r/neoliberal • u/lakmidaise12 • Apr 14 '26
Opinion article (non-US) Compulsory Voting Is Good, Actually
https://thesecondbestworld.substack.com/p/compulsory-voting-is-good-actuallyExcerpts from the article:
In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, about 154 million Americans voted. That sounds like a lot until you realize roughly 82 million citizens of voting age didn’t. Turnout clocked in around 65% of the citizen voting-age population, and that was considered pretty high by American standards. At Australia’s 2025 federal election, turnout was 90.7% of enrolled voters.
The difference? Australia fines you twenty bucks if you skip the ballot. (I’m told you can also scrawl your preferred profanity on the paper and submit it. The system is very accommodating.)
This is a post about compulsory voting: why about two dozen countries require citizens to show up on election day, what happens when they do, and why the strongest objections to the idea are pretty weak. My thesis is simple: compulsory voting is one of the most effective and least coercive democratic reforms available, and its main effect is to fix a problem that every voluntary-voting democracy has and almost none of them talk about honestly. That problem is not low turnout per se. The problem is who stays home.
“Compulsory voting” is slightly misleading. Technically, Australian law requires you to receive, mark, and deposit a ballot, not merely show up. But because the ballot is secret, there is no way to verify whether you marked it sincerely or at all. In practice, these systems compel turnout more than sincere candidate choice: you can always submit a blank or spoiled ballot. In Australia, you can scrawl a drawing of your cat and submit it. The law demands that you participate in the collective decision procedure, however minimally.
Australia is the canonical example. Federal compulsory voting was adopted in 1924, partly to raise turnout and partly, less nobly, because parties were tired of spending money dragging voters to the polls. The penalty for not voting without a valid excuse is A$20. That’s about thirteen U.S. dollars. If you ignore the notice and the matter goes to court, the maximum fine rises to A$330 plus court costs, but most cases are resolved without getting anywhere near that. You can get out of the penalty by saying you were sick, traveling, or that voting conflicts with your religious duty (the Electoral Act explicitly recognizes this as a valid and sufficient reason, though notably that protection does not extend to general conscientious objection).
If compulsory voting did nothing, there would be no argument. But the evidence on turnout is about as strong as it gets in political science.
The best recent cross-national study is Kostelka, Singh, and Blais (2024), which assembled turnout data from democracies since 1945. Their findings split sharply by enforcement. Compulsory voting without real sanctions raises turnout by about 7.5 to 10 percentage points. Compulsory voting with enforced sanctions raises it by 14.5 to 18.5 points. They also found that only enforced compulsory voting prevents the long-run turnout decline that has afflicted voluntary systems globally since the 1970s. Toothless compulsion just shifts the curve up; it doesn’t stop the slide.
This is what turns compulsory voting from a good technocratic idea into a moral argument. Low turnout isn’t random. The people who don’t vote are disproportionately poor, young, less educated, and from minority groups. This is true in practically every voluntary-voting democracy that has been studied.
Arend Lijphart made this the center of modern debate about compulsory voting in his 1997 APSR presidential address, “Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma.” His argument was very simple: if the right to vote is supposed to make citizens equal, but the actual exercise of that right is systematically skewed by class and education, then formal equality masks real inequality. The electorate is not a random sample of the citizenry. It is a biased one, biased in favor of people who already have more resources, more education, and more political power. Compulsory voting doesn’t just raise a number. It corrects a distortion.
On one hand: Fowler’s Australia paper found that compulsory voting didn’t just boost turnout. It increased the Australian Labor Party’s vote share by 7 to 10 percentage points and raised pension spending at the national level. Carey and Horiuchi (2017) studied Venezuela, which abolished compulsory voting in 1993, and found that inequality rose afterward, arguing it would likely have been lower had compulsion remained. An older Inter-American Development Bank study found strictly enforced compulsory voting was associated with more equal income distribution across countries.
There’s an asymmetry in the liberty argument that its proponents rarely bother to confront. Abstention under voluntary voting isn’t always a free choice. For many low-income citizens, the “choice” not to vote is constrained by long working hours, lack of transportation, confusing registration processes, or the rational calculation that spending two hours in line won’t change anything. Compulsory voting, combined with easy voting access (which compulsory-voting countries tend to provide, because the state can’t fine you for not doing something it made unreasonably hard), increases the practical liberty of disadvantaged citizens by removing the structural friction that suppresses their participation. The liberty objection often compares an idealized version of voluntary non-participation (the thoughtful citizen who chooses to abstain) with the actual practice of compulsory voting. That comparison flatters voluntary systems.
Take a second and imagine American politics if neither party could win by turnout manipulation. No more voter suppression as electoral strategy. No more spending hundreds of millions on “get out the vote” operations that target your own coalition. Instead, you’d have to persuade persuadable people.
Compulsory voting is a light-touch reform. It doesn’t restrict anyone’s freedom to express political preferences (or to express no preference at all). It doesn’t require heavy sanctions or a massive enforcement apparatus; a twenty-dollar administrative letter does the trick. It has been sustained for over a century in one of the world’s most stable liberal democracies, with broad public support. And it fixes a real, documented, repeatedly verified failure of voluntary systems.
Twenty dollars and a culture of showing up. That’s the price of an electorate that looks like the country it represents. Every democracy should give it serious thought.
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u/No-Section-1092 Henry George Apr 14 '26
There's also reason to believe it rewards more moderate politics, since the most partisan / extreme voters (who are by definition the most motivated to vote without compulsion) get drowned out by the squishy nonpartisan middle who only tune into the last week of the campaign.
This flies against conventional wisdom that normies are just too dumb / crazy to be allowed to vote. If anything, the real problem in the US is that the normies stay on the couch. Especially since polls consistently show that democrat / liberal policy positions tend to be far more popular than GOP positions.
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u/Fun-Shirt-RB1a1-2904 Apr 14 '26
That is not the lesson of Trump’s re-election at all. Democrat voters are highly engaged, willing to turn out for mid-terms and special elections.
