Voting has been considered a sacred practice for centuries. As one of the main pillars of a democratic society, perhaps the best way to do this in a democratic system is to vote in elections. And yet, so many Americans do not vote despite being eligible and directly impacted by the outcomes of said elections. Why is it, then, that people do not engage in the electoral system? There are many reasons, including apathy and disillusionment, lack of preference for a candidate, disenfranchisement, and more. There are ways to make voting easier, and we should without a doubt take those steps, as barriers to engagement are antithetical to the democratic ideology. But just because something is easy to do does not mean it will be done. So how, then, do we ensure maximum participation in our democratic election process? I believe that compulsory voting in elections is the strongest way to ensure that we have maximum participation. Compulsory voting means that all citizens of voting age are required to vote, and are subject to a fine if they do not do so.
Compulsory voting is a great way to protect our democracy. More participation leads to more equitable representation. People tend to vote for those that they can see themselves in. This is not an absolute rule, but it is still a strong influence on how someone might vote. Currently, According to a CRS report, the average age of senators is over 64 years old. No wonder young Americans are the least likely to vote; they do not see candidates who look like them, think like them, talk like them, believe the same things they do. According to the American Bar Association, our 117th congress is still overwhelmingly white. The house, with significantly more representatives covering more specific regions of the nation, is predictably more diverse, but still 73% white. The Senate is even less diverse with 89 whie members. This means that people of color are less evenly represented because there are less members who look, think, talk, and behave the way they do. When you force everyone of voting age to participate, suddenly there is an even larger demand for younger and more diverse officials, people who can better connect with historically disengaged sections of the population.
More participation leads to more engagement. The more people vote, the more likely they are to engage in other civic actions like advocating for a cause close to them, attending local town hall events, and contacting elected officials to encourage them to vote a certain way. This increase in engagement leads to more knowledge on how our government works. If people are forced to engage in something, like it or not, they will learn about how that thing works. By mandating voting, we can counterbalance the canyons in our education system when it comes to our government.
More participation leads to more accountability. The more people engage with their government, the harder it is for elected officials to not have to answer for anything your constituency does not approve of. When people are forced to vote, they will be looking at the behavior of the person they have the ability to vote for. If their incumbent candidate has behaved dishonestly or inappropriately enough, mandated voting will bring these issues to light.
Of course, there are still major obstacles to overcome in our voting method, and making it mandatory for all citizens will not necessarily make those go away. For starters, almost every Tuesday, somewhere in the United states, there is an election going on for some position. This means that there needs to be a system in place that can make people more aware of the elections going on in the place that they live. Moreover, there are many hurdles that one must jump over in order to be registered to vote. By making voting mandatory, however, we can eliminate this issue by automatically registering everyone of voting age. There is also the issue of when voting day is. Tuesday, a weekday, was chosen in order to make it harder for those who could not afford to take the time out of their workday to vote. This punishes lower income people. Making voting mandatory could only exacerbate this issue. That is why it will also be important to move when voting day is from a Tuesday to a weekend day, or even expanding the window in which a person can vote by starting on the Friday before and ending like always on Tuesday night. By allowing a large window for people to go and vote, especially if all eligible voters will vote, will not only reduce stress on poll workers but it will also make voting more convenient and easy. It would reduce lines and streamline the process while accommodating for the large number of “new” voters.
Compulsory voting will not cure all of the damage made to our democratic institutions over the past 5+ years. For that, our nation needs to do more introspective work on empathy, understanding, and a belief in our common humanity. But in order for such a renewal of American ideals, we need time and patience and strength. In the meantime, one step on our long journey of national unity is to bring everyone we can into the democratic system.
I am less sure that compulsory voting will lead to greater accountability. The voters who vote under a compulsory voting system but who would not have otherwise almost certainly pay less attention to political news that voters who already vote when it is not compulsory. This means that the electorate would probably be less informed, making it potentially harder to hold candidates accountable. Mandatory voting, for all its other benefits, dilutes the informed and engaged segment of the electorate. This is important because studies have suggested that more sophisticated voters are better able to identify and electorally punish corruption (Weitz-Shapiro and Winters 2016).
However, a competing effect of compulsory voting might counteract this issue. The new voters compulsory voting would add to the electorate would probably be less committed partisans than those that already vote. Committed partisans are less likely to vote against members of their own party when they display antidemocratic tendencies (Svolik 2019). It seems reasonable to belief that committed partisans may also be less likely to electorally punish corruption or incompetence if it means voting against their partisan interests. The effect of low-information and comparatively nonpartisan voters joining the electorate due to compulsory voting is hard to predict.
