essay on mandatory voting

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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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Compulsory Voting’s American History

• February 2024
• See full issue

Voter turnout was higher in the 2020 U.S. presidential election than it had been in 120 years. 1 Nearly sixty-seven percent of citizens over eighteen voted that November, exceeding rates that hovered around sixty percent in the twenty-first century and never broke sixty percent from 1972 to 2000. 2 Some pundits have read this recent record as a triumph. 3 But it can also be seen as a travesty: even with the best turnout since 1900, nearly eighty million eligible voters stayed home. 4

Slim turnout has long prompted reform efforts. 5 Yet the United States has always shied from one direct solution: requiring everyone to vote. “Compulsory voting” — where legislatures require attendance at the polls, often enforced by fines or penalties — exists in around two dozen countries, but nowhere in America, 6 relegating the idea to “goo-goo reformers” 7 and law review notes. 8

Recently, however, compulsory voting has entered mainstream debate. President Obama floated the idea in 2015 to fight money in politics and diversify the electorate. 9 A 2018 New York Times article piqued interest in Australia’s mandatory voting system. 10 And in 2022, E.J. Dionne Jr. and Miles Rapoport published a popular book arguing that “universal civic duty voting” will end voter suppression, improve representation, and boost belief in government. 11 Their work has inspired legislators in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington to introduce compulsory voting bills. 12

This nascent debate marks an exciting effort to make the actual electorate more representative of the eligible electorate and potentially shift political power. 13 Yet modern debates have so far largely overlooked one angle of analysis: history. Though nearly no writers since the 1950s seem to have devoted more than two paragraphs to the history of compulsory voting efforts in the United States, 14 the idea has a rich American tradition. Policies first emerged before the Founding. And debates especially picked up beginning in the 1880s and through the Progressive Era, when twelve states considered the policy, including two — Massachusetts and North Dakota — that passed amendments letting their legislatures enact it. 15

This Note begins to excavate that history. In doing so, the Note illustrates the importance of the fact that these debates happened, highlights Progressives’ competing visions of democracy, and seeks to inform how advocates consider the policy today. Taking seriously the issue some contemporaries called the “most important” the Progressives faced 16 can help us better understand their democracy — and ours.

The Note proceeds as follows. Part I traces the history of attempts to institute compulsory voting in the United States, focusing primarily on the Progressive Era. Part II canvasses the main arguments at Progressive Era conventions for and against compulsory voting. And Part III considers what these debates illustrate about Progressive democracy and policy debates today.

I. Compulsory Voting Proposals in the United States

A 2007 note claimed that “there has been no real attempt to institute compulsory voting in the United States.” 17 Yet this Note — building on then-student Henry Abraham’s 1952 dissertation, which marks the fullest account of compulsory voting 18 but has never before been cited in a law review — unearths repeated American attempts to require voting. 19

This Part traces that history. It first recounts a handful of Colonial Era statutes imposing fines for non-voting. It then focuses on legislative and academic efforts from 1880 to 1920 to institute compulsory voting. And it ends by recounting sporadic proposals from the 1930s to the present. While the only place to mandate voting since the Founding is Kansas City, Missouri, the depth of these debates shows a history of democratic creativity often overlooked today.

A. Preconstitutional Policies

The American colonies had a highly restricted franchise. 20 Still, within this limited suffrage (often only propertied white males could vote), multiple colonies (and later one state) seemed to require eligible residents to attend elections. 21 This section briefly describes those laws.

In 1636, the Plymouth colony adopted a proto-compulsory voting law, fining “each delinquent” three shillings for “default in case of appearance at the election without due excuse.” 22 Virginia followed in 1649, charging 100 pounds of tobacco to voters who evaded the “lawful summons” to elections. 23 Maryland enacted a similar tobacco penalty in 1715, 24 while Delaware in 1734 charged twenty shillings, 25 and North Carolina in 1764 required voting for parish elections. 26 The one colony to constitutionalize compulsory voting was Georgia in 1777, imposing a maximum penalty of five pounds, but the provision was little used and was dropped in the state’s 1789 constitution. 27 No state then attempted to pass compulsory voting for nearly a century after the Founding. 28 While the motives for these laws are not clear, and they may not have been enforced, 29 these provisions suggest a longstanding aim of full participation, at least within the eligible electorate.

B. Pre-Progressive and Progressive Era Proposals

Compulsory voting debates took off a century later, first in spurts in the 1880s and ’90s, and then more robustly in the Progressive Era from 1900 to 1920. 30 This period saw major changes to election rules: Some expanded participation, like national amendments on women’s suffrage 31 and the direct election of senators, 32 along with “direct democracy” policies such as the initiative and referendum in many states. 33 Others were more technocratic, like building the bureaucracy or instituting city-manager local governments and off-cycle elections. 34 But a group of Progressives (and predecessors) also pushed a proposal missing from standard accounts of their agenda: compulsory voting. 35

This section charts that advocacy. From the 1880s to the 1920s, eleven states and one city introduced compulsory voting laws; six states considered constitutional amendments, including at four state constitutional conventions; and dozens of academics and advocates debated the idea. Successes were, admittedly, slim: one Kansas City ordinance and two enabling amendments in Massachusetts and North Dakota. But the range of these debates illustrates that compulsory voting was a serious proposal at the time — one that raised profound questions about the goals of democracy. This section catalogs these efforts; the next Part explores reformers’ arguments.

1.  Legislative Efforts. —  Massachusetts Governor Benjamin Butler gave the first big pitch for compulsory voting with a speech in 1883. 36 His legislature then heard petitions for the policy in 1883, 1885, and 1888. 37 Maryland was next, debating in 1888 a criminal “summons” for non-voters, and imposing fines of $5–$100 to support schools. 38 New York joined when Governor David Hill gave an 1889 address calling for fines or imprisonment for non-voters — citing some pre-Revolutionary examples — leading a legislator to introduce bills the next two years, which failed despite bipartisan backing. 39

The only law passed before 1900 was an 1889 Kansas City, Missouri, ordinance taxing each eligible voter $2.50 but “extinguish[ing]” the tax for all who voted. 40 The law, intended to “stimulate action” among those “‘above’ voting at common elections,” was rarely enforced and short-lived 41 : in 1896, in Kansas City v. Whipple , 42 the Missouri Supreme Court struck it down as a nonuniform tax that violated the state constitutional “free exercise of the right of suffrage.” 43

Beginning in 1900, momentum grew as the Progressive movement rose. In 1904, a New York legislator copied the 1888 Maryland bill, illustrating the spread of the idea. 44 Then Massachusetts saw a “veritable barrage” of proposals, considering (but rejecting) more than a dozen attempts from 1909 to 1918, with schemes ranging from poll taxes to disfranchisement to posting lists of non-voters. 45 Wisconsin rivaled this effort: six bills were introduced from 1903 to 1915, all exempting voters from a poll tax. 46 All died, 47 as did Connecticut’s 48 and Rhode Island’s. 49 The closest bill to passing came in Indiana in 1911, where a bill to make non-voting a misdemeanor passed the Senate twenty-nine to eighteen with no debate, but died in the House. 50 In 1926, a federal proposal surfaced when Senator Arthur Capper proposed that non-voters pay a one-percent tax on their income, aiming to add “millions” of new voters and encourage the “duty” of voting. 51 Politicians often resist changing the rules that elected them, 52 so this lack of uptake makes sense, but these persistent proposals suggest popular support.

2.  State Constitutional Amendments. —  The years before and during the Progressive Era saw sweeping revisions to state constitutions. Remaking their charters to address a changing political economy, states held fifteen constitutional conventions from 1889 to 1899, and nineteen more from 1900 to 1920. 53 Beyond standard proposals like the initiative and referendum, 54 among the bolder ideas was compulsory voting: six states considered — and two passed — constitutional amendments to allow the practice.

New York’s 1894 convention was the first to consider compulsory voting. After local Republican lawyer Frederick Holls wrote an extended tract pushing the idea in 1891, 55 he was elected as a convention delegate, where he raised an amendment “requiring” eligible voters to “exercise such right,” with penalties including losing the right to vote. 56 Debate spanned forty-two pages of the record, though the amendment was ultimately tabled. 57

North Dakota moved next. In 1898, the legislature passed and the people approved by a four-to-one majority 58 the country’s first statewide compulsory voting rule. This amendment allowed the legislature to “prescribe penalties for failing, neglecting or refusing to vote at any general election.” 59 The legislature, however, never used this permission, and in 1978 the voters repealed a sweep of election provisions at once, including the compulsory voting article. 60

After fourteen years, Ohio took up compulsory voting at its 1912 convention. 61 The delegates debated a proposal requiring the legislature to “compel the attendance of all qualified electors, at all elections held by authority of law.” 62 Not the convention’s top priority, the proposal failed to reach a full vote. 63

In 1918, the Massachusetts convention gave compulsory voting its biggest win. The initial proposal, giving the legislature “authority to provide for compulsory voting,” was rejected without debate on July 10. 64 Then, after the proposal won reconsideration, 65 delegates debated it on multiple occasions, spanning more than sixty pages of the record, 66 and drawing on a data-rich “bulletin” on the subject prepared for the convention. 67 Ultimately, after agreeing on an amendment ensuring the secret ballot, the proposal was put to the people, where, boosted by bipartisan appeal, 68 it won with a fifty-one-percent margin. 69 While the legislature has never used its permissive authority to pass a compulsory voting law, it considered numerous bills between 1919 and 1939. 70

Two more states considered compulsory voting amendments. First, Oregon’s legislature passed a 1919 amendment allowing the legislature to require voting, but sixty-eight percent of voters rejected it. 71 Last came Nebraska. In 1919, its constitutional convention debated letting the legislature “prescribe penalties” for not voting, but after three pages’ worth of debate, the amendment failed to pass. 72 Ultimately, these Progressive debates show that compulsory voting was a live political and legal issue with organized advocates on all sides.

3.  Academic and Popular Commentary. —  Compulsory voting was first popularized by British theorist John Stuart Mill, who in 1861 framed suffrage as a social “trust” that the state could mandate. 73 His thought traversed the Atlantic in 1888, when an obscure reform magazine devoted thirteen pages of its second volume to pitching compulsory voting. 74 Four years later, New York lawyer Frederick Holls’s essay drew on Mill’s theory of “duty,” 75 while Professor Albert Hart called compulsory voting “very much discussed” and compared the proposals to pre-Revolutionary policies (though he still rejected the idea as impracticable and unnecessary). 76

By the 1900s, with Progressivism spreading, compulsory voting went mainstream. By 1912, Special Libraries found so much compulsory voting commentary that it publicized a bibliography with fourteen news articles, fifty essays, and many proposed bills. 77 And leading law reviews considered if state power extended to mandating the franchise. 78 By 1914, the policy was so known that the Ohio Legislative Reference Department compiled work on the “live topic[],” one “sure to come up soon for legislative consideration.” 79

The debate resurfaced with creative arguments in the 1920s. A 1922 Harper’s essay advocated what amounted to a “poll-tax-in-reverse,” 80 a women’s group in 1924 proposed a $100 non-voting fine specifically to prod female voters, 81 and New York Republicans briefly pitched disfranchisement for non-voters (until they realized their party won). 82 With poor turnout in 1924 proving these pleas prescient, “non-voting” and “vote-slacking” became frequent sources of academic 83 and political consternation, inspiring proposals to reduce a state’s electoral college vote based on its past presidential election turnout 84 or impose a “tax” on vote slackers. 85 Progressives had created new opportunities for voting; now they wondered how to make people use it.

