post, we outline research that has been done on the impact of voting rights on election turnout and on the economic well-being of Black Americans. As State legislatures consider weakening voter protections and as Congress debates new voting rights laws, we hope that the evidence presented here proves informative for lawmakers. 

Research sheds light on this issue by analyzing the historical impact of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Johnson. Section 5 requires jurisdictions—determined by a formula in the Act’s Section 4(b)—to obtain approval from the U.S. Attorney General or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before changing any election practices. In doing so, Section 5 seeks to ensure that such changes do not have a discriminatory effect—a process known as “preclearance.” The purpose of this preclearance process was to stop discriminatory election changes before they could be implemented in jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory treatment of people of color at the polls. In 2013, however, the Supreme Court held in Shelby County v. Holder that Section 4(b) was unconstitutional because the data used to justify Section 4(b) were outdated, thus rendering Section 5 toothless in all the jurisdictions it had once covered. While Section 5 is still on the books, the nine states, 53 counties across five states, and two townships once covered are no longer subject to the preclearance requirement.

In particular, the research discussed here assesses the impact of Section 5 on electoral turnout and wages by comparing these outcomes before and after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in covered versus noncovered counties. Recent research also includes analysis of the Shelby decision’s impact in formerly covered counties.

Voter Turnout

The vast majority of academic research supports the notion that the Voting Rights Act increased voter turnout. [1] One study, by Aneja and Avenancio-León (2020) , compares changes in turnout in covered versus noncovered counties before and after the Act’s passage in 1965. Crucially, this study compares covered and noncovered counties that share a border, and it provides substantial economic and voter-characteristic data indicating that these neighboring counties were alike. As such, the study compares voter turnout in counties that, apart from variations in Section 5 coverage, were very similar. The authors find that Section 5 increased turnout from 1968 to 1980 by 6.5 to 11.5 percentage points per election, with a jurisdiction’s turnout increasing by 2 percent for every 10 percent increase in its population share that was Black.

Another study, by Ang (2019) , assesses the impact of Section 5 from 1976 to 2016. This study looks at newly covered versus noncovered counties after the 1975 Voting Rights Act amendment, which expanded protection to include more nonwhite groups. The study shows that Section 5 had a significant and substantially positive impact on voter turnout in each general election from 1976 to 2016. [2] In the 1976 and 1980 general elections, Section 5’s coverage increased turnout by 1 to 2 percentage points; and in each general election from 1984 to 2016, its coverage increased turnout by about 4 to 8 percentage points. To put the significance of this impact in perspective, the study’s author estimates that Section 5 increased 2012 turnout in covered counties by 8.1 percentage points. That same year, average turnout was 54.9 percent, meaning that about 15 percent of turnout in covered counties was attributable to Section 5. Moreover, the increase of 4 to 8 percentage points was driven entirely by higher nonwhite turnout; coverage had no observable impact on white turnout, but nonwhite turnout grew by 7.5 to 20 percentage points from 1984 to 2016.

While the analysis by Ang (2019) ends with the 2016 election, it provisionally supports the hypothesis that the Shelby decision decreased voter turnout. Comparing the 2012–16 change in turnout in covered counties with the 2012–16 change in noncovered counties, the study shows that on average, previously covered counties had a decrease in turnout of 1.5 percentage points. This outcome was the consequence of reduced turnout among nonwhite voters. Turnout did not decrease among white voters from 2012 to 2016 in previously covered counties relative to noncovered counties, but turnout among nonwhite voters decreased by 2.1 percentage points in covered relative to noncovered counties over the same period.

Research has yet to decisively explore the causes of these changes, but there are at least three plausible and non–mutually exclusive explanations for this lower turnout in previously covered counties. First, after the Shelby decision,there was a substantial decrease in the number of polling places in previously covered jurisdictions. One study finds that at least 868 polling places in formerly covered counties were shut down in the aftermath of Shelby , which amounted to a 16 percent reduction in polling places in the 381 counties analyzed. Because this study only examines data for 381 of the roughly 800 counties once covered by Section 5, the actual number of polling places that closed after Shelby could be higher than 868. Indeed, a follow-up study examining over 85 percent of formerly covered counties finds that there were 1,688 polling place closures after Shelby .