I agree with you that voting should be made compulsory in the United States, at least on a federal level. As you said, there are local elections occurring everywhere, all the time, so making voting for those compulsory would be difficult if not impossible, but congressional and presidential compulsory voting would logistically be quite easy to achieve. Also, making voting day a national holiday similar to Labor Day, where most if not all people are allowed and encouraged to take time off of work, would increase voter turnout and demographic representation, even without making voting mandatory. People of color in the US disproportionately work lower-paying wage jobs, where just surviving requires them to work as many hours as they can (US Bureau of Labor Statistics). Many people who are in this socioeconomic bracket cannot afford to take any time off to vote in elections, either because they are living paycheck to paycheck or because any missed shifts will result in them losing their job.
Also, compulsory voting will not fix the more fundamental problem of disproportionate demographic representation in office-holders at the national level. It’s extremely difficult to ‘break into’ politics on the national level; the people who are elected are pretty much always the people who have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on advertisements and campaigns (Evers-Hillstrom). As you said, older white men are the most likely people to have this kind of money. Furthermore, it is near impossible to be elected to a national position without the backing of either the Democrat or Republican party organizations. Therefore, any politicians elected to those positions must kowtow to the will of the party in order to maintain that backing. This greatly limits the kinds of political ideas that can be represented in elected policymakers and worsens polarization.
I agree with you entirely that voting should be made compulsory in the United States, especially at the federal level. Making it mandatory at the local level may be nearly impossible, referring to your point about how those happen quite frequently. However, compulsory voting at the federal level would be quite easy to accomplish with the right courses of actions. Given I have encountered an innumerable amount of individuals who claim to not vote during elections, due to reasons such as not being able to take off work or not having candidates representative of their beliefs, making voting mandatory would allow for these people to combat being underrepresented in their elections. The decision of compulsory voting, however, must be complemented by choices that allow as many people to participate as possible: designating days where workers are allowed to take off from their jobs, increased and affordable access to transportation to voting stations, etc. Doing so accounts for voters who work lower paying jobs that cannot afford to miss days, those without the luxury of personal modes of transportation — ultimately increasing voter turnout without too many obstacles.
However, I am unsure about your point of compulsory voting leading to greater accountability taken by elected officials. I feel as though a push for genuinely educating constituents on the actions of their elected bodies would need to happen alongside compulsory voting in order for that result to actually come to be. Making voting mandatory does not change the feelings, or lack thereof, of voters who are not nearly as informed on candidates as voters who already participate in elections when it is not mandatory to vote. Therefore, implementing compulsory voting has the plausibility of voters choosing candidates blindly, given they may not care about the policies of the person they voted for — they are just voting because they have to.
I think in an ideal world, I agree with compulsory voting. People know they need to vote in federal elections, and it has a top-down effect. People get very passionate about democracy, look into their local and state affairs, get excited to vote, attend town hall meetings, and all of that. Now, that is not super likely. Mostly because I think for those not caught up in the most recent polarization, politics has become either too boring or too stressful. For people who are not extremely opinionated on either side, politics has become much too frustrating. People are now apathetic to it, and I am not sure how much compulsory voting could do to fix that. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Currently, some countries with compulsory voting have a null vote option for people who don’t want the fine and don’t want to vote. I don’t think this option should be available to the public, or else a great deal of people would choose it. I also just do not think people would care enough after doing their civic duty of voting compulsorily, to then go to their hometowns and get super passionate about the mayorial race or what have you. Whether or not these local elections impact people’s lives does not seem to matter. Further, I think if people did get very into their local elections, the only thing that would happen is similar dynamics of polarization, but just occuring in different pockets around the country. Though I see this working well in concept, I could also seeing it go very badly in practice. I do see the appeal to it, that is, trying to get citizens to care. I just think that people will not always see the need or importance of participating in democracy.
While I agree that compulsory voting would increase our turnout in elections, I do have some issues with the idea. First of all, I think that it fundamentally is not compatible with American principles. A fundamental ideal of American freedom is the right to do what one wants and make their own choices. That includes the right to choose whether or not to be an active participant in democracy. You noted how there are many hurdles that people have to go over so that they can vote. I think if we were to have compulsory voting, in addition to the proposals that you made, we would also need to make election day a national holiday. France has a national holiday for their elections, and while they still have lower turnout than nations like Australia or Belgium, their turnout is still much higher than ours. So at the very least, if we do not have compulsory voting, we should have a national holiday for our elections in addition to plenty of early voting that has seen an increase in our turnout. On the point of accountability, I am not sure that more participation would necessarily lead to increased accountability. Brazil has compulsory voting, yet there is still corruption and elected officials escape being held accountable. In the United States, specifically in the House of Representatives, we have an extreme issue of gerrymandered districts. These districts are drawn so specifically to protect partisan interests and incumbents, that even unpopular incumbents still often get reelected because their district still leans heavily in their favor for general elections. In the primary, incumbency advantage will still most likely be enough to carry unpopular officials. Incumbency advantage in the House of Representatives has grown significantly over the years and is often enough to carry incumbents safely through the primary. So even if more people are voting, the voters in these districts still might not be inclined to hold