C. Post-Progressive Revivals

As the Progressive Era faded into the Great Depression and New Deal, compulsory voting lost its energy. 86 In 1930, Professor J. Allen Smith represented this trend, arguing the “unintelligent vote” encouraged by compulsory voting “will always be a menace to popular government.” 87 Legislatures apparently agreed: Just a few states introduced bills in the 1930s and 1940s. 88 Two states’ efforts to pass amendments failed in 1949. 89 And a federal effort to “investigate” 90 compulsory voting gained bipartisan support but petered out. 91 By 1952, Professor Abraham’s masterwork on compulsory voting concluded that the practice was undesirable and undemocratic. 92

A few proposals surfaced in the 1970s, but the idea was “not popular in America,” 93 and scholars were nearly “universal[ly] reluctan[t]” to it. 94 Commentary remained scant until the twenty-first century. 95 Then, however, the contested 2000 election brought a resurgence of commentary, 96 which accelerated with a New York Times debate series in 2011 97 and President Obama’s quasi endorsement in 2015. 98 By 2020, amid multiplying democratic crises, compulsory voting was again gaining adherents in academia, the press, and state legislatures. 99 Today, there is more momentum for compulsory voting than there has been since the Progressive Era.

II. Pros and Cons at Progressive Era Conventions

Part I illustrated that compulsory voting has a long American history. Its most prominent debates occurred from 1890 to 1920, mostly within the Progressive Era. This Part mines these discussions to understand the ideas and interests driving compulsory voting advocates. Drawing largely on records of the state constitutional conventions in New York (1894), Ohio (1912), Massachusetts (1917–1919), and Nebraska (1919–1920) 100  — which form the most sustained record of debate — the Part identifies the pros and cons raised in three common categories of argument: whether (A) the right to vote is a privilege or a duty; (B) higher voter turnout is desirable; and (C) the state could enforce compulsory voting.

A. Is the Vote a Privilege or a Duty?

Delegates at Progressive Era conventions often disagreed about the nature of suffrage. One fight proved core to the debate over compulsory voting: Is the vote a “privilege” (or “right” 101 ), or a “duty” (or “trust”)? 102 If voting is a privilege, the choice of whether to exercise it might seem personal; but if voting is a duty, it might be required. In other words, the “real question . . . goes down to the roots of the theory of the electoral process.” 103 This section traces these competing conceptions.

1.  Pro: The Vote Is a Duty. —  Many advocates viewed voting as a duty, echoing Mill’s argument. One delegate argued that “[t]his vote is not a thing in which [a person] has an option; . . . [i]t is strictly a matter of duty.” 104 On this view, the “real nature of the vote” is “entirely outside” any individual voter; far from “personal property” one could dispose at will, the vote conferred a “trust” which voters had an obligation to use “for the benefit of every person.” 105

This duty/privilege distinction was core to the case for compulsory voting: if voting is a “mere privilege,” it cannot be compelled, but if it is a “trust or obligation,” then neglecting it can “seriously affect the whole course and progress of a state” — justifying state compulsion. 106 The privilege to vote thus required using it well: those who “accept the blessings of democracy” should “assume the burdens of democracy.” 107 This argument was supported by limitations on suffrage at the time: since all of “we the people” were sovereign, yet only some could vote, that “delegated portion” must use the vote on behalf of the “rest.” 108 Only then would the “best men” be elected and the full electorate democratically represented. 109

2.  Con: The Vote Is a Privilege (or Is Not a Legal Duty). — Opponents of compulsory voting saw voting as a “privilege” (or, relatedly, a “right”). This privilege “to be allowed to vote” 110 was a “priceless gift” 111 not to be exercised by rote requirement. 112 Some cited the fact that suffrage was not universal to show it could not be a duty for all. 113 More broadly, opponents believed compelling the vote violated the “general spirit of our laws” 114 and the nature of the right to vote, which included a right not to vote: “[I]f suffrage is a sovereign right of the citizen, he must be as free . . . not to exercise it as to exercise it . . . .” 115 Because the “whole theory of a democracy . . . exists by virtue of the consent of the governed,” 116 voters must get to choose how they exercise consent, not be forced “to the polls like cattle to the slaughter.” 117

Other opponents conceded that voting was a duty but one that could not be compelled. Even if the vote is a “trust,” voters retain a separate “duty” and “right” of “discriminating as to when [they] shall” vote. 118 And, even if voting “ should be performed,” that did not mean it must be performed. 119 It was especially important to protect the right not to vote to protest a lack of candidates “entitled to our suffrage.” 120 This view of the vote emphasized that voting was a personal act, not a public one.

B. Should We Seek Higher Voter Turnout?

Compulsory voting most directly addresses low voter turnout: to ensure everyone votes, make it illegal not to. The difficulty has been disagreement over the desirability of full turnout. For many, the “spectre of non-voting” 121 threatened democratic legitimacy. 122 But for others, the quantity of votes mattered less than the quality of the voter. This section explores these divergent views of turnout.

1.  Pro: Non-voters Should Be Made to Vote. —  Many supporters lamented low voter turnout. 123 To them, this “apathy of the electorate” formed a “peril to our republican institutions” 124 and was “detrimental to the best interests of the community.” 125 Non-voters were often derided as “slackers” (like those refusing to fight in World War I 126 ). 127 These slackers, along with other non-voting “holier-than-thou citizens,” needed a push to the polls. 128

For these slacker haters, compulsory voting was the ideal solution, as it aimed to “bring out practically the entire vote.” 129 Only then would all the “latent force of discernment and knowledge” bear on the “decision of vital political issues” 130  — making the electorate better resemble the community. They also believed that some non-voters needed to be heard. Drawing on debatable data, 131 many thought non-voters were workmen, farmers, and professionals 132  — the “educated vote of the community” 133  — and they needed to vote to counteract the “disgrace brought upon self-government, when the ignorant and worthless voters — the men who regard a vote as property . . . — are in a majority.” 134 Moreover, even if not all non-voters were virtuous, compulsory voting could create civic virtue. Since the policy would clarify that voting is a “civic duty,” 135 people would “become the most enthusiastic” voters, 136 as those who know they “must vote” will develop a “desire of doing so intelligently.” 137

Many Progressives also supported compulsory voting as a complement to other democracy reforms. One reform idea was “corrupt practices acts,” designed to reduce the influence of money in politics, 138 as candidates could often get “hired men” 139 to the polls or win because they had “means to hire the automobiles.” 140 With compulsory voting, there would be no “excuse for the use of money at election time under the pretence and guise of securing the attendance of voters,” since everyone had to attend. 141 Other major reforms were the direct democracy devices of the initiative and referendum (I&R). 142 Compulsory voting advocates believed the policies had to go together, since I&R backers meant to “leave the questions” not to “ part of the voters” but to “all of the voters.” 143 If I&R elections had low turnout, they would empower minority rule 144 and special interests. 145 A final connection was that if voters rejected the “short ballot” (reducing the number of elected positions), 146 compulsory voting was needed to add a “spur behind” overtired voters.” 147

2.  Con: Non-voters Should Stay at Home. —  Opponents saw less value in full participation. These opponents emphasized that the “many reasons for refraining from voting,” like long work hours or distance to the polls, made it wrong to penalize non-voting. 148 Others explicitly sought to protect non-voting as a means to signal dissatisfaction with politics. 149 What mattered was not the “ number of voters . . . but the number of informed voters. 150

These opponents denied that non-voters possessed special civic capacity. They described the idea that the best men do not vote as “per se an absurdity.” 151 To the contrary, “[f]ailure to vote . . . is abundant proof of a man’s unfitness to vote,” 152 and those “idle rich” who think it “beneath their dignity to go to the polls” are not just delinquent, but “not fit to be called an American.” 153 From this vantage, compelling the vote was nonsensical. There was “nothing gained” by requiring citizens to vote on issues of which they “have no understanding.” 154 And no one was “desirous” that those with “no political opinions should be forced” to claim them, since the “less of the unintelligent opinion we get the better.” 155 Here, the goal was not to make the electorate representative, but to reach the right outcomes. Those who believe they are too ill-informed to vote should be accepted “at their own valuation.” 156

Moreover, some Progressives saw conflict between compulsory voting and other reforms. A few believed compulsory voting might increase corruption, since those who vote only because they are forced to may be the easiest to buy off. 157 In this world, voters may sit around the polls until “some one appears with a bag full of silver dollars and . . . in a little while they all are voting.” 158 Others feared that mandating voting could undermine the referendum, since the “tremendous slacker potential vote” might all just vote negative or abstain. 159 And still others thought it a worse solution than the short ballot or less frequent elections: voters should be encouraged to participate by making politics simpler, not forced to show up or face punishment. 160

C. Can Compulsory Voting Be Enforced?

Any effort to compel voting needs state enforcement. Progressives were unsure how government could mandate voting — and whether it was legal. This section addresses debates over how compulsory voting could work.

1.  Pro: Compulsory Voting Is Practical, Enforceable, and Legal. —  A few supporters drew on domestic and foreign experience to frame their policy as practical. One referred to the practice as “in no sense . . . novel or untried,” citing Georgia’s early constitutional provision and Virginia’s colonial laws for historical support, along with Kansas City’s recent ordinance, as evidence it was still possible. 161 Others more often referenced other countries’ successes. The Massachusetts convention bulletin, for example, cited six countries’ examples. 162 If “[e]very Nation of progress has adopted” compulsory voting, then surely so could America. 163

Proponents were adamant that “ some proviso can be made” to enforce poll attendance. 164 They were also sure the policy would “accomplish the purpose of reducing the number of non-voters.” 165 The real question was how to enforce it. A commonly suggested idea was to impose a fine on non-voters. 166 Other options were to “cancel[]” voter registration 167 or “ridicule” non-voters. 168 More drastic penalties were imprisonment or disfranchisement, which would make non-voters lose their right to participate if they failed to use it. 169 While these penalties may have seemed draconian, supporters believed they would be rarely needed, since with the law “known,” citizens would “recognize their civic duty” and vote. 170 Supporters also sought to shore up the policy’s legality by analogy. Like compulsory jury service, court testimony, or military service, compulsory voting was just another way the state could enforce public duties. 171

2.  Con: Compulsory Voting Is Impractical, Unenforceable, and Illegal. —  Foes painted the policy as radical and untested. Some emphasized that the policy “does not exist anywhere in the United States” 172 and that “no precedent for such legislation can be found in the history of the government.” 173 Foreign countries’ experiences were similarly dismissed. What little “facts and reports” available showed no “special benefit” and instead depicted “rank failure” in “nearly every instance.” 174 Even if the policies worked elsewhere, skeptics wondered if “Tasmania” was relevant to American debate. 175 With little precedent, compulsory voting seemed an “un-American,” “[u]topian dream.” 176

Opponents further claimed there would be “no way of enforcing” it. 177 They first argued it would not raise turnout: some voters would cast a “blank ballot in protest”; 178 others would still stay home since their obstacles were “restricted naturalization laws” or “industrial exigencies,” not a lack of interest. 179

Moreover, every proposal raised for enforcement faced “practical objections.” 180 For example, tracking down each non-voter could involve a “great expense” or raise the specter of voters “herded to the polls by the police.” 181 Building a “complete system of registration” would similarly burden budding bureaucracies. 182 Disfranchisement as a penalty drew particular pushback. In an age of expanding suffrage, why should we countenance “limitation of the franchise,” especially given the many good reasons for non-voting? 183 Even if “excuse[s]” let citizens evade punishment, leaving the right to vote up to “three or four inspectors” felt despotic. 184 And, if the legislature “could disfranchise a large proportion of the citizens contrary to the desire of the people themselves,” the right to vote could vanish. 185

Beyond believing it a bad and impractical idea, opponents thought it was illegal. Here, many cited the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling as a “leading authority” for the idea that the government may not compel all duties and compulsory voting violated the “free” exercise of suffrage. 186 Moreover, opponents thought analogies to taxation and military service were weak, as these were dubiously legal and addressed different kinds of rights. 187 Even those who supported the policy had legal doubts, fearing the “grave constitutional question” of imposing penalties “without a constitutional provision.” 188 Politics was the main barrier, but law loomed large.

These debates reflect how seriously delegates considered compulsory voting. Even if most proposals failed, compulsory voting was on the agenda, raising questions about the meaning of democracy, the importance of turnout, and the limits of government.