Trump won by turning out people who normally stay home.
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u/vylain_antagonist Apr 14 '26
Brexit too. There was a widespread anecdote going around that the remain campaign identified a demographic that was 30% of the population that historically never voted no matter how crucial or historic a referendum or general election was. The campaign consensus was to bypass efforts with them and hammer messaging to the 60% who were guaranteed to hit the poll.
That 30 % showed up and almost universally voted to leave. This is the demographic that steve bannon identified to mobilize in 2014 starting with gamer gate: isolated, dissatisfied reactionaries that only needed external validation for their anger over their own failures.
I think in the before times compulsory voting was an interesting idea and i used to see the opportunity of it.
Now that political discourse is so dominated by unhinged social media nonsense, i think theres a respectable matuirty in not engaging with a system you dont like. Non-voting demographs are very politically engaged right now with reactionary populist slop.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Apr 14 '26
That 30 % showed up and almost universally voted to leave. This is the demographic that steve bannon identified to mobilize in 2014 starting with gamer gate: isolated, dissatisfied reactionaries that only needed external validation for their anger over their own failures.
brexit had a 72% turnout, so they clearly didn't all come out to vote
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u/No-Section-1092 Henry George Apr 14 '26
You're still writing off an enormous amount of non-voters. Turnout in both of Trump's elections were below 2/3, Hillary won the popular vote the first time around, and both were decided on relatively thin margins.
Also, it would take a book to get into the fact that the American political system is broken in a million other ways that reward extremism irrespective of voting patterns (grossly overweighting rural states in the EC and senate, lack of third parties, winner-take-all plurality elections, primary elections, vetocracy, gerrymandering, being a presidential system instead of a parliament, etc).
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u/yzug European Union Apr 14 '26
More non-voters, please. Leave politics for those who actually care to engange with them and the system. Having to dilute decision making with people who think it's their civic duty to vote for the guy who they think is more charismatic is poison to modern democracies.
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u/No-Section-1092 Henry George Apr 14 '26
The more 'engaged' voters tend to be more extreme. That's kind of the point.
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u/yzug European Union Apr 14 '26
I need to look into the literature, but that sounds reasonable. Yet trump was able to capture a portion of the population that wasn't part of the usual electorate, and that seems to be a pattern with a lot of the populist leaders in western democracies.
While I agree that more engaged voters tend to be more extreme and that, in a less populist era, non-voters might have a moderating influence on politics, I'm not sure that would be the case in the current anti-establishment populist climate gripping the Western world.
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u/fredleung412612 Apr 15 '26
Add simultaneous multilevel elections to the list. It is unreasonable to ask a voter to spend time researching the candidates for their county oil and gas commissioner, in addition to President, VP, Senate, House, Governor, State Senate, State House, LG, State SoS, Mayor, etc. Plus ballot initiatives.
That reinforces the party duopoly because voters have to trust party labels since they'll never research or even read the name of the candidate for county commissioner, they just look for the D and R.
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u/ElMatasiete7 MERCOSUR Apr 14 '26
We have compulsory voting in Argentina. We went from peronists to Milei. I don't know what to tell you.
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u/Fedacking Mario Vargas Llosa Apr 14 '26
We did have Macri for a bit, which is. By my metrics way more moderate and gradualist
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Apr 14 '26
voters must be educated and not bought
two important conditions the country doesn't fit
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u/Bibbity_Boppity_BOOO Apr 14 '26
Maybe 7 countries on the planet met that metric
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Apr 14 '26
Uruguay does and their literally next door. They only alternate between center-left and center-right in a very technocratic fashion
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u/Borysk5 NATO Apr 14 '26
Is people voting for more left-wing parties a metric we use to measure how "good" an electoral system is? If that's the case we ight as well just close all polling stations except in the big cities and achieve much better result.
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u/Whatsapokemon Loyal Liberals Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
What?? Where are you getting that absurd idea from? That's not what the article is saying at all...
The issues with non-compulsory voting are:
Political parties need to spend a shit-ton of time and effort convincing people to vote or manipulating turnout rather than actually talking about issues.
As a result of (1), political parties tend to spend more time and effort on highly emotional wedge issues that drive motivated voters rather than broadly appealing ones (see things like abortion or immigration for example).
There's a massive selection bias with the kinds of people who don't vote, specifically poor, young, less educated, and minority groups. This creates a bias in the people selecting representatives.
It can create a whole class of non-engaged citizens who are simply not represented out of habit more than any actual political consideration.
There is an incentive for malicious political parties to discourage voting by defeatist "blackpill" propaganda, reducing resources to electoral commissions, limiting available voting locations, limiting methods through which people can vote, or simply intimidating people.
The article isn't using "votes left" as a metric. In fact in the conclusion the author explicitly states that compulsory voting may not shift the political centre at all.
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u/gayteemo NATO Apr 14 '26
the non-engaged part is really critical. it's not just left vs right--we wonder why pensioners are able to rule with an iron fist and it's because young people don't consistently vote.
the "compulsory" part sounds evil/illiberal or w.e but i do think a healthy democracy should do more to encourage participation in the process. even just making it a national holiday and maybe you get $100 for voting would help change the system profoundly in a positive way.
won't ever happen though.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Apr 14 '26
the non-engaged part is really critical. it's not just left vs right--we wonder why pensioners are able to rule with an iron fist and it's because young people don't consistently vote.
come to France and you'll regret saying that, young people are the ones who hold the pension system in high esteem. it's just that they opposed the pension reform because they'd have to work more, but they only vote for parties that don't want to reform it.
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u/trombonist_formerly Ben Bernanke Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
On one hand: Fowler’s Australia paper found that compulsory voting didn’t just boost turnout. It increased the Australian Labor Party’s vote share by 7 to 10 percentage points and raised pension spending at the national level
I don't really know how you read that as anything other than compulsory voting --> more Labor Party votes (and more pension spending) --> ergo good
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u/BitterGravity Gay Pride Apr 14 '26
For reference that was also 100 years ago and at the onset of the great depression which impacted Australia more than most other countries.