Before the Shelby decision, each of these counties would have needed to obtain approval before closing a polling place. That was because Section 5 required proof that the closure would not have a racially discriminatory effect. Moreover, localities needed to notify voters of polling place closures ahead of time. Shelby made it easier to make these closures. Given the close link between distance to a polling place and one’s ability to vote, Shelby ’s adverse impact on voter turnout may have been at least partially due to these closures. Indeed, in a study that makes use of random differences in the distance between eligible voters’ homes and their nearest polling place, Cantoni (2020) estimates that increasing distance to the polls by approximately a quarter mile would decrease election turnout by 2 to 5 percent. Moreover, the study finds that distance to the polls has a particularly adverse impact on turnout by people of color and low-income individuals. For example, in nonpresidential elections, the impact of increasing distance to the polls in disproportionately nonwhite areas is three times greater than in predominately white areas.

Second, Section 5’s rollback may have increased purges of voters from registration rolls. Since the Shelby decision, formerly covered counties have increased the share of voters purged by at least 25 percent relative to noncovered counties. Studies estimate that if this increase had not occurred, there would have been 3.1 million fewer purges from 2013 to 2018. Notably, voter purges have a mixed record of accurately removing voters who should be removed from registration records, with some purge strategies registering an error rate of over 99 percent .

Third, the Shelby decision made it easier to pass and implement voting rights restrictions. Within two months of the decision, North Carolina passed a law that reduced early voting, narrowed the voter registration window, and imposed a strict photo ID requirement, among other voting restrictions. While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ultimately struck down this law in 2016 for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution, the law would not have been implemented in the first place pre- Shelby . In fact, the North Carolina legislature waited until after Shelby to vote on the legislation; after the ruling, a State Senate committee chair remarked , “So, now we can go with the full bill.” More generally, from 1998 until Shelby in 2013 , Section 5 blocked 86 voting laws from taking effect, and 13 such laws were blocked from 2012 to 2013 alone.

To be sure, economic research indicates that not all potentially restrictive voter laws have the same magnitude of impact. As already noted, increasing distance to the polls has sizable and statistically significant adverse impacts on voter turnout. Evidence further indicates that expansions of early voting and switching to all-mail elections expand turnout. Kaplan and Yuan (2020) use cross-county increases and decreases in the number of days of early voting in Ohio to estimate that each additional day of early voting increases turnout by 0.22 percentage point. Moreover, Gerber, Huber, and Hill (2013) use cross-county variation in implementing Washington State’s all-mail elections to estimate that the system boosted turnout by 2 to 4 percentage points. Evidence on voter ID laws is less straightforward. On one hand, some evidence indicates that these laws reduce turnout. Esposito, Focanti, and Hastings (2019) find that a voter ID law in Rhode Island decreased voter registration and turnout for people without driver’s licenses by 7.6 and 2.7 percentage points, respectively. Further, GAO (2014) examines voter turnout between the 2008 and 2012 general elections in Kansas and Tennessee, which adopted voter ID laws, and concludes that the measures decreased turnout by 1.9 to 3.2 percentage points. On the other hand, a compelling, systematic study by Cantoni and Pons (2021) finds that voter ID laws have no statistically significant impact on voter turnout. The researchers also find that voter ID laws increase the likelihood that nonwhite voters are contacted by a political campaign by 4.7 percentage points, and theorize that this heightened outreach may have increased nonwhite turnout. The paper concludes that “mobilization against strict ID laws might have offset direct negative effects on the participation of ethnic minorities of about one third of a percentage point.” [3]

Economic Status

Multiple studies find that an enhanced ability to vote leads to improved economic status. For example, by examining the impact of Section 5 on the Black/white wage gap from 1950 to 1980, the study by Aneja and Avenancio-León (2020) estimates that Section 5 decreased the wage gap by a statistically significant 5.5 percentage points. In their sample, the Black/white pay gap narrowed from about 55 percent in 1960 to 80 percent in 1980, meaning that the impact of the Voting Rights Act on the pay gap accounted for roughly one-fifth of the narrowing of the Black/white pay gap during that period. A pay increase of this magnitude would be equivalent to the median Black worker’s annual income increasing by over $2,700 in 2020.

If we can expect stronger voting rights protections and greater enfranchisement to yield more economic benefits for Black families, then we can also expect Black families to have suffered economically after the Shelby decision. Recent evidence shows this is indeed what occurred. Another study by Aneja and Avenancio-León (2019) finds that for each 1 percentage point increase in the share of a county’s population that is Black, the Section 5 rollback increased the private sector Black/white wage gap by 0.49 to 0.59 percentage point, and increased the public sector wage gap by 0.65 to 0.80 percentage point. The authors obtain these results by comparing trends in the Black/white wage gap in pairs of counties that share a border, where one county was previously covered by Section 5 and the other was not. The results imply that for a previously covered county with a 15 percent pre- Shelby Black population share that borders a noncovered county, removing coverage decreased private sector wages for Black workers by 7.3 to 8.9 percentage points, relative to wages for white workers.

