I’m a big fan of compulsory voting. And I’m not the only one. Here’s Lisa Hill, from the University of Adelaide.
The most decisive means for arresting turnout decline and closing the socioeconomic voting gap is mandatory voting: in fact, it is the only mechanism that can push turnout anywhere near 95 percent. Places with mandatory voting also have less wealth inequality, lower levels of political corruption and higher levels of satisfaction with the way democracy is working than voluntary systems. Here in Australia, where we love freedom as much as anyone else, we have a mandatory voting regime that is well managed, corruption-free, easy to access, cheap to run and has an approval rating of more than 70 percent.
And when everyone votes, the outcome is much less dependent on turnout. Electoral swings to this or that party aren’t flukes of turnout; they’re big changes in the overall national mood.
But if everyone votes, including low-information voters, doesn’t that just mean that everyone votes stupidly? That’s the view of Jason Brennan, who argues that — dear heaven! — too many people vote already.
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.
He doesn’t want a democracy. He wants a cabal of elites to make wise choices for everyone.
I once talked to an angry young man who made exactly this argument. I told him that he was a clever person, but (quoting Douglas Adams) “you make the same mistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid.” Of course, some people are stupid, but there’s no reason to think that all the stupidity or ill-informedness is always located in one or the other party. The stupidity is likely to be somewhat evenly distributed. Random bad answers will be randomly distributed, and they’ll cancel each other out. And along the way, you’ve gotten input from as many people as you can. If we have to err, let it be on the side of more participation.
18 November 2011 at 8:20 pm
I would be against compulsory voting because it would just be a pain for people who don't care either way. People should vote, yes, but it's not the government's job to force them to.
18 November 2011 at 8:29 pm
LIAR. We don't have 95% turnouts. We have 81%. 10% are not registered to vote. And we have high informal voting rates at around 5%. When you remove the unregistered voters and informal votes our turnouts are only 77%. The equivalent in NZ is 78%. So they have higher turnouts than we do and over there everybody who votes votes because they want to vote. Over there, voting is voluntary. In fact, almost every democracy has voluntary voting and many have higher voter turnouts than we do including Denmark, Malta, Iceland, and Sweden. That's because when voting is voluntary, leaders need to get out and sell the idea of democracy. They need to empower the electorate (rather than threaten with fines and force) in order to inspire and motivate people to vote. This can lead to better turnouts and it certainly leads to a better general understanding of democracy, because leaders who don't inspire the electorate will soon be replaced by ones who can. Better leaders. Democratic leaders.
Our decision to vote should be democratic. The the lie that freedom is mandatory should end.
18 November 2011 at 9:53 pm
Jason, even if every fact you cite is true, which I doubt, that does not make the Daniel a liar. That makes him mistaken.
I doubt that such a Daniel is as misinformed as you make him out to be and your name calling is over the top and out of place. In my opinion.
18 November 2011 at 11:36 pm
Vid: Is it the government's job to force people to vote? I don't know — is it the government's job to make people get driver's licenses or pay taxes? It is, because we've decided that it is. So the "government's job" is a job we give it. And there are advantages in giving it this job.
Just thought: Another downside of voluntary voting is that it's possible to depress turnout by the use of voter intimidation, as the US Republicans perennially do.
21 November 2011 at 12:21 am
Maybe I am off base here because I have never voted in Australia (and probably never will, though a resident), but, how does one gauge apathy in the electorate when it's (I'm assuming) easier to just pull the lever for whoever doesn't give you the willies than to abstain or dodge voting altogether?
Jason, I tend to agree with your overall premise (assuming the evidence is sound) but it doesn't make Daniel a liar. Go to HuffPo or Drudge if you wanna get nasty.
4 December 2011 at 3:24 pm
Maybe compulsory voting works depending on how many major parties there are?
I also would like to see what would happen if, under compulsory systems, an "abstain" option was given and the winning party/minority government must have more votes than even the abstain option.
Obviously, it's a thought experiment, but it would seem at first glance it would allow people to actually make their real thoughts on the election known, rather than voting negatively. ie, voting against a party rather than for a party.
20 December 2011 at 5:47 pm
Re a cabal of elites: It sounds like if it were possible to always have just people to be the kings it would be well to have a king, but it is not.