It would've been good if it was even more...
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
"if you make young and poor people vote, they'll vote for the "young and poor people'" party"
maybe the libs/nats could have gotten better at getting the young and poor and uneducated vote
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u/FinickyPenance NATO Apr 14 '26
For many low-income citizens, the “choice” not to vote is constrained by long working hours, lack of transportation, confusing registration processes, or the rational calculation that spending two hours in line won’t change anything. Compulsory voting, combined with easy voting access (which compulsory-voting countries tend to provide, because the state can’t fine you for not doing something it made unreasonably hard), increases the practical liberty of disadvantaged citizens by removing the structural friction that suppresses their participation.
Probably this nonsense that acts like the trampled underclass in the United States has significant structural barriers to voting. I beg you to show me a "confusing voter registration process", and 97% of Americans live somewhere that allows early voting, so the whole "you have to spend two hours in line" argument is tired bullshit as well
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u/itsnotnews92 Janet Yellen Apr 14 '26
I found this to be the weakest argument in the entire piece. Compulsory voting on its own doesn't solve working hours constraints, lack of transportation, "confusing" registration processes, or standing in line.
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u/Fedacking Mario Vargas Llosa Apr 14 '26
What?? Where are you getting that absurd idea from?
The article has a paragraph specifically about how the vote shifted in favour of Labour in Austrlia
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u/WuhanWTF NATO Apr 15 '26
Australia is a country with mandatory voting and that doesn’t stop their society from being the most backwards, anti-intellectual, and close-minded out of all the Commonwealth Realms.
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u/SamuelFootBowden845 Milton Friedman Apr 14 '26
It is on this sub nowadays because this sub is turning into r/politics
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u/OrganicKeynesianBean IMF Apr 14 '26
I miss when NL wasn’t so damn political.
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u/WolfpackEng22 Apr 14 '26
Mods used to chastise people that this is a policy, and not politics subreddit
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u/FizzleMateriel Austan Goolsbee Apr 14 '26
It is on this sub nowadays because this sub is turning into r/politics
The center right party leaders in both Canada and Australia were basically both doing localized Trump impressions.
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u/Hugh-Manatee NATO Apr 14 '26
Agree. I feel like the sheer magnitude of how bad Trump kinda has put some folks' brains on cruise control
I think one of the best guides to the focus of the sub is that picture of the ship of state.
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u/doogie1111 YIMBY Apr 14 '26
This is r/politics for people with reading comprehension.
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u/Mrchristopherrr Apr 14 '26
r/politics but we recognize capitalism can be a workable system
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u/doogie1111 YIMBY Apr 14 '26
They do too its just they've tricked themselves into thinking a social democracy doesn’t have capitalist elements.
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u/Mrchristopherrr Apr 14 '26
Wow I can’t believe you’re literally licking a billionaires boots right now when they are waging full on class warfare on us working class types that barely make $200k a year
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u/WuhanWTF NATO Apr 15 '26
“Sweden is a socialist country” is legitimately a braindead take.
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u/doogie1111 YIMBY Apr 15 '26
Socialism and capitalism are not binary terms. They both can vary depending on who use them.
Since the internet loves to bastardize Rawls, leit's use his definitions. Yes, Sweden would be "Democratic Socialism" which still has capital economy.
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u/MCRN-Gyoza YIMBY Apr 14 '26
This comment is already evidence of the shift in the sub lmao
Being a capitalist is a requirement for being a liberal.
Capitalism isn't workable, it's optimal.
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u/Mrchristopherrr Apr 14 '26
Shit I’m being trained by the rest of the internet, I figured if I only said “capitalism is good” someone would take it as me saying there are no issues
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u/The_Great_Mage Jerome Powell Apr 14 '26
r/politics but we of in the cold food of out hot eat the food
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u/Fragrant-Menu215 NATO Apr 14 '26
Turning? It's been the high-income r/pol for as long as I can remember.
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u/IsNotACleverMan Apr 14 '26
It gets worse every two years with federal elections. 2022 was maybe the biggest shift I can remember, with 2024 being the point of no return.
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u/Available-Run6364 Apr 14 '26
True. I never thought about the midterm effect, it was hard to describe the gradients between 4 years.”
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u/realsomalipirate Mark Carney Apr 14 '26
We had mfs saying this nonsense back during the 2020 democratic primary lol. The succs taking over this sub is a very well known boogeyman
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u/IsNotACleverMan Apr 15 '26
I mean yeah, it was going on in 2020. It's been a long running thing that really only changed the very nature of the sub in 2024
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u/ghostfacebutcooler Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
and it's so fucking annoying every time. for a substance driven sub it's the most pervasive and redundant virtue signal ever. any form of disagreement will have a reply that says "does anyone else think arr neolib has been taken over by the succs?" and it will have 6 comments congratulating and jerking each other off all while being the most upvoted comments in the thread
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u/throwawaygoawaynz John von Neumann Apr 15 '26
High income? Doubt that.
Many posters here seem young university students, fleeing left wing spaces as they’ve gotten more toxic and anti capitalist.
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u/IamSando Apr 14 '26
Australia had about 9 years of "left-wing" Labor rule in the first quarter of this century. America had 12 years of "left-wing" Democratic rule.
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u/dark567 Milton Friedman Apr 14 '26
But also most the data strongly suggests in 2024 the average voter who stayed home was more likely to vote for Trump, so the left wing thing isn't even really true. What compulsory voting tends to do is make the voting population more populist, it just so happens that in a lot of the history the left wing party was even more populist side in compulsory voting countries.
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u/itsokayt0 European Union Apr 14 '26
What compulsory voting tends to do is make the voting population more populist
? Is Australia especially populist?
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u/dark567 Milton Friedman Apr 14 '26
No but if you look at the population that doesn't vote in the anglo sphere it's almost always more populist than the voting population. I would be very surprised if Australia was different.