Due to the relative recency of the Shelby decision, specific explanations for this observed backslide are currently understudied. However, research suggests a few potential pathways through which the Voting Rights Act narrowed the Black/white wage gap in the 20th century. First, Section 5 directly increased Black employment in the public sector by about 3.8 percentage points. The combination of this increase with 18 percentage point higher wages for government jobs accounts for about 10 percent of the observed increase in Black wages directly attributable to the Act.

Second, this direct increase in demand and pay boosted competition for Black workers within the private sector. This competition-based impact on private sector wages explains about 29 to 35 percent of the decrease in the private sector Black/white wage gap after the Act’s passage.

Third, the Voting Rights Act complemented and strengthened antidiscrimination employment provisions in the Civil Rights Act. Jurisdictions covered by Section 5 saw increased private sector antidiscrimination legal action relative to comparable noncovered jurisdictions. Also, the observed impact of Section 5 on the private sector wage gap was greater in areas with more enforcement action by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 

The Voting Rights Act also may well have raised wages by enhancing school quality and improving the treatment of Black people by law enforcement agencies. Research by Cascio and Washington (2013) shows a link between the Voting Rights Act and improved school quality. Specifically, these researchers demonstrate that for the average county in a State that previously had literacy tests, the Act’s increase in Black voter turnout is associated with a 16.4 percent increase in State transfers to local governments. A total of 63 percent of such funds went to education spending, with school quality particularly improving for Black children. Given the evidence that increased school quality leads to higher wages ( Card and Krueger 1992 ), this likely improved subsequent labor market outcomes as well.

In addition, research shows that the Voting Rights Act led to better treatment of Black people by law enforcement agencies. For every increase of 10 percentage points in the share of the population that was Black in counties covered by Section 5, there was a reduction of 17 to 23 percent in the growth rate of arrests of Black people, relative to noncovered counties. There were no corresponding effects for arrest rates of white people. This effect was not attributable to changes in factors that could influence crime rates—such as migration patterns, education levels, and labor market conditions—but was instead due to lower misdemeanor arrests by police departments with elected sheriffs. Due to the close link between misdemeanor offenses and lower wages, the Voting Rights Act may have improved the economic well-being of Black communities through this channel as well.

More generally, evidence suggests that the composition of an electorate affects whether the lawmakers representing it vote in line with the electorate’s policy preferences, both by affecting who is elected and by making an impact on how lawmakers vote once they are in office. As such, a higher share of Black voters will generally increase the likelihood that lawmakers in office promote the interests—including the economic interests—of Black communities.

This blog post has described the benefits of voter protection for improving the ability of people of color to vote, and has outlined the connection of this right to the economic well-being of Black Americans. Expanded voting rights and voting protections have played a crucial role in enhancing voter turnout, particularly for people of color. Further, while voting rights are often examined through a legal, civil rights lens, it is important to also understand the types of economic harm that are inflicted when voting rights are curtailed.

[1] Relatedly, voter registration—a prerequisite for voting—among Black Americans in the South increased markedly after the Voting Rights Act’s passage. Comparing 1964 with 1968—that is, before and after passage of the Act—voter registration among Black Americans increased by an average of 19 percent in States that did not have literacy tests before the Act, and by 67 percent in States that had literacy tests before the Act. Literacy tests were employed by local governments to disenfranchise those without access to education.

[2] The study also finds that Section 5 coverage boosted the electoral success of Republican political candidates. The author hypothesizes that the share of the Republican vote increased due to “political backlash among racially conservative whites.”

[3] Despite the prevalence of citing voter fraud as a reason for enacting voter ID laws, the study further finds no actual or perceived impact of voter ID laws on voter fraud.

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Pros and Cons of Compulsory Voting

Australia is well-known for its compulsory voting laws

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Over 20 countries have some form of compulsory voting, which requires citizens to register to vote and go to their polling place or vote on Election Day .  

With secret ballots, it's not really possible to prove who has or has not voted, so this process could be more accurately called "compulsory turnout" because voters are required to show up at their polling place on Election Day.

Facts About Compulsory Voting

One of the most well-known compulsory voting systems is in Australia. All Australian citizens over the age of 18 (except those of unsound mind or those convicted of serious crimes) must be registered to vote and show up at their designated polling place on Election Day. Australians who do not abide by this directive are subject to fines, although those who were ill or otherwise incapable of voting can have their fines waived.  