III. Lessons from Compulsory Voting’s History

Parts I and II illustrate that debates over compulsory voting have a long American tradition. Far from just a niche, radical idea, compulsory voting proposals have emerged in multiple historical periods, with particular intensity in the Progressive Era. This Part reflects on what this history can teach us — about both Progressive democracy and compulsory voting’s present-day revival.

A. Reflections on the Progressives

Compulsory voting’s main American momentum largely overlapped with the Progressive Era’s democracy reform movements. Yet these wide-ranging debates have almost entirely been left out of Progressive Era historiography. Reckoning with them offers three insights into the democracy Progressives pushed for.

First, the primary significance of the compulsory voting debates was that they happened at all. The Progressive Era has long been known as a time when electoral rules were transformed, home to both an explosion of direct democracy initiatives and a host of technocratic innovations. 189 But nowhere on that list is compulsory voting. True, the policy never gained wide acceptance. Yet the fact that the policy spawned six constitutional proposals, dozens of legislative efforts, and scores of articles suggests that some Progressives’ agendas spanned more than just those practices familiar today. 190 By looking beyond victorious reforms to those that fell short, we can see that Progressives’ quest to reimagine government was more varied than many historical accounts credit. 191

Second, delving into compulsory voting debates shows Progressives grappling with the meaning of democracy. Scholars have long noted that “Progressivism” encompassed widely varying visions of democracy, with some favoring mass participation and others seeking enlightened elite rule. 192 The debates over compulsory voting can help illuminate these contradictions, as the policy forced Progressives to grapple with questions of democratic legitimacy, how much voters could be trusted, and how far the state could intrude in citizens’ lives. As the institutions of democracy were changing, so too were the justifications needed about how and how much the people should participate.

Third, Progressives’ preoccupation with “non-voting” 193 showed that many saw popular participation as crucial to their agenda, aside from its democratic merits. Their vision of robust social welfare legislation required divesting power from existing elites — a goal which low turnout complicated and which mandatory voting might solve. Repeated efforts to link compulsory voting with Progressive staples like the I&R and anti-corruption laws connect policy with a broader effort to build Progressive power. This lens could explain the confusing debates over whether non-voters were slackers or virtuous citizens: Progressives believed the masses would support their anti-oligarchy agenda, 194 so they needed palatable ways to bring them into the electorate. Many Progressives may well have supported compulsory voting purely for ideas of fair representation. But viewing these advocates in political context can clarify how Progressives tried to achieve policy goals.

B. Reflections on the Present

Compulsory voting has regained traction today as a way to align the actual and eligible electorates, advance racial justice, and reduce elite political influence. 195 The debate so far has largely drawn on democratic theory and comparative data. 196 Both are key for showing the policy is worthwhile and workable. But this Note suggests that supporters should situate their proposals in American history to show that the policy is a real possibility and should not be overlooked as a way to solve our many crises of democracy. This section offers two ways that history can inform today’s debate and two places where modern advocates must go beyond Progressive arguments.

First, advocates can point to our long history to deflect charges that compulsory voting is radical, unconstitutional, or un-American. Multiple colonies and Revolutionary-era Georgia adopted the policy, two states constitutionalized the policy, and dozens more debated it. 197 This history does not answer whether we should mandate voting today. But it does — along with the breadth of experience with the policy abroad — suggest that we should take the policy seriously, just as Progressive Era delegates and their predecessors did.

Second, supporters can draw on America’s history to show the persistence of questions around low turnout and the meaning of democracy. Like in the Progressive Era, today many are seeking to reimagine democracy to respond to current crises. 198 Opponents today often dismiss compulsory voting as a Democratic Party power grab. 199 But stepping back from the partisanship of the moment (and the fact the opposite might be true 200 ), compulsory voting has had a far more bipartisan history; 201 and even if the parties then were less polarized, this history is at least a reminder that good-government elements across partisan lines can unite for pro-democracy reforms. 202 And, while compulsory voting may have political effects — as the mass populace supports more redistributive policies than political elites do 203  — the impact is unclear given that turnout may lack a partisan skew. 204 Yet the reason we keep debating compulsory voting is because too few people keep voting; 205 aligning this mismatch between the populace and represented electorate is not partisan but pro-democracy. Invoking the arguments that Progressive advocates raised can thus situate these proposals not as ad hoc partisan schemes but as longstanding efforts to make government more representative.

We also should learn from what these historical debates left out and consider how advocates can use new arguments to build a more successful coalition today. For one, the legal context has changed, with compelled speech doctrine, for example, presenting a doctrinal framework that early twentieth-century advocates would not have had to contend with. 206 We also know far more about how the policy might work: rather than speculate based on bad bulletins or shoddy statistics, we can draw on robust empirical work around turnout and governance. 207 Further, while proposals often bubble up at times of declining turnout, 208 the fact that today’s momentum came despite an uptick in 2020 participation suggests it is possible to build a less outcome-contingent coalition. Historical facts can give mandatory voting legitimacy; present ones are needed to confirm its value.

More crucially, we must better emphasize how compulsory voting might create a more diverse electorate. Here, the Progressive Era debates have little to offer. Nearly every advocate this Note identified was a white man, every state that considered the policy had vanishingly small non-white populations, and just two states (Nebraska and Oregon) let women vote at the time of debating compulsory voting. 209 Promisingly, however, advocates today pitch compulsory voting as a way to address racial turnout gaps and make the electorate reflect the diversity — along all possible dimensions — of the country. 210 Some respond that the policy might harm minority voters, especially if voter suppression policies persist. 211 Yet making this question central is a key update needed for assessing the merits of compulsory voting. Progressives failed to pitch the policy as inclusive, instead resting on their restricted ideas of delegated representation. Supporters today can draw on the pro-democracy arguments Progressives made about full participation, but must do more to build cross-racial coalitions to translate their vision into law.

These differences suggest that the arguments supporters pursue today will not and should not precisely track the Progressives’. They also suggest that our moment is different — and perhaps more ripe to finally make voting a universal duty. Drawing on the untapped history of compulsory voting while building on twenty-first-century ideals of inclusive democracy just might push us toward a just way to solve the perennial “non-voting” dilemma.

Compulsory voting may not yet be on the horizon. But the recent wave of advocacy has given the issue a greater spotlight than it has had in a century. Amid this momentum, we have much to learn from exploring compulsory voting’s overlooked American history. From the colonies to the Progressive Era to the twenty-first century, Americans have seriously considered making voting a duty of citizenship. That history helps illuminate the depth of democratic creativity in our Progressive past. And, given our crises of democracy today, that past should push us to keep reviving this powerful policy today.

^ National Turnout Rates 1789–Present , US Elections Project , https://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present [https://perma.cc/6V32-F6XV].

^ See, e.g. , Chris Cillizza, Turnout Really Was Historically Bonkers in 2020 , CNN (Jan. 29, 2021, 6:31 PM), https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/politics/turnout-2020-record-voting/index.html [https://perma.cc/2WXF-BT78].

^ See Domenico Montanaro, Poll: Despite Record Turnout, 80 Million Americans Didn’t Vote. Here’s Why, NPR (Dec. 15, 2020, 5:00 AM), https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/945031391/poll-despite-record-turnout-80-million-americans-didnt-vote-heres-why [https://perma.cc/U4C5-7GSF].

^ For worries about “non-voting” dating back to the 1920s, see, for example , Charles Edward Merriam & Harold Foote Gosnell, Non-voting : Causes and Methods of Control 241–43 (1924).

^ See E.J. Dionne Jr. & Miles Rapoport, 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting 53 (2022). The exact number varies based on how one defines the practice.

^ Nicholas Stephanopoulos, A Feasible Roadmap to Compulsory Voting , The Atlantic (Nov. 2, 2015), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/a-feasible-roadmap-to-compulsory-voting/413422 [https://perma.cc/9GXV-EJBP].

^ See, e.g. , Sean Matsler, Note, Compulsory Voting in America , 76 S. Cal. L. Rev. 953, 955 (2003); Note, The Case for Compulsory Voting in the United States , 121 Harv. L. Rev . 591, 592 (2007) [hereinafter The Case for Compulsory Voting ].

^ Stephanie Condon, Obama Suggests Mandatory Voting Might Be a Good Idea , CBS News (Mar. 18, 2015, 5:50 PM), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-suggests-mandatory-voting-might-be-a-good-idea [https://perma.cc/ZW4A-9Q85].

^ See Tacey Rychter, How Compulsory Voting Works: Australians Explain , N.Y. Times (Nov. 5, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/world/australia/compulsory-voting.html [https://perma.cc/QX2F-DU6U].

^ Dionne & Rapoport, supra note 6, at xv–xxiv; see also Miles Rapoport & Alex Keyssar, Opinion, How to Boost Voter Turnout to Nearly 100 Percent , Bos. Globe (Jan. 8, 2022, 8:00 AM), https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/01/08/opinion/how-boost-voter-turnout-nearly-100-percent [https://perma.cc/GLD3-J33J].

^ See H.B. 5704, 2023 Gen. Assemb., Jan. Sess. (Conn. 2023); H.B. 653, 191st Gen. Ct., Reg. Sess. (Mass. 2019); S.B. 5209, 68th Leg., 2023 Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2023).

^ Based on experience abroad, compulsory voting is no democratic panacea, but it can increase turnout. See, e.g. , Dionne & Rapoport , supra note 6, at 53–57. With an electorate that thus looks more like America, support for liberal or redistributive policies might increase. Cf. Benjamin I. Page & Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It 66–72 (2017) (describing how policy tracks the influence of the wealthy, not the people). But cf. Bertrall L. Ross II, Addressing Inequality in the Age of Citizens United, 93 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1120, 1187–88 (2018) (arguing compulsory voting would not lead to redistributive policies).

^ To the author’s knowledge, only one law review article in the past 107 years has devoted more than a footnote to past attempts at compulsory voting. See Nate Ela, The Duty to Vote in an American City , 66 How. L.J. 247, 256–95 (2022) (describing Kansas City’s brief compulsory voting experiment in detail); compare also, e.g. , Richard L. Hasen, Voting Without Law? , 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 2135, 2173–74, 2174 n.154 (1996) (one footnote), with Note, Civil Conscription in the United States , 30 Harv. L. Rev. 265, 267 & n.15 (1917) (two footnoted paragraphs). One political science treatise on state constitutionalism notes four state debates, see John J. Dinan, The American State Constitutional Tradition 66, 315 n.11 (2006), and Dionne and Rapoport delve into Massachusetts’s history and a few other examples, see Dionne & Rapoport, supra note 6, at 54–55. But the only comprehensive history of compulsory voting is a 1952 dissertation by Professor Henry Abraham that gives eighty-three pages to American efforts yet is only available in a few archives and is not digitized. See Henry Julian Abraham, Compulsory Voting: Its Practice and Theory (1952) (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania) (on file with the University of Pennsylvania Library) [hereinafter Abraham dissertation]. This Note is deeply indebted to Abraham’s work. However, illustrating how little-known and dated this lone historical account is, Professor Alexander Keyssar’s masterful history of the right to vote does not cite it, noting that “compulsory voting awaits its historian.” See Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States 128, 231, 424 n.19 (2000).

^ See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 116–55 (referencing California, Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin).

^ See 2 Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Ohio , at 1192 (1913) [hereinafter Ohio Debates] (statement of Del. Frank Taggart); see also 3 Debates in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, 1917–1918, at 23 (1920) [hereinafter Massachusetts Debates] ( statement of Del. Allan G. Buttrick) (calling the question of compulsory voting “one of the most important matters that has been brought before this Convention”); 1 Journal of the Nebraska Constitutional Convention , at 537 (1921) [hereinafter Nebraska Debates] (statement of Del. Jerry Howard) (“[E]verybody who reads this proposal can see how important it is.”); 1 Revised Record of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York , at 1059 (1900) [hereinafter New York Debates] (statement of Del. Frederick Holls) (calling the policy “a matter of very great and far-reaching importance,” though “not the most important one before the Convention”).

^ The Case for Compulsory Voting , supra note 8, at 598 n.45 (noting Georgia and Virginia pre-revolutionary statutes, Massachusetts and North Dakota amendments, and a local ordinance).