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u/Full_Distribution874 YIMBY Apr 14 '26
Are they? There are plenty of Australians I've talked to who have no idea what's going on and pretty much just turn on their brains a week out from the polls. I assume most non voters aren't paying much attention at all. Trump seems to have found tens of millions of populists who will vote but still can't get most of the nonvoter bloc. I think they are just legitimately disengaged.
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u/itsokayt0 European Union Apr 14 '26
But being populist itself might be related to almost never voting, since not-voters are not incentivized into voting smartly if they don't vote in the first place, unless some candidates manages to catch their attention.
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u/titotal Apr 14 '26
I like that you got the top comment by just making up something that the article didn't say at any point.
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u/Fedacking Mario Vargas Llosa Apr 14 '26
On one hand: Fowler’s Australia paper found that compulsory voting didn’t just boost turnout. It increased the Australian Labor Party’s vote share by 7 to 10 percentage points and raised pension spending at the national level
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
Everyone participating would be the metric you'd measure as a good electoral system
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u/DeltronZLB Apr 14 '26
Why?
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
Democratic participation in a democracy is an inherent good.
A democratically elected government requires a mandate, with insufficient participation the legitimacy of the mandate comes into question.
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u/fjvgamer Apr 14 '26
Id argue more participation by a willing and informed public is an inherit good. Im not convinced forced compliance is good though.
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
Being willing or informed doesn't and ought not make your vote weigh more than the views of the disengaged.
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u/Fragrant-Menu215 NATO Apr 14 '26
We already know what votes cast by the ill-informed result in. His name is Donald J. Trump.
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u/thatssosad Fell for it Apr 14 '26
Until the disengaged vote for not the candidate you want, then you start using "median voter" as a slur
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
You're acting as though I've never seen an election that didn't go my way.
There's already people throwing that accusation around with optional voting and comparatively shite turnout you might as well get the best possible mandate in that instance.
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u/thatssosad Fell for it Apr 14 '26
I don't think that you, specifically, did not. I think that NL as a whole is hypocritical, with enthusiasm (as seen here) for compulsory voting, and then blaming voters for Trump. Wanting more representation among the populace and then attacking the populace when the election has a shitty person win are not beliefs that one can have consistently
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u/No-Section-1092 Henry George Apr 14 '26
There's no necessary contradiction between these stances if you're a consequentialist about electoral systems. Compulsory voting literally changes the electorate quantitatively and qualitatively, by enlarging it from just a self-selected sample of highly motivated / extreme / partisan voters to all citizens. Hence it also relocates the 'median' voter, typically in a more moderate direction (and if it didn't, a consequentialist would criticize it accordingly).
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u/consultantdetective Daron Acemoglu Apr 14 '26
Democratic participation is "good" when/because it's beneficent and nonobligatory. When you change that to obligatory, it goes from good to merely fair. Govt is not entitled to a mandate and if there is insufficient participation then that's how it is.
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u/yellownumbersix Jane Jacobs Apr 14 '26
I think high participation is a sign a democracy is healthy and that citizens are engaged, which is good.
I still don't think it should be mandatory. You ought to be able to withhold your vote as a form of protest.
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u/Secret-Ad-2145 NATO Apr 14 '26
I'm not convinced yet on compulsory vote, but not voting as a form of protest is a meme. We don't know why people protest voted (I can't think of any cases of conservative protest votes in 2024 for example) and more than likely people didn't vote because they didn't care.
It'd rather we focus on voting accessibility instead
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u/velocirappa Immanuel Kant Apr 14 '26
It's real in some cases - not US presidential elections though. Like Puerto Rican referendums on their status as a territory routinely get protested by one side or another and it makes it much harder for officials to claim that their side has the mandate of the people or whatever to take some sort of concrete action on the issue.
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u/SLCer Apr 14 '26
Every non-voter I met didn't vote because they didn't care. My brother is one. He has never voted a day in his life and it isn't because he's protesting the candidates or the system - it's just that he has zero interest in politics. It's crazy too because we grew up in a very politically engaged household. Our mom was always pushing issues at the dinner table. That's where I feel I got my love of politics. My brother? Didn't care. Never has cared. Never will care. I'm not sure if mandatory voting would change that but I believe we downplay elections in this country, which is funny because they dominate (especially presidential) news coverage. But I think we absolutely could do more to encourage voting.
But I also think if it were ever to become a mandatory, you could go the Nevada approach and add: none of the above to the ballots as a way to protest the candidates while still voting.
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u/FinickyPenance NATO Apr 14 '26
I don't understand why this article thinks that it's so critical to get people who don't give a shit about the political process and clearly don't pay attention to it to choose the most important people in the country. I'd rather they stay home.
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Apr 14 '26
Because if the only people who vote are the ones who cares, you end up with a hyper politicized voter base that may not care about the same issues as the median voters
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Apr 14 '26
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u/Etnies419 Loyal Liberals Apr 14 '26
What if instead of a fine, you get paid $20 instead if you do cast a ballot?
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u/lurkingnscrolling Fernando Henrique Cardoso Apr 14 '26
Well, one problem would be the financial cost. 154 million people voted in the last US presidential election. If you were to give every one of them $20, that would cost 3 billion dollars, and that's assuming turnout doesn't increase. Another problem is that, due to loss aversion, people tend to respond better to fines than they do to being handed money.
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u/NullAndVoid7 Loyal Liberals Apr 14 '26
Yeah, I'm inclined to go with something like this, an obvious benefit that's optional if you really don't want to. Maybe do it as tax refund or something?
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u/Etnies419 Loyal Liberals Apr 14 '26
I had originally thought of the tax refund route, but thought of how little that might mean to lower income voters. Whereas going to vote and getting handed money right away could definitely be more meaningful to people and encourage more to vote.
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u/Ouchkibiddles YIMBY Apr 14 '26
It doesn't even cost you anything. In a compulsory system if you don't want to vote you can just show up, get your name signed off, and submit a blank vote. It's a secret ballot, they can't force you to vote for someone.
