Should America Make Voting Compulsory? – Free-Rider Problem and U.S. Democratic Government

Can the government of a polity characterized by low levels of political participation truly work? This question appears to be particularly important in the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election in the United States. According to a recent poll conducted by Gallup, Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. has fallen to 21%, the lowest point since July 2016 (Brennan 2017). Concurrently, the discontent of American citizens with the performance of Donald Trump is also on the increase. Trump has consistently had much lower approval ratings than any elected president in his first year, and his approval rating has steadily declined from the first through his third quarter in office (Gallup 2017b). At the same time, we ought to bear in mind that the incumbent president triumphed in a low-turnout election. Only about 56.9 percent of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot on November 8, 2016.  This means that more than 4 out of 10 Americans who had the privilege of being able to make a decision about the political future of the U.S. simply didn’t, and just a little more than a quarter of the voting-eligible population chose the next president (Lopez 2016). This state of the matter begs a question, Would satisfaction with the performance of the president and the overall direction in which the U.S. be higher if more people decided to express their preferences on the election day? Is it a responsibility of the government to ensure higher levels of political participation?

I believe that the answer to the two questions above is yes!, and that this is the time for the United States to adopt compulsory voting. We should understand that liberal democracy constitutes a good example of a public good – it is (at least in principle) non-excludable, as all citizens of a polity have access to the benefits the regime offers, and also non-rivalrous, since if one citizen enjoys the full extent of rights guaranteed to them purely by virtue of being a U.S. national, nobody’s ability to participate in and benefit from democracy is affected. Yet, like any public good, liberal democracy is subject to a free-rider problem. Whether a citizen incurs the costs of voting – such as time spent traveling to polls and waiting in line, information costs of choosing whom to vote for – does not affect their ability to seize advantages of living in a free, democratic society (Harvard Law Review 2007, 591-2). Compulsory voting is not only a legitimate mechanism for increasing the legitimacy of democratic government, but also an effective way of instilling a sense of shared responsibility for the polity into the political culture of the United States. This is an important issue. A review of scholarly literature supports the claim that political participation is highly correlated with governance effectiveness. For instance, in his 2006 study Martin Nekola argued that political participation is a key cornerstone of good governance in harmonizing the activities of the state, private and public (non-profit) sectors, allowing markets to flourish and people to live healthier and happier lives (Nekola 2006, 394).

       Compulsory voting could also ensure a broader, more representative sample of voters in American elections. As observed by Lisa Hill, a professor of politics at the University of Adelaide, “Failure to vote is concentrated among groups already experiencing one or more forms of deprivation, namely, the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, indigenous peoples, the isolated, new citizens and the young” (Hill 2011). Prof. Hill hails from Australia, a country similar to the United States in that it is also a multiethnic polity with an Anglo-Saxon heritage. Adoption of compulsory voting by Canberra in 1924 proved to be an effective response not only to plummeting turnout (evidenced by the 1922 election in particular), but also to ensuring a more representative and legitimate government. An expansion of the requirement to Aboriginal Australians in 1984 only perpetuated this positive trend. And phasing out the requirement to vote can yield the exactly opposite effects. As explained by Aly Waleed, this was demonstrated by the Netherlands, which abandoned compulsory voting in 1970: “The result was not merely a fall in turnout, but a disproportionate decline in the turnout of socially and economically marginalized groups” (Aly 2017).

     It is interesting to observe that the idea of compulsory voting has been recently considered by high-profile policymakers in Washington. President Barack Obama was a proponent of making voting mandatory, expressing a view similar to Prof. Hill. “The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups,” Obama said in 2015. “There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls” (Yan 2015). President Obama was certainly aware that the U.S. faces some of the lowest turnout rates in the developed world.

Opponents of compulsory voting could argue that it is “Un-American,” as it forces citizens to express their preferences and limits their “liberty” to refuse participation in the political process. If we consider casting a ballot to be a form of “voicing” one’s opinion, could compulsory voting be deemed unconstitutional and a violation of the First Amendment? I believe this is not the case. Membership in a democratic polity brings about not only benefits, but also obligations. In a similar way, voting is not merely a privilege, but also a civic duty. Participatory effort is required to perpetuate a democratic regime, even if it means that autonomy of individuals has to be somehow limited. At the end of the day, would compulsory voting differ from other obligations imposed on citizens, such as mandatory taxation, jury duty and the requirement to vaccinate our children?

Works cited:

Aly, Waleed. 2017. “Voting Should Be Mandatory,” New York Times, January 19. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/opinion/voting-should-be-mandatory.html?_r=0

Brennan, Megan. 2017. “Dissatisfaction with Government, Direction of U.S. Persists,” Gallup News, October 19. http://news.gallup.com/poll/220703/dissatisfaction-government-direction-persist.aspx?g_source=POLITICS&g_medium=topic&g_campaign=tiles

Harvard Law Review. 2007. “The Case for Compulsory Voting in the United States,” Harvard Law Review 121 (2): 591-612.

Hill, Lisa. 2011. “What We’ve Seen in Australia With Mandatory Voting,” New York Times, November 7. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/07/should-voting-in-the-us-be-mandatory-14/what-weve-seen-in-australia-with-mandatory-voting

Jones, Jeffrey M. 2017. “Trump Job Approval Slips to 36.9% in His Third Quarter,” Gallup News, October 20. http://news.gallup.com/poll/220742/trump-job-approval-slipped-third-quarter.aspx?g_source=POLITICS&g_medium=topic&g_campaign=tiles

Lopez, German. 2016. “Trump Was Elected by a Little More than a Quarter of Eligible Voters,” Vox, November 10. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13587462/trump-election-2016-voter-turnout

Nekola, Martin. 2006. “Political Participation and Governance Effectiveness: Does Participation Matter?,” In Democratic Governance in CEE Countries: Challenges and Responses for the XXI Century, edited by Alan Rosenbaum and Juraj Nemec, 393-406. Bratislava, Slovakia: NISPACee.

Yan, Holly. 2015. “Obama: “Maybe It’s Time for Mandatory Voting”,” CNN, March 19. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/politics/obama-mandatory-voting/

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