^ See generally Abraham dissertation, supra note 14.

^ As Abraham noted, “there has been an astonishingly extensive amount of toying with the idea in the United States.” See id. at 103.

^ See, e.g. , Keyssar , supra note 14, at 4–8.

^ Professor Albert Hart suggests that some of these laws are irrelevant because they were about deliberative town meetings, not traditional elections. See Albert Bushnell Hart, The Exercise of the Suffrage. , 7 Pol. Sci. Q. 307, 317–22 (1892).

^ Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 106–07 (quoting The Compact with the Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth 41 ( William Brigham ed., Boston, Dutton & Wentworth 1836)). The fine later grew to ten shillings, see id. , suggesting the law was not a dead letter. As early as 1636, other localities seemed to compel voting. Massachusetts codified that voters “shall have liberty to be silent and not pressed to a determinate vote,” while New Haven, Portsmouth, and Providence each fined voters who arrived to the voting site late. 3 Cortlandt F. Bishop, History of Elections in the American Colonies 192 (1893) (quoting The Charters and General Laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay 201 (1814)). Southampton, New York, in 1654 and Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1669, also seemed to mandate attendance at town meetings. See Hart, supra note 21, at 319–20.

^ Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 107 (quoting 1 The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia 334 (William W. Hening ed., Richmond, Samuel Pleasants, Jr., 1809)). Virginia reenacted this scheme four times from 1662 to 1785, twice increasing the fine. Id. at 108.

^ Id. at 108. Maryland also appeared to fine “freemen” twenty pounds of tobacco as late as 1642 if they did not attend the election of the burgess or send a proxy. See Bishop , supra note 22, at 33–34.

^ See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 108–09.

^ Id. at 109. A “[d]isability” could remove someone from the obligation of voting. Id. (quoting A Complete Revisal of All the Acts of Assembly, Of the Province of North-Carolina 305 (Newbern, James Davis 1773)).

^ Id. at 111; see Hasen, supra note 14, at 2174 n.154.

^ See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 110–12. One major 1918 voting rights history does not mention compulsory voting. See Kirk H. Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States (1918). The one mention of compulsory voting this Note finds in the interim is an 1860 speech by New York’s governor. See Governor Edwin D. Morgan, Annual Message to the 83rd Session of the N.Y. Legislature (Jan. 3, 1860), in 5 State of New York: Messages from the Governors 151, 196 (Charles Z. Lincoln ed., 1909) (“Every effort should be made to encourage, and, perhaps, compel the legal voters to exercise the right of voting . . . .”).

^ See Hasen, supra note 14, at 2174 n.154 (noting that Georgia and Virginia seemed to infrequently enforce their provisions).

^ While historians debate when the Progressive Era began, standard accounts situate it around 1900, preceded by the Populist and People’s Party uprisings of the 1880s and 1890s. See, e.g. , Arthur S. Link & Richard L. McCormick, Progressivism 11–20 (1983).

^ U.S. Const. amend. XIX.

^ Id. amend. XVII.

^ For direct democracy efforts, see generally Thomas Goebel, A Government by the People: Direct Democracy in America, 1890–1940 (2002) .

^ For examples of less democratic changes and these tensions within Progressivism, see generally Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 , at 167–77 (1967).

^ For the idea that the Progressive agenda coalesced into a standard series of reforms, see Sarah M. Henry, Progressivism and Democracy: Electoral Reform in the United States, 1888–1919, at 13 (1995) (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University) (noting the “emergence of a consensus among self-defined progressives on a package of electoral reforms that they believed would promote ‘the people’s rule’”).

^ See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 118 & n.2.

^ Id. at 119–20.

^ Id. at 142.

^ Id. at 143–46; see also Governor David B. Hill, Annual Message to the 112th Session of the N.Y. Legislature (Jan. 1, 1889), in 8 State of New York: Messages from the Governors , supra note 28, at 674–76; New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1064–65 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Kansas City v. Whipple, 38 S.W. 295, 295 (Mo. 1896) (describing the charter provision).

^ See The Obligation of Suffrage , Kan. City Star , Dec. 24, 1896, at 4.

^ 38 S.W. 295.

^ Id. at 295–97 (quoting Mo. Const. of 1875, art. II, § 9).

^ Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 142, 146. Earlier, the Maryland legislator who had pushed the compulsory voting bill there also tried to introduce it in Pennsylvania, though apparently without success. See id. at 142–43.

^ Id. at 120–22.

^ Id. at 149.

^ Id. at 149–51.

^ Id. at 148.

^ Id. at 151.

^ Id. at 147–48.

^ Id. at 156–57. The House rejected the amendment. Id.

^ Cf. John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust 103 (1980) (noting politicians often try to ensure “they will stay in and the outs will stay out”).

^ See Dinan, supra note 14, at 8–9 (charting the history of state conventions).

^ See id. at 49–50.

^ Frederick William Holls, Compulsory Voting: An Essay (1891).

^ See New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1058 (proposed amendment to section 4 of article 2 of the constitution) (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Id. at 1058–100.

^ Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 117.

^ N.D. Const. art. II, § 127, repealed by N.D. Const. art. CIV, § 2.

^ Id. art. CIV, § 2 (“Article V, consisting of sections 121 through 129, and articles 36 and 40 of the amendments, of the Constitution of the State of North Dakota are hereby repealed.”). It makes sense that the 1970s amendments did not include compulsory voting, which had little traction then.

^ See Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1192–95. Ohio’s convention was a Progressive hub attended by former President Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan; there, they debated classic Progressive policies such as the initiative, which Bryan called the “most effective means yet proposed for giving the people absolute control over their government.” See Dinan , supra note 14, at 60.

^ Ohio Constitutional Convention 1912: Proposals for Amendments as Introduced (1912) (Proposal No. 211).

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1195.

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 20 (Resolution No. 282).

^ See id. at 20–83.

^ See 2 Bulletins for the Constitutional Convention 1917–1918, at 227 (1919) (Bulletin No. 24) [hereinafter Massachusetts Bulletin ].

^ See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 128.

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 21.

^ Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 132–35.

^ See James D. Barnett, Compulsory Voting in Oregon , 15 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 265, 265–66 (1921); Oregon Secretary of State , Initiative, Referendum and Recall , in Oregon Blue Book 7, https://sos.oregon.gov/blue-book/Documents/elections/initiative.pdf [https://perma.cc/28XP-CEN2].

^ Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 537, 540. Only two states have since tried (and failed) to constitutionalize compulsory voting. See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 151, 153 (citing examples in Maine and Rhode Island).

^ See John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government 205–06 (New York, Henry Holt & Co. 1873) (1861).

^ James Clement Ambrose, Compulsory Voting , 2 Our Day 276, 276–88 (1888).

^ Holls claimed that based on “extracts from hundreds of newspapers,” there was ninety-percent support for compulsory voting among editorials; though those numbers seem inflated, the presence of articles suggests widespread debate. See New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1074 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Hart, supra note 21, at 308; see also id. at 319–22, 327. But see John M. Broomall, Compulsory Voting , 3 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. & Sci. 93, 95–97 (1893) (supporting compulsory voting and believing it enforceable via fine). Popular commentary also continued in the 1890s. See generally, e.g. , Morris S. Wise, Should Voting Be Compulsory? , Soc. Economist , Sept. 1892, at 143; James Bryce, The Teaching of Civic Duty , Forum , July 1893, at 552, 566.

^ See Special Librs. Ass’n, Select List of References on Compulsory Voting , 3 Special Librs. 32, 32–36 (1912).

^ See, e.g. , Note, Regulation and Limitation of the Right to Vote , 11 Colum. L. Rev. 278, 278–79 (1911); Note, supra note 14, at 267.

^ W.T. Donaldson, Compulsory Voting and Absent Voting with Bibliographies 3 (1914).

^ Samuel Spring, The Voter Who Will Not Vote , 145 Harper’s Monthly Mag. 744, 748–50 (1922); Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 173, 174 & n.1.

^ Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 175.

^ Id. at 176–77.

^ See Merriam & Gosnell , supra note 5, at 241–43; Charles H. Sherrill, Voting and Vote-Slacking , 221 N. Am. Rev. 401, 403–04 (1925) .

^ See Sherrill, supra note 83, at 403–04.

^ Arthur Capper, “ Let Us Tax the Vote Slacker , ” N.Y. Times Mag., Dec. 19, 1926, at 1.

^ In the first fifty results of a Harvard library search of “compulsory voting” (with the date range set from 1930 to 2000), just four focus on the United States.

^ See J. Allen Smith, The Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government 52–55 (1930) .

^ See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 149–53 (referencing California, Maine, and Wisconsin).

^ Id. at 151–53 (referencing Maine and Rhode Island).

^ Id. at 159 (quoting H.R. 641, 81st Cong. (1950)).

^ Id. at 163–65.

^ Id. at 244–51. As referenced earlier, though this Note disagrees with Abraham’s conclusions, it would not have been possible without his comprehensive study.

^ Kevin P. Phillips & Paul H. Blackman, Electoral Reform and Voter Participation: Federal Registration: A False Remedy for Voter Apathy 69 (1975).

^ Alan Wertheimer, In Defense of Compulsory Voting , in Participation in Politics 276–77 (J. Roland Pennock & John W. Chapman eds., 1975).

^ But see Hasen, supra note 14, at 2173–74 & n.154 (briefly describing the American history in a 1996 article); Ross Parish, For Compulsory Voting , Policy, Autumn 1992, at 15, 17 (supporting the policy).

^ See, e.g. , Martin P. Wattenberg, Where Have All the Voters Gone? 165 (2002).

^ See Should Voting in the U.S. Be Mandatory? , N.Y. Times (Nov. 7, 2011), https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/07/should-voting-in-the-us-be-mandatory-14 [https://perma.cc/CJM2-QVFR].

^ See Condon, supra note 9. For one supportive response to President Obama’s proposal, see S tephanopoulos, supra note 7. For one conservative critique, see Jonah Goldberg, Progressives Think that Mandatory Voting Would Help Them at the Polls , Nat’l Rev . (Nov. 13, 2015, 5:00 PM), https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/11/mandatory-voting-progressive-bad-idea [https://perma.cc/G6CA-G3XZ].

^ See, e.g. , sources cited supra notes 11–13. See generally Tavi Unger, Mandatory Voting in Constitutional Context , 57 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 271 (2022).

^ This Note refers to these four as “Progressive Era conventions,” though New York’s 1894 convention precedes the core of the Progressive Era as defined in this Note, see supra note 30.

^ Though “privileges” and “rights” are distinct — what may be bestowed discretionarily versus what one is entitled to — both contrast with “duty,” something one is obliged to perform. In this sense, rights and privileges are about who is allowed to vote, while duties are about who must vote. For one definition of these distinctions, see Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning , 23 Yale L.J. 16, 55 (1913).

^ See Henry J. Abraham, What Cure for Voter Apathy? , 41 Nat’l Mun. Rev. 346, 347–48 (1952) (contrasting voting as “not a privilege but a duty, a public trust,” with voting as “not an inalienable right . . . [but] a privilege” that can be “deni[ed] to certain classes”); see also Donaldson , supra note 79, at 8–9 (comparing “duty imposed upon each elector” with “privilege”).

^ Merriam & Gosnell , supra note 5, at 242–43.

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1062 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Id. at 1061.

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1193 (statement of Del. Frank Taggart).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 31 (statement of Del. J. Franklin Knotts).

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1192–93 (statement of Del. Frank Taggart). This argument reads today as paternalistic (at best), entrusting (near-exclusively) white men to speak for women and other residents denied the vote. For background on this exclusion, see Lloyd L. Sponholtz, Harry Smith, Negro Suffrage and the Ohio Constitutional Convention: Black Frustration in the Progressive Era , 35 Phylon 165, 165–67 (1974).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 42 (statement of Del. John D.W. Bodfish).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1079 (statement of Del. David H. McClure).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 66 (statement of Del. Patrick S. Broderick).

^ Id. at 25 (statement of Del. George P. Webster).

^ E.g. , id. (referencing the exclusion of people convicted of crimes).