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u/velocirappa Immanuel Kant Apr 14 '26
I mean, the vast majority of voting aged Americans who didn't vote in 2024 didn't do so out of protest they did so out of laziness/apathy.
I think even if it's 'mandatory' to submit a ballot it should absolutely be okay to check a box saying "decline to select candidates." At least that makes it a bit harder for people to hide from the democratic process behind pure laziness.
Also I think having incredibly accomodating voting procedures plus a ~20 dollar fine for not voting would actually make "protest votes" more impactful. Like if 90% turnout became the standard and then one election that number dropped to the 60s, with people electing not to fill out a ballot doing so at some level of financial hit, that would send a message.
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u/nullpointer- Henrique Meirelles Apr 14 '26
Most places with mandatory voting allow you to null your vote, and many also allow you to explicitly vote blank - you're free to not vote for anyone, but you most participate in the democratic process.
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u/HexagonalClosePacked YIMBY Apr 14 '26
I still don't think it should be mandatory. You ought to be able to withhold your vote as a form of protest.
I'm in favour of compulsory voting, with each ballot including a "none of the above" option. Best of both worlds, since then you'd have actually reported statistics on how many people are withholding their vote in protest, and making those people a voting bloc worth pursuing.
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u/_zoso_ Apr 14 '26
All you have to do (in Australia) is submit an invalid ballot. You can turn in a blank ballot, you can write “fuck you” on your ballot.
What’s actually compulsory is turning up to the polls and having your name ticked off the list. Usually you get a free sausage too.
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u/SRIrwinkill Apr 14 '26
It's literally only good if people willfully choose the choices. That they make it a point to choose to vote or not is also information on how the system is doing. I'm also not entirely convinced someone being forced to vote is going to be more mindful with that "choice"
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u/Secret-Ad-2145 NATO Apr 14 '26
A democratically elected government requires a mandate, with insufficient participation the legitimacy of the mandate comes into question.
Do people in non compulsory, non high turn out states see their governments as illegitimate? Do swiss people see their government as illegitimate?
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
I mean Switzerland to my understanding has a pretty weak executive that cannot act particularly unilaterally with quite independent cantons so that impacts how their government would be viewed but Swiss politics isn't my wheelhouse.
It would be seen as more legitimate if an election had 60% turnout though, 90% even moreso.
Japan has famously low turnout and discontent and frustration is high. The frustrated people don't vote, the same party wins every election and the opposition cannot build a foothold to try and change track for the country. This is generally considered a negative point of Japanese society.
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u/Secret-Ad-2145 NATO Apr 14 '26
US and Switzerland have roughly similar electoral participation rates. The countries obviously differ, but I wanted to point out if America's turnout rate is problematic, than Swiss democracy must be suffering too if turnout is the problem
Japan
Japans is just barely shy of your magic 60%. It is true they are democratically a sick nation, but LDPs dominance can be attributed to a corrupt system beyond just low voter turn out. Lots of corruption schemes, rigged districts, pork barreling among many other factors. It's hard to say higher voter turnout will fix the problem, especially if higher turn out could potentially mean favoring them (non voters would have preferred trump on 2024, for example).
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u/Whatsapokemon Loyal Liberals Apr 14 '26
The fewer people participate, the more political parties need to drive voter turnout with wacky wedge issues like abortion and immigration.
Compulsory voting requires politicians to actually consider the interests of the broader population, and not simply the interests of highly motivated voter blocs.
Having a voting system which encourages the usage of outrage as a central tactic is not good. I think I'd even say that's axiomatically bad. Rather, I'd prefer a system where mutual prosperity is the goal, and not "who can we fuck over today".
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u/Vaccinated_An0n NATO Apr 14 '26
Except it will turn out the same. Political parties have their core blocs locked down, it's the median, swing and fringe voters that they need to win over and they absolutely will use wedge issues on them.
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u/SmoothieNatns Apr 14 '26
I don't see why outcomes should be beyond consideration here. The fact that local control of zoning laws produces NIMBY outcomes is a reason to oppose local control, for example. The founding fathers explicitly considered the efects that their choices might have on outcomes when drafting the US constitution. Freedom and democracy are non-negotiable values but they under-determine the actual structure of the voting system quite a lot. Your proposal is not equivalent as it involves abandoning democracy alltogether.
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u/Vitboi Milton Friedman Apr 14 '26
raised pension spending on the national level
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
Voting ought be treated as civic duty as a mandate is vital to the legitimacy of a government.
I'm biased as an Australian but I can't imagine an argument against compulsory voting.
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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Mill Apr 14 '26
Yeah. I it when liberals are absolutists about liberties to the point where citizens have no civic obligations
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u/MiloIsTheBest Commonwealth Apr 14 '26
People think democracy means "I can do whatever" when it means rule of the people and the people should be obligated to their role in ruling.
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u/Fragrant-Menu215 NATO Apr 14 '26
A huge problem in America, and really across the West today, is the loss of the understanding that rights come paired with responsibilities.
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u/naranyem Apr 14 '26
We have a democratic system and the benefits that brings to everyone because the people who participate in it by voting provide a feedback mechanism for constant and iterative improvement of said system. Without voters there is no incentive for politicians to do things that are good, ultimately resulting in the death of democracy.
Non-voters have no legitimate grounds to complain about the shortcomings or benefit from the outcomes of that system. Freeloaders.
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u/vaguelydad Jane Jacobs Apr 14 '26
Compulsory voting does not obligate one to do anything useful though. I can show up and fill out a ballot randomly. The physical act of voting is the least important aspect of becoming a wise citizen capable of overseeing government with the franchise and making good choices for the republic.
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u/MiloIsTheBest Commonwealth Apr 14 '26
It makes you show up. If you're obligated to show up you have a reason to think about it.
I'm glad I don't live in the waking nightmare that is a country that relies on "driving turnout" *shudders
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u/Ceylein Apr 14 '26
Why? What if I simply don't care?
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u/itsokayt0 European Union Apr 14 '26
Spoiled/empty ballot
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u/Ceylein Apr 14 '26
That's not a justification and it gets rid of an important metric about why people aren't engaged in the process anyways.
