On Compulsory Voting

William Galston has a piece in the New York Times about introducing compulsory voting in the United States. He has the right reform, but uses some odd logic to justify it.

He offers three justifications. The first is a complaint that American citizenship is “strong on rights, weak on responsibilities”. I would point out that compulsory voting is about protecting people from being prevented from exercising their right to vote, not imposing some onerous burden on them. His second point is insightful, namely that the decline of political machines and organised labour has reduced the ability of interest groups to mobilise voters, although as Jonathan Bernstein notes, modern get-out-the-vote operations are no less successful than the older methods.

For his third argument, Galston repeats the usual line about American politics being too polarised. I have two issues with this: firstly, some of us like a good old-fashioned ideological stoush, and secondly, there are virtually no ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans in this technocratic, fiscally conservative age. Moreover, compulsory voting won’t lead to some magical centrist utopia – independents often have high turnout, parties will simply adapt their appeals to new voters, and political scientists are divided over whether negative advertising increases or decreases turnout.

In general, the arguments against compulsory voting are unconvincing. It doesn’t constitute a massive infringement of civil liberties, especially when compared to other civic obligations such as jury duty, and it’s rather unsavoury to hear people argue for the right to avoid participating in the democratic process. Plus, you can always make up an excuse, cast a blank vote, or spoil your ballot paper. Perhaps most importantly, compulsory voting (and compulsory registration) prevents the disenfranchisement of disfavoured groups (although not always – the Howard government’s changes to electoral registration laws prior to the 2007 federal election were clearly an attempt to disenfranchise young voters). Under compulsory voting, African-Americans in the South wouldn’t have been able to be intimidated into not exercising their right to vote for decades.

On the other hand, there aren’t many appreciable differences between countries with compulsory voting and those without. Australia doesn’t have a significantly more politically engaged citizenry or a completely different political culture than the United States or Britain. Groups that would have much lower turnout (young people, indigenous Australians, etc.) under a non-compulsory regime are not noticeably more free or better off. Compulsory voting won’t bring about better democracy by itself – it is just one of many necessary improvements such as campaign finance regulations, non-partisan redistricting, ending the malapportionment of upper houses, and primaries.