^ Donaldson , supra note 79, at 18 (citing Hart, supra note 21, at 317, 319); see also New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1089 (statement of Del. Jerome S. Smith) (worrying about the “spirit of coercion” that is “everywhere rampant” in these proposals).

^ Kansas City v. Whipple, 38 S.W. 295, 297 (Mo. 1896).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1094 (statement of Del. Stephen S. Blake).

^ Id. at 1095 (statement of Del. Stephen S. Blake). These arguments around the “invasion of personal liberty” that came from forcing voting were seen to defeat the compulsory voting amendment in Oregon. See Barnett, supra note 71, at 266.

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1077 (statement of Del. David H. McClure).

^ Id. at 1097 (statement of Del. William P. Goodelle) (emphasis added).

^ Id. at 1078 (statement of Del. David H. McClure).

^ Henry J. Abraham, Compulsory Voting 23 (1955).

^ See generally Donaldson , supra note 79; Merriam & Gosnell , supra note 5.

^ See, e.g. , Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1192 (statement of Del. Frank Taggart) (decrying that “but one-fourth of the entire people” had ever “exercised this privilege” of voting).

^ See Rapoport & Keyssar, supra note 11 (quoting Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 42 (statement of Del. John D.W. Bodfish)). Another delegate chided the “vast number of stay-at-homes” at elections. Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 30 (statement of Del. J. Franklin Knotts); see also Barnett, supra note 71, at 265 (noting that “waning interest in elections” caused “lamentation” in Oregon).

^ See generally, e.g. , Take Slackers into Army , N.Y. Times, Sept. 10, 1918, at 6.

^ E.g. , Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 539 (statement of Del. Jerry Howard); see also Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 21 (statement of Del. Jerome S. Smith) (“Are they satisfied to . . . let the slackers remain at home?”).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1092 (statement of Del. De Lancey Nicoll).

^ Id. at 1070 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Id. at 1063.

^ For an example of the not-too-detailed information that delegates had, see Massachusetts Bulletin , supra note 67, at 232–39.

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1193 (statement of Del. Frank Taggart); see also Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 539–40 (statement of Del. Jerry Howard) (describing some non-voters as “merchant princes,” id. at 540).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1068 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Id. at 1068–69; see also Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 539 (statement of Del. Jerry Howard) (lamenting that 25,000 “not illiterate but educated men, graduates of colleges and professional men” stayed home).

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1194 (statement of Del. Frank Taggart); see also New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1075 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 29 (statement of Del. Jerome S. Smith).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1070 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls). New York Delegate Frederick Holls believed that compulsory voting would “tend to increase” the “intelligent and educated vote” by the “impetus which it would give to political education.” Id.

^ See Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Changing the People: Legal Regulation and American Democracy , 86 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1, 37, 38 n.221 (2011). For context on corruption worries, see Hill , supra note 39, at 675 (“Corruption, and not partisanship, is the great danger of the times.”).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1071–72 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 26 (statement of Del. Allan G. Buttrick).

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1193 (statement of Del. Frank Taggart); see also Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 28–30 (statement of Del. Jerome S. Smith) (arguing compulsory voting “will reduce corrupt practices to the minimum,” id. at 29).

^ See generally Goebel , supra note 33.

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 21 (statement of Del. Jerome S. Smith) (emphasis added).

^ Delegate Holls, for example, feared that initiative votes might “comprise[] practically only a moiety of the electoral body,” rendering the election a “mere farce.” See New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1069 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 62 (statement of Del. John W. McAnarney).

^ See Wiebe , supra note 34, at 167–77 (describing the short ballot).

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1195 (statement of Del. Edward W. Doty).

^ E.g. , Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 50 (statement of Del. Albert Bushnell Hart).

^ E.g. , id .

^ Abraham, supra note 102, at 348 (emphases added).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 45 (statement of Del. George P. Webster).

^ Id. at 33 (statement of Del. James T. Barrett).

^ Barnett, supra note 71, at 266.

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 27 (statement of Del. Charles H. Morrill).

^ Id. at 45 (statement of Del. George P. Webster).

^ See id. at 46.

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1194 (statement of Del. H.M. Brown).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 65 (statement of Del. George P. Webster).

^ Id. at 51 (statement of Del. Albert Bushnell Hart); see also Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 539 (statement of Del. O.B. Spillman).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1064–66 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ Massachusetts Bulletin, supra note 67, at 232–39 (citing Austria, Belgium, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and Tasmania). Other contemporary commentators similarly commented on other countries’ practices. See Note, supra note 14, at 267 n.14 (“It would appear that compulsory voting is quite generally established in civil law countries.”); William E. Hannan, Data Relating to Compulsory Voting 3–8 (1926) (citing experiences of Argentina, Australia, Austria, Spain, and other countries).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 59 (statement of Del. James T. Barrett).

^ Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 539 (statement of Del. Jerry Howard) (emphasis added). If the “will of the people” favors compulsory voting, then the legislature will not be “so lacking in practical common sense” that it becomes “impossible” to execute. Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 70 (statement of Del. J. Franklin Knotts).

^ Hannan , supra note 162, at 15 (citing Merriam & Gosnell , supra note 5, at 241).

^ E.g., supra notes 38–39 and accompanying text.

^ Massachusetts Bulletin , supra note 67, at 231.

^ Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 539 (statement of Del. Jerry Howard).

^ See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 120–22; Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1193 (statement of Del. Frank Taggart); New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1079 (statement of Del. David H. McClure) (considering a proposal to disfranchise citizens after five years of consecutive non-voting). Disfranchisement is an odd penalty for those seemingly seeking to ensure that everyone votes. However, these debates took place in a context where the franchise was still restricted both formally and informally; even the policy’s supporters meant to mandate voting for eligible voters — not for every American.

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1194 (statement of Del. Frank Taggart); see also New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1068 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls) (“When disfranchisement has lost its deterrent power, the ballot itself, and with it, all free institutions, will be doomed.”).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1073 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls) (calling compulsory voting “as important” as the Civil War draft); Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 74 (statement of Del. George W. Anderson) (arguing if we can “draft men into the military service,” we can “draft men to the performance of their duty at the polls”).

^ Massachusetts Bulletin , supra note 67, at 231–32.

^ Kansas City v. Whipple, 38 S.W. 295, 297 (Mo. 1896); see also New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1089 (statement of Del. Jerome S. Smith) (“There is not a State in this Union where a system of compulsory voting has been introduced since the Declaration of Independence; not one.”).

^ Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 538 (statement of Del. O.B. Spillman).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 71 (statement of Del. Lincoln Bryant); see also Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 539 (statement of Del. Jerry Howard) (“I am not going into Spain or Belgium . . . . I am remaining here at home in Nebraska.”).

^ New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1095 (statement of Del. Stephen S. Blake).

^ Nebraska Debates, supra note 16, at 539 (statement of Del. R.A. Matteson); see also id. at 538 (statement of Del. O.B. Spillman) (noting compulsory voting would “not be practical in its operation in this state”).

^ Hannan , supra note 162, at 15 (citing Merriam & Gosnell , supra note 5, at 241–43). This objection was captured in the oft-repeated line that one can take a horse to water but cannot make him drink. See Barnett, supra note 71, at 266; Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1195 (statement of Del. Edward W. Doty); Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 28–29 (statement of Del. Jerome S. Smith); see also William A. Robson, Compulsory Voting , 38 Pol. Sci. Q. 569, 575–76 (1923).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 63 (statement of Del. Charles H. Morrill).

^ Donaldson , supra note 79, at 15. One New York delegate even thought the proposal being raised must be a joke, as it is “not at all practical and not at all necessary.” New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1077 (statement of Del. David H. McClure).

^ Barnett, supra note 71, at 266; Donaldson , supra note 79, at 15 (citing Merriam & Gosnell , supra note 5, at 241–43). While no proposal explicitly suggested having police officers round up non-voters, fear over penalties was sufficient to kill the measure in Oregon. See Barnett, supra note 71, at 266.

^ Donaldson , supra note 79, at 15.

^ Ohio Debates, supra note 16, at 1193–94 (statement of Del. Edward W. Doty).

^ See New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1078–80 (statement of Del. David H. McClure).

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 58 (statement of Del. H. Huestis Newton); see also id. at 51–52 (statement of Del. Lincoln Bryant) (worrying disfranchisement was “depriving” voters and could undermine popular sovereignty).

^ See, e.g., Donaldson , supra note 79, at 13–15 (citing Kansas City v. Whipple, 38 S.W. 295, 295–97 (Mo. 1896)).

^ See, e.g. , Hart, supra note 21, at 317–18.

^ Massachusetts Debates, supra note 16, at 35 (statement of Del. John W. McAnarney); New York Debates, supra note 16, at 1058 (statement of Del. Frederick Holls).

^ See generally, e.g. , Henry, supra note 35, at 12–15; Blake Emerson, The Public’s Law: Origins and Architecture of Progressive Democracy (2019) (describing the growth of an administrative bureaucracy).

^ Keyssar , supra note 14, at 232 (describing the range of Progressive Era reform efforts).

^ For example, some states and cities in the Progressive Era pushed proportional representation. See John Dinan, Framing a “People’s Government”: State Constitution-Making in the Progressive Era , 30 Rutgers L.J. 933, 940–42, 940 n.36, 941 nn.37–38 (1999).

^ For discussions of these and other tensions in Progressivism, see generally Keyssar , supra note 14, at 232; Daniel T. Rodgers, In Search of Progressivism , 10 Revs. Am. Hist. 113 (1982); Emerson , supra note 189; Daniel A. Smith & Joseph Lubinski, Direct Democracy During the Progressive Era: A Crack in the Populist Veneer? , 14 J. Pol’y Hist. 349 (2002).

^ See generally Merriam & Gosnell, supra note 5; Donaldson , supra note 79, at 22.

^ Cf. Joseph Fishkin & William E. Forbath , The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution 185–87 (2022) (describing Progressives’ constitutional arguments against wealth concentration).

^ See, e.g. , Dionne & Rapoport , supra note 6, at xvi–xxiv (representation); Ekow N. Yankah, Compulsory Voting and Black Citizenship , 90 Fordham L. Rev. 639 , 660–66 (2021) (racial justice); id. at 654–55 (economic equality).

^ For one recent theoretical argument, see Emilee Booth Chapman, Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy 16 (2022). For just a few of the many studies of compulsory voting abroad, see generally Shane P. Singh, Beyond Turnout: How Compulsory Voting Shapes Citizens and Political Parties (2021); Ruth Dassonneville et al., The Impact of Compulsory Voting on Inequality and the Quality of the Vote , 40 W. Eur. Pol. 621 (2017).

^ See supra sections I.A–B, pp. 1140–46.

^ See generally, e.g. , Danielle Allen, Justice by Means of Democracy (2023) (describing a power-sharing liberalism vision of participatory government).

^ See, e.g. , Goldberg, supra note 98.

^ For example, education levels correlate with both voter propensity and support for Democratic candidates in recent elections, so compulsory voting might draw more from pools of voters that trend Republican. See Hannah Hartig et al., Pew Rsch. Ctr., Republican Gains in 2022 Midterms Driven Mostly by Turnout Advantage 13–14 (2023), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/07/PP_2023.07.12_validated-voters_REPORT.pdf [https://perma.cc/2WDA-M6M5].

^ For example, in the 1950s, Representative Jacob Javits (a Republican) proposed a plan to consider compulsory voting that President Truman (a Democrat) endorsed. See Abraham dissertation, supra note 14, at 161–65.

^ Cf. id. at 187 (opposing compulsory voting but “assum[ing] without question the theoretical desirability of ultimate total participation”).

^ See Page & Gilens , supra note 13, at 66–72 (describing how policy outcomes track the preferences of voters in the top of the income distribution). But cf. Ross, supra note 13, at 1187–91 ( doubting that compulsory voting produces redistributive or equality-inducing outcomes and citing an empirical study as evidence).

^ See Daron R. Shaw & John R. Petrocik, The Turnout Myth: Voting Rates and Partisan Outcomes in American National Elections 11 (2019).