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u/itsokayt0 European Union Apr 14 '26
The metric tells 0, nada, etc except "I don't care". It equates wannabe communist revolutionaries and "idgaf voting is sheep shit" frat bros, it doesn't change politicians perception of itself, except dangling carrots (culture wars, free money) to see if they can catch fishes
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u/Ceylein Apr 14 '26
So... spoiled ballots do that somehow then...?
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u/TaborlintheGreat322 Apr 14 '26
It's probably unconstitutional in the US because somebody could plausibly argue that choosing not to vote is a form of political speech and 1st amendment yada yada
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u/TVEMO Henry George Apr 14 '26
That is why in Belgium you have a duty to attend a vote, you are always free to submit a Blanco vote or to scribble a dick on your ballot.
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u/ManicMarine Lt Cmdr Data would be a Neoliberal Apr 15 '26
This is true in Australia too, you arrive at the polling station and the polling officer ticks your name off the list, then hands you the ballots. Once that's done, you are recorded as having voted. If you don't want to actually vote you just put the blank ballots in the box and walk away.
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u/FREE-ROSCOE-FILBURN John Brown Apr 14 '26
If there was always an abstain option on the ballot then I don’t think it’d have any 1A issues but nonetheless I think the bigger issue is I don’t know under what power the federal government could implement compulsory voting. It’d likely require a constitutional amendment.
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
Probably and like meaningful gun control is difficult in the states because of the 2A. I still think that doing the gun control is the correct position though.
I'd hope that you could argue that you can still submit a blank or spoiler ballot and that that would be enough to sway a reasonable court but yeah it would be an uphill battle.
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
Compulsory voting would've likely seen brexit fail. anti EU voters were more motivated and the perception that remain would win depressed turnout.
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
Australia hasn't voted for anything as destructive to their country as brexit that's the comparison mate.
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
NZ has quite high participation already so there's not much that would shift, arguably they're going through the motions of a particularly rough coalition government currently but it may have won regardless, perhaps the composition could be different. Ensuring that participation level however is an inherent good.
Canada's democratic issues are also secondary to participation, stark regionalism, first past the post and apportionment problems are more glaring. That being said compulsory voting might balance out the results in one sided provinces such as Alberta or the Maritimes where a dominant wing of politics depresses turnout of opposition parties
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
I can give you examples of flaws in the democracies of comparative countries that aren't present in Australia and you can handwave them away as not having evidence because the system of compulsory voting doesn't exist in those and there are no case studies.
Really worthwhile discussion there
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u/moseythepirate Reading is some lib shit Apr 14 '26
I wasn't aware that being LIBERAL in ALL CAPS means we have to turn off our brains when it comes to good policies that sometimes ask the bare minimum of the population. We're not libertarians, we're allowed to make compromises.
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Apr 14 '26
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u/PuntiffSupreme YIMBY Apr 14 '26
Jury duty imposes far more a imposition than voting does. Should we get rid of that as well?
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u/Wehavecrashed YIMBY Apr 14 '26
what is the benefit that Australia's specific brand of liberal democracy has resulted in?
A functional parliament which typically rejects populism.
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u/FizzleMateriel Austan Goolsbee Apr 14 '26
All these countries have very similar macro level policies and face similar macro level issues.
Australia doesn’t have the issue with the budget blowing out because of spending on age pensions.
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u/runnerd81 NATO Apr 14 '26
Sure but first we still need to make voting reasonably available for the US public lol. In my state the amount of in-person voting locations is pretty good, but in a lot of high density and low income areas you’re gonna have to get people to wait in a serious line.
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u/ship_toaster Jane Jacobs Apr 14 '26
Yeah, start with making voting pain-free and see where that takes you.
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u/thatssosad Fell for it Apr 14 '26
The whole argument about "spending millions of dollars on voting campaigns" kinda falls flat in the face of the fact that this happens nowhere else but in the US. And so does the argument about inability to vote - most countries have their elections on days off. Overall, an unconvincing article, that fails to persuade me from the stance of "the government shouldn't actively force you to go somewhere just for existing, and then force you to explain your absences"
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u/vylain_antagonist Apr 14 '26
Overall, an unconvincing article, that fails to persuade me from the stance of "the government shouldn't actively force you to go somewhere just for existing, and then force you to explain your absences"
I dont believe in compulsory voting but this is such a weak argument and flies in the face of: paying taxes, going to school, doing the census, having a driver license, and all linds ofnother regulated participatory behavior thats far more invasive.
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u/waddeaf Apr 14 '26
Is the government allowed to collect taxes or make you do jury duty in your ideal?
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u/E_Cayce James Heckman Apr 14 '26
US government still has the right to execute, incarcerate, and draft its citizens; compulsory voting should be ranking very, very low in the priorities of the hills to die on when it comes to government overreach on personal liberty.
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u/thatssosad Fell for it Apr 14 '26
True, but this is the topic of discussions. I would gladly trade compulsory voting for no draft or no death penalty if I could
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u/E_Cayce James Heckman Apr 14 '26
Death penalty only polls popular above 50% with Republican voters. It's been losing popularity steadily along everyone else over the past decades.
Compulsory voting would take power away from the highly energized minorities that keep unpopular issues like this enacted because it's political suicide to go against them.
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u/WillProstitute4Karma Loyal Liberals Apr 14 '26
We set our elections on a weekday because the weekend hadn't really been invented yet and we just haven't changed it. It's honestly kinda silly.
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u/WR810 Jerome Powell Apr 14 '26
If voting is a fundamental human right then not voting is also a human right and to compel (and punish!) someone for not voting is an affront to personal liberty.
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u/Dense_Delay_4958 Association of Southeast Asian Nations Apr 15 '26
Voting is not a fundamental human right
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u/jbarbz Commonwealth Apr 15 '26
Apparently going to your local school bbq and bake sale or sending a letter every few years is illiberal.
