Against Compulsory Voting

By Max Howard

Bristol, UK

(Elliott Stallion / Unsplash)

In 2001, 59.4% of British citizens voted in the general election, the lowest turnout seen in the UK since 1918 – and turnout has not been greater than 70% this millennium. It seems like this is cause for concern – how can a democratic government best represent their citizens if so many are not expressing their needs politically in the first place? Even more worrying is the inequalities within voter turnout. It is estimated that in 2017, roughly 50% of 18–34 year-olds voted, as opposed to the 85% of those 65 and older​. And it is not just age where this divide is present. Overall, a person is more likely to vote if they are old, wealthy, white, employed, and educated. These characteristics describe some of the most privileged people in the UK, who are best insulated from poor public policy, and less likely to be directly affected by policy on welfare or immigration, which has a larger impact on vulnerable people. One proposed solution is compulsory voting, which has already been adopted by 21 countries around the world.

The usual arguments for mandatory voting are as follows: if we are in favour of democracy, as most of the western world is, then it would appear that hearing the voice of the whole nation must be better. Mandatory voting also avoids voting suppression, which is becoming an increasingly pressing issue in the US, and prevents issues that disproportionately affect non-voters being overlooked. In reality, the vast majority of those who do not vote are not doing so as part of political protest, but rather out of a lack of political education, political apathy, or a sense of political disempowerment; mandatory voting ensures that these people’s voices are heard​​. On top of this, the argument that people have a right not to vote for any party out of protest is swiftly resolved by the option to spoil your ballot. In a country where everyone must vote, politicians are forced to satisfy as many people’s preferences as they can, rather than pandering to those demographics more likely to vote. Because of this, mandatory voting is much less likely to foster extremist governments, as under mandatory voting, elections are not won by whoever can motivate the largest proportion of their base to vote, but by which party persuades the swing apolitical voters​. Overall, it seems that mandatory voting, by better holding governments accountable to their citizens, could increase aggregate wellbeing. 

However, this argument hinges on the assumption that people can effectively communicate their preferences through their vote, but this is only true to an extent. It has been argued that the average citizen is poorly politically informed and very biased - and non-voters are even less well informed, and even more biased​. A powerful example of irrational voting was in 1916, when a series of shark attacks across the Jersey shore resulted in a decrease in tourism. As a result, the governor of New Jersey at the time, Woodrow Wilson, lost his home state in the presidential election. Of course, voters knew that he could not have had anything to do with these shark attacks, but they associated the attacks with their incumbent at the time, and he lost their support. Achen and Bartels believe that these shark attacks were responsible for a ten percentage point reduction in votes for Wilson. An alternative explanation for voter behaviour is that when most people vote, rather than expressing their wants and needs, it is more likely that they are affirming their tribal identities​. People vote for certain parties for the same reasons they support certain football teams or feel patriotic. A study in New Zealand indicated that instead of people’s preferences affecting which party they associated themselves with, their preferences changed over time to better align to the party they had already associated with​. In America, political scientists found that only around 17% of Americans actually had ideologies, with the remaining 83% being non-ideological, and even struggling to define terms such as “liberal” and “conservative”. Despite this “ideological innocence”, the vast majority of these 83% of voters were dedicated Republicans and Democrats and rarely changed parties. If most people are not actually voting to bring about certain ends they deem beneficial for themselves or others, but are instead voting for certain parties in order to belong to certain social groups, then there is no reason to expect mandatory voting to increase the general wellbeing by highlighting the wants and needs of the electorate.

The concept of mandatory voting also misunderstands voter turnout as a metric for public political participation altogether. A high voter turnout is not valuable in itself – there would be nothing intrinsically valuable in every person in a nation ticking an arbitrary box on a ballot each election (this would probably be relatively harmful) – but because it is indicative of a population with active political participation. Mandatory voting clearly increases voter turnout, but it does not directly force people to take an interest in politics, and there is little evidence that suggests that mandatory voting improves the public’s political knowledge as a secondary effect. Advocating for mandatory voting is a good example of Goodhart’s Law – “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. Mandatory voting is a band-aid solution which fails to address the causes of low voter turnout.  

It might further be argued that compulsory voting should not only be of low priority, but actively discouraged until general political knowledge has vastly improved. The current voting pool is already irrational and biased, and in some cases not even attempting to benefit themselves nor the general public​​. Adding voters who have received even less political education to this voting pool would only increase the discrepancy between citizens’ preferences and how they vote. Non-voters are twice as likely to say they do not feel they have enough information on how to vote according to one report Instead, full focus should be placed on education, and altering the democratic process until citizens can better vote for their preferences. The goal should not be to have as large a voting pool as possible, but to have as large a politically informed voting pool as possible. Increased political education, decreasing resistance to registering to vote, simplifying the political process or better access to political information would all increase political participation and knowledge, and would still correspond to an increase in turnout​ as a byproduct.   

To conclude, while it may seem as though mandatory voting would prevent underrepresented groups from being politically neglected, because voters are in general unable to convey their preferences through voting, it is unlikely that this would be the case. In actuality, mandatory voting is likely to further distort elections, given an increased lack of political knowledge. Instead, emphasis should be on developing a climate of political education and curiosity, which would in turn lead to more political participation, and more informed political participation.