^ See National Turnout Rates 1789–Present , supra note 1 (describing turnout rates often below sixty percent).

^ One could imagine a claim that being forced to vote amounts to being compelled to state a political opinion. For an example of compelled speech doctrine arising after the Progressive Era, see Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, 713 (1977) (prohibiting state from requiring a driver to bear a license plate with “Live Free or Die”).

^ See, e.g. , sources cited supra note 196.

^ See National Turnout Rates 1789–Present , supra note 1.

^ For a timeline of suffrage, see Ctr. for Am. Women & Pol., Women’s Suffrage in the U.S. by State (2014), https://tag.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/suffrage-by-state.pdf [https://perma.cc/B5NE-B6D2]. For anti-Black disfranchisement during the Progressive Era, see, for example, J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880–1910, at 139 (1974) (describing “disfranchising conventions” that southern states used to pass voter suppression policies). For the whiteness of Progressive advocates, see, for example, Sponholtz, supra note 108, at 165–68 (describing marginalization of Black Ohio delegates, in particular Harry Smith). For the whiteness of the states debating the policy — the six to propose amendments had Black populations lower than 2.5% by 1910 — see Dep’t of Com., Negro Population 1790–1915, at 49 (1918).

^ See, e.g. , Yankah, supra note 195, at 639–43; Matsler, supra note 8, at 977. A truism here is worth stating: the only way the electorate fully represents eligible voters is if the groups are the same.

^ See Ihaab Syed, Comment, How Much Electoral Participation Does Democracy Require? The Case for Minimum Turnout Requirements in Candidate Elections , 66 UCLA L. Rev. 2024, 2070–72 (2019).

• Civil Rights
• Election Law
• Legal History
• State Constitutional Law
• State Government

February 12, 2024

More from this Issue

Calling balls and strikes in prisoner litigation, voting wrongs and remedial gaps, moore  than meets the i.r.c. the apportionment rule’s originalist backstop for i.r.c. § 877a.

18 Mandatory Voting Pros and Cons

Mandatory voting, often referred to as “compulsory voting,” is a structure where the laws of a nation require eligible citizens to register and vote in elections. If the voter chooses not to vote, then penalties can be imposed if a sufficient reason for not voting cannot be provided.

In the American 2020 Presidential election, 22 million more Americans voted compared to the 2016 election. Still, only about two-thirds of eligible voters voted. Usually, the number rests at about half of eligible voters. Local and midterm elections are worse. For example, less than 37% of eligible voters voted in the 2014 American midterm elections.

At least 26 countries require mandatory voting for all eligible citizens according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. In Australia, for example, where voting has been mandatory since 1924, people who fail to vote may receive a notice in the mail seeking an explanation of their failure to vote. If the explanation is not accepted, then first-time offenders are fined $20. That fine is increased to $50 for those who have paid previous penalties or been convicted of failing to vote. In Australia, voters who do not respond to the notices sent by mail or refuse to pay their assigned penalty could lose their driver’s license.

There are certain pros and cons of mandatory voting that must be considered when examing from a balanced perspective whether all citizens should be required to vote.

List of the Pros of Mandatory Voting

1. It allows the government to reflect the wishes of the majority. One of the biggest compulsory voting pros is that more voters are communicating their desires through the voting process. When mandatory voting is not part of a country’s laws, then voter participation can be very low. Out of 35 peer countries, the United States ranks 28th in terms of total voter turnout. In the State of Hawaii, the average voter turnout is somewhere around 50%. In West Virginia, the average voter turnout is just 52.9%. In Australia, where mandatory voting is enforced, turnout rates are often above 90%. That means the government is a better reflection of the population.

2. It limits the voices of the extreme. Another big compulsory voting pro is that it limits the voices of extremist views that can impact the direction of the government because compulsory voting requires everyone who is eligible to vote. That allows the government to pursue legislation that is more centrist in nature, which benefits the general society more than one political side or the other. By protecting against the extreme, potentially vulnerable minorities have more protections available to them as well.

3. It reduces election costs. Another benefit of mandatory voting is a reduction in election costs. In Australia, the election costs per voter, for each major election that is held, is about $15 per voter. Since 1990, the cost per voter has increased about 15% with each subsequent election. In the United States, where mandatory voting is not part of the electoral process, state elections can be much more expensive. In Iowa, the cost per voter for elections was $39.11 in 2014. In New Hampshire, it was $50 per voter. Then, in Alaska, the cost per voter was $120.59.

4. It reduces “red meat” conversations in the election process. In the United States, many voters are motivated to vote for their preferred candidate because that person supports one core social issue. Many voters vote with their bank accounts in mind in the U.S., even if issues like abortion, religious freedom, or gun rights are part of the equation. With mandatory voting, candidates can focus on more issues than the “red meat” items. Deeper conversations about where to take the country become possible.

5. It encourages voters to be informed about candidates and issues. There will always be people who go to the voting booth to make random votes because they want to avoid paying the penalty for not voting. Under a mandatory voting structure, however, many voters do more research on candidates and core issues because the mandatory voting structure encourages them that they have a voice. They engage in debates and confront controversial ideas that may not work. That ultimately results in legislative decisions that help more people overall.

6. It makes it easier for citizens to cast their ballots. Advocates for mandatory voting typically use Australia as a model. There, voting is made easy. Voters complete their voter registration online, voters vote on a certain Saturday, and they can go to any voting station in their area to vote. In Australia, the experience is a community event and part of the culture. In fact, Australian voters often purchase a “democracy sausage” (bread with sausage in it) after casting their ballot. By comparison, anyone who has tried to vote in the United States knows there can be confusion about getting registered, when to vote, and where to vote. Making voting mandatory would shift the burden from the individual in figuring out how to get it done, to the state in making it easy and accessible. Right now, in the USA, it is a civic duty, but generally not a celebratory experience.

7. It makes voter suppression less of an issue. In the 2020 American Presidential election, the Republican Party took a number of actions in the name of ensuring integrity to the voting process and reducing or eliminating fraudulent voting. The Democratic Party interpreted these actions as voter suppression tactics. If voting were clear and easy, as it is in Australia under its mandatory voting system, the question of fraud would be much less of an issue. That would reduce the need to take actions to ensure integrity which others see as voter suppression.

8. It combats the influence and power of the uber wealthy in politics. In a speech given in March 2015, Barack Obama expressed support for mandatory voting because he said that it would bring in the voice of people who tend to vote less. These people are generally young, lower income, and skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities. With these currently underrepresented segments of society voting, the money spent by powerful lobbyists and rich donors would have less impact on election results. Obama stated: “It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything.” As an aside, Canadian Liberal leader Justin Trudeau also publicly supported compulsory voting in statements he made in 2015.

9. It contributes to the stability of democracy. A fundamental benefit of mandatory voting is that it supports democracy, which exists through and by participation from the people. The less people vote, the less decisions made by government will be seen as legitimate and representative of the desires of the people it governs.

List of the Cons of Mandatory Voting

1. It eliminates the concept of having freedom. The biggest compulsory voting con is perhaps that it eliminates the concept of having the freedom whether or not to cast your vote. Voting is certainly a privilege. Some would even call it a civic “right” or “responsibility.” In countries where mandatory voting is not part of the government structure, the decision to not cast a ballot is still a vote. It is a vote that says the voter rejects all candidates, the structure of the government, or other personal reasons. The choice to not vote speaks of more freedom than the requirement to vote or pay a fine.

2. It can reduce interest in local elections. Many voters do educate themselves on core local issues to make informed votes when an election day rolls around. Compelling citizens to vote is not a guarantee that a voter will decide to be actively involved in an election. Voters could choose candidates randomly. They could purposely vote against certain proposals or candidates to be disruptive. For these people, the funds spent on issue awareness are basically wasted.

3. It forces people to pay penalties for following their religious beliefs. An important compulsory voting con is the consideration of certain religious groups and their religious freedoms. There are several religious groups that have rejected participation in politics. The largest group, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has 8.2 million adherents throughout the world. About 70,000 of them live in Australia, where mandatory voting forces them to serve their faith or their government, but not both. Old Order Amish, Christadelphians, Doukhobors, the Baha’i, and the Shaykhiya are all known to reject participation in politics as well.

4. It increases the costs of law enforcement. Although mandatory voting may decrease the cost per voter in an election, the process of enforcing voting laws creates an increased cost for local law enforcement officials. Notices were sent to a majority of the 6% of people who did not vote in the last election in Australia. Enforcement of penalties comes at a cost as well. For those who refuse to pay an assigned penalty, the costs to enforce a revocation of a driver’s license and other penalties have a cost as well.

5. It increases the rates of informal voting. In Australia, informal voting (also called spoiled ballots) is defined as a ballot that has not been properly completed. These ballots are not counted towards a candidate or issue. Blank ballots, those without official marks, or papers that identify the specific voter are all common reasons for ballots to be considered informal. Since ballots do not identify specific voters, that means compulsory voting doesn’t actually create a vote in all circumstances. Voters just need to show up and make sure their ballot is cast.

In 2013, 5.9% of votes that were cast in Australia’s election were informal, which was the highest rate since 1984. Informal votes that were classified as deliberate went from 34% in 2001 to 49% in 2010. Informal votes are like a not-vote vote, which is the same as someone in the U.S. choosing not to vote. It inflates participation rates and nothing more.

6. It waters down political campaigns. When everyone is required to vote, politicians must campaign with all voters in mind, not just their trusted base. This means that their message needs to be one that includes and benefits everyone, resulting in politicians taking positions on issues that are not necessarily ideal because they are trying to get votes from everyone.

7. It increases uneducated voting. An important compulsory voting con is that people may cast their ballots, but not do so intelligently. In other words, just because people are forced to vote does not mean that they can also be forced to be informed about the issues and make a decision about who they think is the best candidate. They just have to choose a candidate, any candidate, to fulfill the voting requirement and avoid a penalty.

Those who choose not to vote may be doing so because they do not feel appropriately educated on the issues, or feel they do not have enough information to take a position on a candidate. Forcing them to vote is forcing them to simply toss a coin and pick someone.

8. It can lead to bad policy outcomes. Requiring all citizens to vote may result in politicians choosing to focus on marginal voters and swing voters instead of their trusted base in order to win the election. Marginal and swing voters tend to be more easily persuaded, and some have argued that these voters prefer simple explanations to complicated and nuanced reasonings on issues. This can lead to avoiding more beneficial and sophisticated legislation for the sake of simple answers to capture the swing votes.

9. It increases the negative campaigning and advertising. Haydon Manning, associate professor at Flinders University in Australia, wrote that his country’s compulsory voting system requires politicians to use “banal sloganeering and crass misleading negative advertising” in order to woo disengaged citizens. In Manning’s view, this diminishes the democratic experience for those who think through the various political issues.

So, should all citizens be required to vote? These mandatory voting pros and cons suggest that requiring people to vote can create more awareness of societal issues and increase participation rates. At the same time, compulsory voting may simply waste time and money for some voters because they show up to avoid a fine, but still don’t actually cast a formal vote.

• Contributors
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• The Regulatory Review In Depth

A Case for Mandatory Voting

Alana sheppard.

Scholars argue that civic duty voting could revive American democracy.

Despite historically high voter turnout rates in the 2020 general election, the United States still ranks in the lower half of developed countries for voter turnout.

Low voter turnout can threaten a democracy by inaccurately representing the needs of citizens, particularly marginalized individuals who face the greatest barriers to political participation.

To reach higher levels of participation and a more representative electorate, senior Brookings Institution fellow E.J. Dionne Jr. and a working group of experts argue in a recent report that the United States should adopt universal civic duty voting. Universal civic duty voting legally requires that all eligible citizens participate in all general and local elections.

In the working group report released by both the Brookings Institution and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School , the authors noted that although most people oppose the idea of mandatory voting, they do believe voting is both a right and a duty. The working group hopes that once the public sees the benefits of a universal voting scheme, more people will support the codification of a duty to vote.