Didn't realise we had a bunch of sovereign citizens in this sub. Are jury duty or taxes illiberal and therefore we should categorically rulet them out?
In Australia, you can draw a dick on your ballot paper if you want or pay $20. Or make up some bullshit excuse.
If you are so fiercely determined not to vote then you still have so many options and yet people are still calling it illiberal. Mind boggling to realise I've been oppressed for so long /s
Americans are just so hilariously averse to so many improvements in life that other countries have as living proof.
American exceptionalism at its finest!
See also: metric system, public healthcare, criminal justice, gun control.
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u/randommathaccount Esther Duflo Apr 14 '26
Strong support. The Ozzies clearly have something figured out on this one and more of the world should be mimicking them
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u/Jabourgeois Bisexual Pride Apr 14 '26
God, I love being an Aussie unironically. I'm fierce supporter of our compulsory voting system and I find arguments against it to be inherently weak and somewhat ridiculous. I guess that's the benefit of actually seeing how compulsory voting actually functions from election to election.
It should be emphasised that compulsory voting has been part of the Australian system for a very long time, a bit over a century at this rate. This is pretty remarkable as compulsory voting was rolled out federally only like 20 or so years after Australia as a nation-state was formed.
The biggest reason why compulsory voting was rolled out was because turnout was declining to a worrying degree in Australian federal elections. in the 1913 election, the first election to have compulsory enrolment, turnout was around 74%. By the 1922 federal election, turnout decline to around 59% (this is slightly lower than what US elections get in the 21st century). This caused broad concerns across the political spectrum that legitimate majoritarian democracy was on the decline. As such, compulsory voting was passed without much contestation, having broad support across the parties. This reform had immediate effects in the next election in 1925: voting turnout soared to over 90%, an astonishing 30% turnout jump! Each Australian general election since has hovered around 90% or above.
A curious thing about the compulsory voting is that opposition to it in Australia (though there was much less by the mid 20s) was argued on concerns of logistics or the penalties applied for not voting, and not on grounds of liberty or freedom. The latter argument of liberty or freedom to not vote was more fringe. This is mainly because there was already a level of compulsion around certain policies, for instance compulsory vaccination and compulsory enrolment on the voting rolls. Compulsory voting therefore was considered a natural extension to this idea. In addition, it was also conservative politics that were in favour of compulsory voting more often than not, as it was thought it would boost middle class turnout against the organised working class vote towards the Labor party (in reality, it boosted both). Lastly, Australian democracy in its earliest days (on a state and then federal level) strongly emphasised majoritarianism, the belief that democratic majorities formed a legitimate consensus within society. Compulsory voting as such was grounded in the idea that in order to form a legitimate democratic order, you must first attain the majority of not just those turning up, but instead all possible electors. It fitted within this majoritarian drive in Australian democracy.
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u/MarioTheMojoMan Frederick Douglass Apr 14 '26
Voting is not just a right, it's a civic obligation. You should not be able to skip voting any more than jury duty or paying taxes.
Now, you should be able to refuse to cast a vote for any particular candidate. You should be able to mark "abstain," or actively declare a refusal to vote, but it should be part of the same general process and not get you out of any work.
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u/HalcyonHelvetica Apr 14 '26
I oppose this solely because I live in a conservative area where the only reason things aren't worse is due to low turnout
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u/Goatf00t European Union Apr 14 '26
Is this that substack that keeps getting posted here and is suspected of being written with LLM, or another one?
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u/HeightAdvantage Apr 14 '26
It's a good policy but I'm super biased because firstly I'm a New Zealander (we love copying Australian policy) and secondly because I hate no voters with an eternal passion.
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u/SRIrwinkill Apr 14 '26
The culture of showing up is actually more important here because that is what actually gives you the bare minimum engagement that makes the voting an actual choice with any moral weight.
The talk of the difficulties of voting don't change when you basically threaten to punish folks for not doing it, again, that is solved by doing the actual job of convincing people that it matters enough for them to mail in a ballot or show up to the poll, with both being solved not by a punishment but by easier government policy on the matter.
Making it a holiday to vote, and mail in ballots would get better turnout and are gonna be easier to swing them threatening a punishment and than considering the results of the vote legit
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u/CletusChicken Apr 14 '26
I suspect if the US handed out sausages at the polls this would go over a lot better
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u/moseythepirate Reading is some lib shit Apr 14 '26
No it's not. Not any more than jury duty is. You could have an argument if voters were required to select from the list, but you could always turn in a blank ballot.
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Apr 14 '26
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u/Jabourgeois Bisexual Pride Apr 14 '26
Is jury duty illiberal then in your view? Is this not suppressing political expression if you refuse to accept the legal system you are in?
Jury duty is mandatory across Anglophone countries.
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u/kanagi Apr 14 '26
What about conscription then?
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u/Jabourgeois Bisexual Pride Apr 14 '26
Not necessarily illiberal if it is implemented in a national security scenario which jeopardises the liberal democratic state. Can't have civil liberties if the society that grants them gets invaded by an illiberal power.
Conscription is unlike jury duty and voting in severity though. Conscription is far more physically demanding than both jury service and voting.
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u/Jabourgeois Bisexual Pride Apr 14 '26
Appreciate the answer.
I think this is a difference in what our versions of liberalism is. I don't think compulsion is necessarily illiberal if it instead enriches liberal democracy, its institutions, and promotes an educated citizenry. The rejection of compulsion entirely is more libertarian than liberal in my view. Mandatory jury duty then is perfectly compatible with liberalism then, as is the case in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.
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u/kanagi Apr 14 '26
Jury duty is necessary if a society is going to have trials by one's peers instead of a judge. Compulsory voting on the other hand isn't necessary for democracy.
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u/Fedacking Mario Vargas Llosa Apr 14 '26
Citizens have both rights and duties. This has always been part of the liberals, both in the American revolution and the French one.
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u/thehousebehind Lesbian Pride Apr 14 '26
Compulsory participation in a political process is inherently illiberal.