Compulsory voting in Australia was adopted in the state of Queensland in 1915 and subsequently adopted nationwide in 1924. With Australia's compulsory voting system comes additional flexibility for the voter. Elections are held on Saturdays, absent voters can vote in any state polling place, and voters in remote areas can vote before an election at pre-poll voting centers or via mail.  

Voter turnout of those registered to vote in Australia reached less than 60% prior to the 1924 compulsory voting law.   In the decades since 1925, voter turnout has never been less than 91%.  

In 1924, Australian officials felt that compulsory voting would eliminate voter apathy. However, compulsory voting now has its detractors. The Australian Electoral Commission provides some arguments in favor of and against compulsory voting.

Arguments in Favor

• Voting is a civic duty comparable to other duties citizens perform (e.g. taxation, compulsory education, or jury duty).
• Parliament reflects more accurately the "will of the electorate."
• Governments must consider the total electorate in policy formulation and management.
• Candidates can concentrate their campaigning energies on issues, rather than encouraging voters to attend the poll.
• The voter isn't actually compelled to vote for anyone because voting is by secret ballot.

Arguments Used Against Compulsory Voting

• Some suggest that it is undemocratic to force people to vote and is an infringement of liberty.
• The "ignorant" and those with little interest in politics are forced to the polls.
• It may increase the number of "donkey votes" (votes for a random candidate by people who feel that they are required to vote by law).
• It may increase the number of informal votes (ballot papers that are not marked according to the rules for voting).
• Resources must be allocated to determine whether those who failed to vote have "valid and sufficient" reasons.

Additional References

"Compulsory Voting." Australian Electoral Commission, May 18, 2011.

" Appendix G - Countries With Compulsory Voting ." Parliament of Australia.

" Enrolling to Vote ." Australian Electoral Commission.

" Voting Before Election Day ." Australian Electoral Commission.

Barber, Stephen. " Federal Election Results 1901-2016 ." Parliament of Australia, 31 Mar. 2017.

" Voter Turnout - 2016 House of Representatives and Senate Elections ." Australian Electoral Commission.

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The Case for Compulsory Voting in the United States

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America Needs Compulsory Voting

A little coercion can do a lot for democracy, by anthony fowler.

Electoral participation in the United States lags far behind that in other developed democracies. Typically, about six in ten eligible voters have cast ballots in recent presidential elections—and turnout rates for midterms, primaries, and state and local elections are lower still.

A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that large majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree that high voter turnout in presidential and local elections is very important. But how legitimately can Americans claim that their government is “of the people, by the people, for the people,” when close to half of their fellow citizens don’t participate in the political process at all?

PERSISTENT UNDERREPRESENTATION

Even more troubling than abysmal voter turnout, though, is the extent to which young, low-income, and minority groups and interests are underrepresented in the political process. Analyzing data from the 2014 midterm elections, I found that 67-year-olds had more than six times the electoral influence of 18-year-olds—despite the fact that the younger group was larger. Old, wealthy, and white communities consistently vote at higher rates than young, poor, and minority ones, and these disparities may partly explain why elected officials in the United States are, on average, older and wealthier than the populations they represent and why the policies they support often fail to reflect the preferences of their constituents.

Reformers have spent decades fighting for policies aimed at increasing voter participation among underrepresented groups, but most of these hard-won improvements—including same-day registration, youth preregistration, early voting, voting by mail, and even mobile voting—have only modestly increased overall participation. Perversely, many of these efforts have succeeded more in mobilizing the old, white, and wealthy populations who were already voting at high rates than in luring historically underrepresented communities to the polls.

Many get-out-the-vote interventions actually exacerbate inequalities in political participation.

When Ryan Enos, Lynn Vavreck, and I reassessed 24 experimental get-out-the-vote interventions that had previously been shown to boost voter turnout, we found that the interventions, on average, actually exacerbated inequalities in political participation: the strategies successfully encouraged more people to exercise their right to vote, but the larger pools of voters they helped to produce were, in many cases, even less representative of the American electorate as a whole. The persistent intractability of participatory inequality in the United States led Arend Lijphart, an expert on comparative voting systems and a former president of the American Political Science Association, to call unequal voter participation “ democracy’s unresolved dilemma .”

A COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEM

Students and journalists often ask me why so few people vote. But the real mystery is why so many people vote. Voting is tedious. It often involves unfamiliar paperwork and shuffling in long lines through crowded, poorly lit rooms. The chances that an individual’s vote is going to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election, even in a battleground state in a very close race, are less than one in one million . Contemplating these odds, a person might reasonably conclude that voting makes little sense.

Voting, in other words, is a classic collective-action problem. Individuals have little incentive to vote, but if everyone voted, society as a whole would benefit from a government that more accurately reflects public preferences and goals. Citizens face collective-action problems daily, in virtually every domain of public life. Though many people would naturally prefer not to pay taxes or serve on juries, communities fare better when citizens accept these duties, and societies have developed mechanisms to ensure that they do so.

U.S. courts don’t rely on volunteers knocking on people’s doors encouraging them to show up for jury duty.

U.S. courts don’t rely on volunteers knocking on people’s doors encouraging them to show up for jury duty, and bureaucrats at the IRS don’t waste time trying to design messages or reforms to induce people to voluntarily send in their tax payment checks (what if we made tax day a national holiday?). Instead, these collective-action problems are solved through various forms of compulsion: citizens who don’t appear for jury service or pay their taxes on time face fines or other penalties.

Why not compel people to vote as well? I am one of the co-authors of a recent report by the Brookings Institution and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation that advocates for what we call “universal civic duty voting.” Just like paying taxes, we believe, voting should be an expectation of citizenship: people should be legally compelled to vote and fined if they don’t. Unequal participation is a problem for the United States and its democracy because electoral and policy outcomes do not necessarily represent the will of the public. American society would benefit from universal voter turnout because electoral outcomes would be better, fairer, and more legitimate. But because individuals don’t have much incentive to vote, the only way to achieve near-universal participation is through some form of compulsion.

In the report, we recommend that the fines be small (around $20) and that election officials waive fines when extenuating circumstances make voting too burdensome. In other countries, such as Australia, modest legal incentives have notably increased participation, ensuring that more than 90 percent of eligible voters participate in all state and federal elections. Working-class citizens were underrepresented in Australian elections before compulsory voting, but when different states implemented the policy between 1914 and 1941, election results and public policies shifted in their favor.

A CIVIC DUTY

There will be many objections to compulsory voting in the United States. Many Americans will feel that they should have the right not to vote. To be clear, we recommend that citizens be compelled to cast a ballot, not that they should be compelled to vote for any candidate. If they would like to vote for “none of the above,” they should have that right. But we don’t believe compulsory voting violates civil rights any more than compulsory tax paying, compulsory driving under the speed limit, or compulsory jury service.

One objection is that if people choose not to vote, perhaps they don’t care, they’re uninformed, or they don’t deserve to have their interests represented. Certainly, many Americans are uninformed or apathetic about politics, and Michele Margolis and I have found that many would change their vote choices and partisan leanings if they were more informed. But since nobody has a rational, instrumental incentive to vote in a large election, I don’t see any reason to politically reward those who vote because they happen to enjoy doing so. Furthermore, there is some evidence that once you induce people to vote, they become more informed, so compulsory voting would likely improve the extent to which eligible voters pay attention to politics and hold informed views.

Another objection to compulsory voting, and certainly an impediment to its implementation, is likely to come from some of the incumbents who were elected under voluntary voting, who may be reluctant to endorse a change that could harm their reelection chances or drastically alter their incentives in office. But the same can be said for virtually any major political reform, and the fact that some will be worse off isn’t a good reason not to implement a policy that will make most better off. Furthermore, in the long run, citizens and candidates from all parties and ideologies would benefit from fairer and more legitimate elections.

A BETTER, FAIRER APPROACH

Could compulsory voting work in the United States? I don’t expect it to be implemented soon, but it’s not just an academic curiosity. Many countries have successfully implemented compulsory voting. And although it’s hard to imagine anything like a constitutional amendment requiring it, there are other ways the policy could come about. Suppose, hypothetically, that Cleveland, Ohio, implemented a compulsory voting law, compelling all eligible voters in Cleveland to vote in all statewide elections. Cleveland would then have increased representation when Ohio selects its governor, attorney general, U.S. senators, and the like. When Cincinnati realizes that it is losing out, it follows suit and implements its own compulsory voting law—and eventually, with every city and town acting out of self-interest, Ohio has statewide compulsory voting.

Compulsory voting may sound like a wacky idea to many Americans. But there was a time when speed limits, universal health care, and environmental regulations were also wacky ideas. The United States should seriously discuss compulsory voting as a way to solve a collective-action problem and generate better, fairer, and more legitimate election results and public policies than the ones it now has.

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