Critics of universal voting most commonly fear that the policy violates the freedom not to speak, protected by the First Amendment. The working group argues that its proposed policy only requires attendance in elections— “the voter is free to check-in as having participated (in person or by mail) and walk away without casting a ballot.” The group maintains that the policy does not force citizens to exercise the speech-related elements of voting, such as choosing a specific candidate. Rather, universal voting compels conduct, similar to paying taxes or serving on a jury.

Another common concern among critics of universal voting is that the policy would penalize people from marginalized communities who may have institutional barriers to voting. The working group emphasizes that “the purpose of civic duty voting is to increase participation, not to lay traps for voters or penalize vulnerable communities.”

The group maintains that “mitigating the possible disparate effects of the policy must be a top priority.” For example, it explains  that a penalty for non-compliance would be minimal. The fine would not exceed $20, accrue late fees, nor impose further penalties if not paid. Non-compliers could also substitute the fine with community service.

The working group also emphasizes that complementary voting reforms must accompany a civic duty voting scheme for the policy to work and avoid exacerbating inequalities. Such reforms include same-day, automatic, and online voter registration, expanded early and absentee voting, accessible polling places, and restored voting rights for citizens with felony convictions.

The working group contends that the potential benefits of a universal voting scheme extend beyond increased voter turnout. Mandatory voting could assist in a “rebirth” of civic life.

With a comprehensive mandatory voting scheme and its corresponding voting reforms, the Brookings-Harvard working group argues that campaigns and organizations dedicated to protecting the right to vote could now focus on educating voters about the issues and candidates.

Mandatory voting would widen the electorate, widening the political spectrum that candidates must represent. The working group suggests that candidates could begin to reject polarizing views and avoid “divisive rhetoric and vilifying particular groups.”

With citizens compelled to vote—perhaps in a less volatile political climate—the working group predicts that “some citizens, initially empowered by their votes, would be drawn to deepen their participation in other aspects of civic life.”

The working group supports its optimism about a civic duty voting scheme by noting the “dramatic increases in participation” in countries that “have carefully implemented versions of civic duty voting.”

Australia, for example, saw voter participation soar from 60 to 91 percent after enacting mandatory voting. Although citizens could turn in blank ballots, only about 20 percent did .

Beyond voting laws, Australia also established a voting culture that encourages citizens to participate in democracy. After voting, citizens often receive “democracy sausages” at community barbecues. Australian voter Neil Ennis reportedly said , “Everyone turns up. Everyone votes. There’s a sense that: we’re all in this together. We’re all affected by the decision we make today.”

Inspired by Australia’s model, the Brookings-Harvard working group encourages policymakers to consider offering non-partisan, viewpoint-neutral incentives to complement a mandatory voting program. These incentives could include entering voters into a lottery for a financial prize, awarding voters “reduced fees for government services,” or giving voters “favorable access to public employment or educational opportunities.”

In adopting a comprehensive civic duty voting scheme as other countries have, the members of the working group argue that the United States could see a similar increase in democratic participation, along with a decrease in inequality, and moderation of the nation’s overall political atmosphere.

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Voters, lawyers, and activists continue to fight for voting rights in the Peach State.

Lift Every Voice: The Urgency of Universal Civic Duty Voting

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July 20, 2020

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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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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.

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“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.

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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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The learning network | should voting be mandatory.

Should Voting Be Mandatory?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

• See all Student Opinion »

A healthy representative democracy depends on citizens exercising their right to vote. Yet here in the United States, usually 40 percent of eligible voters don’t vote during presidential elections, and typically 60 percent don’t vote in congressional midterm elections.

Should voting be mandatory?

In the 2011 Op-Ed essay “ Telling Americans to Vote, or Else ,” William A. Galston writes:

Jury duty is mandatory; why not voting? The idea seems vaguely un-American. Maybe so, but it’s neither unusual nor undemocratic. And it would ease the intense partisan polarization that weakens our capacity for self-government and public trust in our governing institutions. Thirty-one countries have some form of mandatory voting, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. The list includes nine members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and two-thirds of the Latin American nations. More than half back up the legal requirement with an enforcement mechanism, while the rest are content to rely on the moral force of the law. Despite the prevalence of mandatory voting in so many democracies, it’s easy to dismiss the practice as a form of statism that couldn’t work in America’s individualistic and libertarian political culture. But consider Australia, whose political culture is closer to that of the United States than that of any other English-speaking country. Alarmed by a decline in voter turnout to less than 60 percent in 1922, Australia adopted mandatory voting in 1924, backed by small fines (roughly the size of traffic tickets) for nonvoting, rising with repeated acts of nonparticipation. The law established permissible reasons for not voting, like illness and foreign travel, and allows citizens who faced fines for not voting to defend themselves. The results were remarkable. In the 1925 election, the first held under the new law, turnout soared to 91 percent. In recent elections, it has hovered around 95 percent. The law also changed civic norms. Australians are more likely than before to see voting as an obligation. The negative side effects many feared did not materialize. For example, the percentage of ballots intentionally spoiled or completed randomly as acts of resistance remained on the order of 2 to 3 percent.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …

— Should voting be mandatory?

— Would legally requiring people to vote make for a healthier democracy? Or do you agree with Jason Brennan, an associate professor of ethics, economics and public policy at Georgetown University, who argues in this 2011 Room for Debate that higher turnout does not necessarily lead to higher quality government? He writes:

The median voter is incompetent at politics. The citizens who abstain are, on average, even more incompetent. If we force everyone to vote, the electorate will become even more irrational and misinformed. The result: not only will the worse candidate on the ballot get a better shot at winning, but the candidates who make it on the ballot in the first place will be worse. Most people believe that more voting causes better government. This is an article of faith, not fact. Social scientists have shown that higher quality government tends to cause higher turnout. But higher turnout does not cause higher quality government.

— Is mandatory voting undemocratic? Is it unconstitutional?

— Instead of mandatory voting, would you support other ideas to increase turnout, such as tax breaks for voting or making Election Day a public holiday so workers get the day off, as readers suggested in these letters to the editor ? Or would you recommend using automatic voter registration , so that when an eligible voter gets a driver’s license, he or she is automatically registered to vote?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

What's Next

Feature   Oct 19, 2020

Is Mandatory Voting the Answer to Our Voting Wars?

Ash Center Fellow Miles Rapoport helps ignite a public debate on implementing universal voting in the United States 

Reimagining Democracy Program

Democratic Reform

Political and legal fights over voter registration deadlines and polling locations are only intensifying as the United States lurches towards one of the most consequential and unprecedented elections in generations, leading many observers to ask, “Does it have to be this way?” Chief among the critics of this unfolding drama of voter suppression, voter disinformation, and an election system nearly brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic is Miles Rapoport, Ash Center senior practice fellow in American democracy. As aformer Connecticut secretary of the state, he should know—Rapoport was responsible for running the state’s elections. “What we’ve seen over the last few weeks, with uncertainty over voting rules, lawsuits filed by the dozens, and general confusion about what Election Day should look like, isn’t a flaw in the system. It’s just a further illustration of how our decentralized, often politically driven and in some cases poorly administered election system was designed to function,” he says.

Rapoport, like numerous advocates and scholars around the country, has been following thiselection season with great alarm. “The dramatic shift we’ve seen to early voting and absentee voting has laid bare the many inadequacies of our current voting system.” While the US often styles itself as the world’s defender of democracy, in truth, barely a majority ofAmericans cast votes in the last presidential election. Midterm and other off-year elections sometimes see as few as a third of eligible voters turn up at the polls. “The truth is, we’ve built a system in this country that erects many barriers and makes it difficult for many people to vote,” adds Rapoport.

The reasons why it is so difficult to vote in the US compared with many other advanced democracies are manifold, with longstanding state and even intrastate variations in election systems and their chronic underfunding being primary culprits. And, in a number of places, voting barriers are also intentionally erected, meant to ensure that racial and other minorities are not able to exercise their constitutional rights to participate in theirdemocracy. At a 2018 conference sponsored by the Ash Center and chaired by Archon Fung, Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government and director of the Ash Center’s Democratic Governance program, Rapoport, along with Fung and a host of other HKS faculty members and outside scholars and advocates, discussed exactly what it would take to get US voter participation to roughly 80 percent of eligible voters—a figure on par with many other advanced democracies. “The truth is that even if we could do away with many of the blatant voter suppression and disenfranchisement efforts, which are purposely designed to make voting more difficult, we still wouldn’t be close to achieving 80 percent,” said Fung during his presentation at the conference.

Fung argued that in order to significantly strengthen voter participation rates to approachthose in Europe and elsewhere, the US would have to undergo a shift that would build and foster a stronger culture of voting. This sparked an examination of what would be required to institute such a system and instill a culture of voter participation in the US. “Looking at acountry such as Australia where they legally mandate that their citizens vote, I thought that there’s no structural reason why we couldn’t do that here,” says Rapoport. “If it could work in Australia, it could work in this country.”

Joining forces with Washington Post op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program and visiting professor at HarvardDivinity School, who also has a longstanding interest in universal voting, Rapoport set out to jump-start a new conversation on the subject. With support from both the Ash Center and Brookings, Rapoport and Dionne formed a working group of two dozen scholars, advocates,and practitioners including Fung; Cornell William Brooks, professor of the practice of public leadership and social justice; and Ash Center democracy fellow Tova Wang. The groupengaged in a series of deep discussions about both the desirability and possibility of enactinguniversal voting. Meeting over the course of eighteen months, the working group discussed everything from the constitutionality of adopting universal voting (their analysis contends that such a system would stand up to legal scrutiny) to how to enforce mandatory voter participation when punitive or other revenue generating fees such as court costs, bail, and other financial penalties are increasingly under scrutiny for their disproportionate impact on communities of color.

The working group was driven by its strong belief that universal voting could go a long way towards creating a political system where all voices would be given the same opportunity to participate in the electoral process. “Political leaders,” said the working group in its reportissued in July 2020 , would be encouraged “to understand that their obligations extend to all Americans, not just to those they deem to be ‘likely voters.’ And we see it [universal or civic duty voting] 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.” For Rapoport and the other working group members, this idea was critical: “Politicians would have to be responsive to the concerns of the entire electorate—not just the narrow minority who largely participate today.”

As Rapoport watches the squabbling over ballot drop-box locations and postmark deadlines for voting by mail play out in court and in the media, he wonders what our voting system would be like if everyone thought of voting in the same way they do jury duty. “Serving on a jury is just considered one of those facts of civic life,” he says. “Doing jury duty is one of those boring and slightly inconvenient civic obligations that people may gripe about, but that everyone understands is critical for the fair administration of justice. I would argue that ensuring all voters participate in the electoral process is critical for the fair administration of democracy.”

While Rapoport is under no illusions as to the challenges of adopting universal voting, he believes that the working group’s report represents an important starting point for a discussion on the merits of their proposal. “It’s not going to happen overnight, but no significant reforms to voting in the history of the country have, either. There was a time when the idea of allowing women or African Americans to vote was seen as outlandish. The groundwork for those reforms took years to lay. I’m convinced universal civic duty voting can have the same trajectory from radical idea to accepted norm.”

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Voting Should Be Mandatory

By Waleed Aly

• Jan. 19, 2017

MELBOURNE, Australia — When you survey the wreckage of 2016, it’s easy to forget that the most seismic democratic events were brought about by minorities.

Only 37 percent of eligible Britons voted to leave the European Union. The case is even clearer in the American election, which Donald J. Trump won despite having persuaded only a quarter of the American electorate to support him. Mr. Trump triumphed in a low-turnout election .

As we scramble to explain the upheavals in democratic politics, we may be describing shifts that, while significant, are smaller than we think.

It’s time for democracies to adopt compulsory voting. I say this from Australia, one of about a dozen countries where people can be penalized for not voting (about a dozen more have compulsory voting on the books but don’t enforce it). We’ve done so at the federal level since 1924 , following a drop in voter turnout. We’re now required by law to enroll at 18 years old (though this isn’t strictly monitored), and we’re fined if we fail to vote. Around three-quarters of Australians have consistently supported compulsory voting, and there is no meaningful movement for change.

The evidence is mixed on whether compulsory voting favors parties of the right or the left, and some studies suggest that most United States federal election results would be unchanged. But all that misses the point because it overlooks that compulsory voting changes more than the number of voters: It changes who runs for office and the policy proposals they support.

In a compulsory election, it does not pay to energize your base to the exclusion of all other voters. Since elections cannot be determined by turnout, they are decided by swing voters and won in the center. Australia has its share of xenophobic politicians, but they tend to dwell in minor parties that do not even pretend they can form a government.

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Mandatory voting won't cure dismal turnout: Our view

Voter turnout in U.S. elections hardly inspires pride. The nation lags far behind most modern democracies in the percentage of its citizens who go to the polls. Even in presidential elections, only about 60% of voters show up; turnout for midterm elections is far lower — just 36% last fall.

Policymakers have tried for years to come up with ways to increase those numbers — early voting, same-day registration and voting by mail — but the impact has been small. President Obama provoked controversy last month when he mused about requiring Americans to vote , as is done in Australia and several other countries. The president was responding to a question about how to offset the effect of big money in politics. "That would counteract money more than anything," the president said.

In Australia , 90% of eligible voters go to the polls despite minimal enforcement. Registered voters who fail to vote get a form letter asking why; almost any excuse will do to get someone off the hook. Those with no valid excuse face a fine of about $20 , which can escalate if someone refuses to pay, though that is rare.

But the idea is a non-starter in the defiantly individualistic U.S., for good reason: A nation predicated on personal freedom rightly forces its citizens to do only a very few things — pay taxes, serve on juries, educate children, be drafted and serve in some wars, and lately, buy health insurance.

There's a compelling reason for each of those, but not to require people to vote. Low turnout, troubling as it is, doesn't pose an existential threat in a nation that has succeeded despite it, nor would forcing disinterested voters to the polls have much value.

If there is an exception, it's in local elections, for which turnout is generally dismal despite the high impact of local government.

Ferguson, Mo., is a prominent example. After a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager last summer, igniting angry protests, it came to light that the voter turnout in Ferguson's local elections is about 12%, which explains why a city that is two-thirds black has only one black city council member and a nearly all-white police force.

Ferguson's voters go to the polls again Tuesday with a chance to elect as many as three black council members, but turnout remains in doubt.

Instead of forcing people to vote, though, government should be educating them — particularly as children — about the power of democratic choice, and it should be removing obstacles that make it hard for interested voters to cast a ballot, especially would-be voters whose long working days make voting difficult.

Lately, though, politicians have been doing the opposite. Ostensibly to save money and combat fraud, state officials, almost exclusively Republicans, have been pursuing a thinly veiled campaign to make voting harder. Methods include cutting back on early voting and instituting voter ID laws while making it difficult for many voters to get the required ID. Those most likely to be deterred are lower-income people, minorities and younger voters who tend not to vote Republican.

The last thing a nation with a turnout problem needs are policies that make it harder to vote. Deliberately keeping people away from the polls is just as bad as forcing them to go.

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Why mandatory voting is a success in some countries, but not embraced in Canada

Brooke Taylor CTVNews.ca Writer

TORONTO -- In the most recent federal elections , roughly a third of Canadians opted to stay home instead of casting their ballots. Could compulsory voting be the solution to Canada's voter turnout woes?

Mandatory voting laws aren't new. Belgium has had mandatory voting on the books since 1893 for men and 1948 women. Australia has had a compulsory voting law in place since 1924. Brazil, Uruguay and Luxemburg also have mandatory voting laws.

"States that have mandatory voting, they just become a fixture of the landscape. In Australia, roughly 70 per cent of the population supports mandatory voting, it's a very broad, very popular policy institution, and it's really not very controversial," Kevin Elliott, political theorist and professor at Murray State University in Kentucky, told CTV's Your Morning on Tuesday.

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In Australia, things are pretty straight forward on election day -- citizens must go to the polling station. If they don't, they will receive a letter, he said.

"You can then send a letter which says that, 'I was out of town', or 'I was taking care of a sick child' or whatever it may be," said Elliott. "And very often, that explanation is sufficient, that's the end of it. If not, you receive a monetary fine between $20 and $50 Australian, at this point, and that's the end of the story."

More than 90 per cent of Australians turned out to vote in their 2019 election. Elliott said that this number is consistently high in that country.

"Australia has some of the best voting rights, highest turnout in the world, regularly in excess of 90 per cent turnout, and it's been fairly stable at that level for, most of the period of time that they've had it since 1924," he said.

In the 2019 federal election, Canada’s voter turnout was 67 per cent, in 2015 it was 68.3 per cent and in 2011 it was 61.1 per cent. Elections Canada’s website acknowledges compulsory voting’s success in Australia, but notes that the right to vote in Canada is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that making voting mandatory might be an unpopular option in Canada.

In 2014, in response to falling voter turnout, Liberals floated the idea of compulsory voting and ran a survey to see if the idea could take off in Canada. Mandatory voting was never officially adopted. In 2017, the Liberals made it clear that they would not impose mandatory voting after a survey on electoral reform. The survey showed that electoral reform was generally popular among Canadians but that mandatory voting was not, with 53 per cent of those polled saying they did not agree with mandatory voting. 

More recently, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole told a virtual crowd last April that he was looking at how Australia conducts mandatory voting and if this would be an option for Canadians.

"I think that's a civic duty that we should encourage. I'm going to look closely at what Australia's been doing. I think there's a lot of things we can do to bring up confidence,” he said.

When The Canadian Press asked for clarification on his position later that month, he said in a statement: "Voting is a constitutionally protected right, and is an important pillar of democracy. Canada's Conservatives will always stand up for the rights of Canadians to cast a vote in our electoral system.”

According to Elections Canada, mandatory voting increases voter turnout by about 20 per cent, which would bring Canadian voter turnout up into the 80 per cent area.

About 70 per cent of Australians support compulsory voting, and Elliott said this is in part because they understand the reasoning behind it.

“They recognize that marginalized people are very likely to not turn out, people who are busy, people who are impoverished, and so, they will tend to recognize mandatory voting as a way for them to count, in a way that they might not otherwise be able to,” he said.

Another note for Australia’s success with mandatory voting is that it has been in place for almost as long as Australians could cast a vote. Their first election was in 1901, and voting mandates came into effect in 1924.

While some people may be concerned about being forced to vote, Elliott said it's only mandatory to turn out to the polls.

"You can remain perfectly free to vote for whomever you want or even to not vote at all," he said. "All that's legally required under mandatory voting statutes is that one attend to the polling place."

There are other things that are mandatory for Canadians that aren't quite as simple as turning out to a polling place on Election Day.

"Jury duty for instance, far more of an imposition than being required to come to the polling place on Election Day, but we recognize that it's an important civic duty, so we don't stress about it all that much," said Elliott.

- With files from the Canadian Press 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

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Pros and cons of compulsory voting

Higher turnout minimises polarisation but critics point to the 'right not to vote'

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Keir Starmer's Labour Party conference speech was interrupted by a protester calling for an "upgrade to the UK political system" and an overhaul of its democratic institutions and processes.

But while it is common to identify the glaring flaws in Britain's electoral system, David Klemperer said in a blog for The Constitution Society that "what is less often commented upon… is a more immediate issue with the representativeness of our elections: that a large proportion of the electorate does not vote".

Voting is compulsory in only about 20 countries around the world, with enforcement varying from modest fines for those who fail to turn up on polling day to the naming and shaming of non-voters.

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Pro: higher and more representative turnout

This may seem obvious but compulsory voting leads to drastically higher voter turnout rates. In Australia, where mandatory voting was first used in 1925, turnout for elections hovers around 90% of all registered voters, compared to an average of just under 65% for the past six UK general elections.

Additionally, said Fair Vote , proponents of the policy emphasise that where voting is compulsory it "becomes more a duty than a right". The idea, said the US electoral reform organisation, is that making voting mandatory alters civic norms, so that eventually it is simply expected that everyone takes part in elections.

Beyond changing the culture around elections, mandatory voting has been proven to improve accessibility. Extending on that idea, Australia has taken extensive action to ensure most people also have "the opportunity to vote – even the most disadvantaged", said the Harvard International Review .

"Those countries who have compulsory voting, where the penalty for not voting is a fine, and where spoiling your ballot paper is allowed as a way of signalling general discontent, tend to have healthier democracies," said Alastair Campbell for the i news site, "and healthier democracies tend to be happier places."

Con: infringes on individual liberty

Critics have long argued that people have a right not to cast a vote, the BBC reported. And on a "philosophical and legal level" compulsory voting "raises the question of whether requiring citizens to vote is an appropriate infringement on individual liberty", admitted Policy Options .

Indeed, said Rohan Silva in The Times , "to a British sensibility the core of the Aussie electoral system feels deeply uncivic and illiberal: the legal requirement to turn up and vote or else be clobbered with a government fine of up to £100 and potentially hauled in front of a judge".

"Some people choose not to vote because they find the available options so distasteful that they don't want to be in the position of supporting any of them," wrote the law professor and author Ilya Somin for The Washington Post in 2015. "Even if the ballot includes some sort of 'none of the above' option, choosing to vote might still be viewed as at least a partial endorsement of the status quo political system, and some citizens might prefer not to signal any such endorsement."

Pro: minimises polarisation

"Lower turnout," Fair Vote argued, "enables more hard-core partisans and ideologues to dominate elections." So conversely supporters of compulsory voting claim it would help to minimise political polarisation.

Writing in The New York Times in 2011, William Galston, from the Brookings Institution think tank, said universal voting "would ease the intense partisan polarisation that weakens our capacity for self-government and public trust in our governing institutions".

"If the full range of voters actually voted, our political leaders, who are exquisitely attuned followers, would go where the votes are: away from the extremes," agreed Eric Lui, a former adviser to President Clinton, in Time . 

"Academic studies corroborate this view," said Silva in The Times, "suggesting that the more people who turn out to vote, the more centrist the outcome." This is said to be because "parties can't simply pander to their hardcore supporters, who tend to be more ideological and less representative of the general population".

Con: the 'uninformed voter' effect

One of the major arguments given against compulsory voting is that it leads to a greater number of so-called "uninformed voters", with those who currently choose not to vote generally less educated on political issues than those who do.

"We know from other places around the world that whilst compulsory voting may actually increase the turnout, it doesn't necessarily result in better-informed electors," the Welsh Conservative Member of the Senedd Darren Millar told the BBC.

Evidence suggests that these new voters are more susceptible to misinformation during a campaign. The Australian political scientist Haydon Manning writing for CNN that compulsory voting often "requires banal sloganeering and crass misleading negative advertising".

There is also concern that uninformed voters, or those who simply do not care about the outcome of an election, may end up voting randomly. The impact of "random" votes "ends up being particularly detrimental because it fails to increase civic engagement and may skew election results", reported Fair Vote.

Pro: counteracts money in politics

In 2015, the then US president Barack Obama suggested "it would be transformative if everybody voted" and that would "counteract money more than anything".

"The people who tend not to vote are young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities…," he argued, adding "there's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls".

The tendency towards non-voting is not evenly distributed among the population, but rather heavily correlated with age and class .

The overall result of such differentials is "an electorate that skews notably older, wealthier, whiter, and more educated than the makeup of the population as a whole", said Klemperer. 

Con: criminalises non-voters

While Australia has shown that only a small percentage of voters refuse to abide by the law, in a country the size of the UK or even US this would still equate to tens or hundreds of thousands of normally law-abiding citizens penalised for not voting.

In countries that have compulsory voting, its enforcement "varies from being strict to being weak", said Policy Options. Australia, for example, imposes modest fines on citizens who do not turn up to vote, with exceptions made for those who have "valid and sufficient reasons", while other countries use "shaming", posting the names of non-voters.

But this is an uncomfortable thought for many opposed to a big state. "If Nadine Dorries is vexed about compulsory BBC licence fees, the thought of enforced voting would probably prompt her to start an armed militia," said Silva.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Voting — Why Is Voting Important

Why is Voting Important

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