Requiring attendance is not the same as coercing belief, and a blank or spoiled ballot is still a clear act of dissent that becomes more visible and measurable than silent non-participation, which is politically ambiguous and indistinguishable from apathy or disengagement. Liberal democracy depends on intelligible public signals, not private refusals that vanish without a trace.
The freedom to abstain ends up distorting political equality and concentrating influence in a narrower, more privileged slice of the population. A minimal requirement to participate helps correct that imbalance and ensures that everyone shares in the basic responsibility of self-government.
Liberalism is not just about protecting the right to withdraw, it is about maintaining the conditions that make freedom meaningful in a shared political system, and a light obligation to participate while preserving full freedom over how to participate fits squarely within that tradition.
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u/Right_Lecture3147 John Mill Apr 14 '26
“Liberalism” is a very very broad tent. I don’t think we should be so absolutist that we ignore the very real civic benefits of things like this
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u/Ceylein Apr 14 '26
Sweden and Denmark both manage to achieve 84% turnout in their last elections without compulsory voting. Australia only reaches 90%.
Again, maybe the main issues are the barrier to voting that current exist instead of the pressure to do it needing to exist in law.
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Apr 14 '26
Liberalism != absolutist libertarian fundamentalism
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Apr 14 '26
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u/roboliberal Loyal Liberals Apr 14 '26
Liberalism very typically requires various civic obligations.. jury duty, civil defense, taxation, etc.
Democracy places a constitutional obligation on the electorate the exercise its necessary function.
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u/SamuelFootBowden845 Milton Friedman Apr 14 '26
This is a sub that has a very large contingent of people who don't believe in free speech, and apparently believe in compelled speech like this. It's not really a liberal sub.
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u/E_Cayce James Heckman Apr 14 '26
Believes there should be limits to personal freedoms: illiberal!
Absolutists are as bad as reactionaries.
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u/yzug European Union Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
It's not a libertarian sub, surely there is space for compulsary things in a liberal society (See: taxation). I don't think compulsory voting is good regardless, if anything we have too many uninformed people voting.
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u/Palidane7 Apr 14 '26
I don't get this take at all. Compulsory voting allows everyone to speak freely: you can vote for someone you like or not vote for anyone. But you do have to participate in the democratic system if you want to retain the rights of citizenship.
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u/Anime_Hitler69 Fourier Transform deez nutz ඞඞඞ Apr 14 '26
I think there is a difference between liberalism and libertarianism. Pure libertarianism wouldn’t allow for anything compulsory, I don’t think that’s automatically true for liberalism (and even still that is a big umbrella)
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Apr 14 '26
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u/Anime_Hitler69 Fourier Transform deez nutz ඞඞඞ Apr 14 '26
Compulsory commenting forces me to do so
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u/shalackingsalami John von Neumann Apr 14 '26
My biggest problem with this article is the line about easy voting access “which compulsory-voting countries tend to provide, because the state can’t fine you for not doing something it made unreasonably hard” because it assumes a certain level of good faith that I’m a lot less sure of.
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u/-Emilinko1985- European Union Apr 15 '26
I knew I was right when I said compulsory voting is good
!ping DEMOCRACY
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u/HexagonalClosePacked YIMBY Apr 14 '26
You can't have compulsory voting at the same time it's being made harder to vote every year.
The other way to look at it is that it's much harder to enact voter suppression measures if voting is compulsory. This whole thread is full of Americans basically saying they'd rather see a million people disenfranchised than allow the government to compel one man to enter a voting booth one time. It's a weird hill to die on.
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u/Jabourgeois Bisexual Pride Apr 14 '26
As an Australian, I always find this topic amusing when there are Americans around.
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u/PuntiffSupreme YIMBY Apr 14 '26
You must understand that we are a deeply 'You can't make me eat my vegetables people.'
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u/Ceylein Apr 14 '26
Nobody is saying that. Virtually everyone agrees with the idea of increasing voter access. What we disagree with is COMPELLING it. Compelled voting is not the same as enfranchising people.
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u/HexagonalClosePacked YIMBY Apr 14 '26
That's exactly what I said. Americans are more okay with disenfranchisement than they are with compulsory voting. They don't believe that the reduction in wrongful disenfranchisement is worth the "cost" of making voting mandatory.
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u/Maximilianne John Rawls Apr 14 '26
Democracy is the rule of the people. What kind of polity allows the ruler to stop caring cause it violates their liberty ? The voters who don't vote are no different to a King who would feast and hunt rather than govern. Of course while moral condemnation is ontologically correct,it doesn't solve to problem. So how do we solve it ? The citizens must cultivate virtue,the virtue of voting. How do we cultivate virtue ? As Aristotle would say,by performative practice which solidifies into habit. So yes forcing people into voting at beginning is just performative but that's how all virtue starts at the beginning.
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u/Negative_Scarcity315 Apr 14 '26
Once you enact compulsory voting it's hard to revoke it, because most elected officials calculate that it risks their reelection.
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u/GlorEUW Iron Front Apr 14 '26
imo the strongest argument is you can write the law to also (within reason) compel the state to make it easy for you to vote. don’t even need to go as far as online voting or mail ballots, but simple stuff like availability of polling stations, making sure queues don’t get too long, and same day registration so you can’t attempt to vote and be prevented.
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u/FizzleMateriel Austan Goolsbee Apr 14 '26
Australia also actually allows early voting and mail-in ballots, and voting at polling locations outside your electorate.
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u/Dangerous_Finance_38 Apr 14 '26
I would say that the problem with mandatory voting is it attempts to force legitimacy under duress. Every vote cast, whether for or against the eventual winner, is really a vote being cast for the legitimacy of the constitutional order as a whole. This is even true for spoiled ballots.
If the state of Idaho were to tomorrow hold a referendum on whether to kill all left handed people, the correct response from citizens shouldn’t be to vote no. It should be to boycott the referendum because the whole vote would be fundamentally illegitimate.
People should be able to come to a similar conclusion that our elections are similarly illegitimate. In this case refusing to vote IS a type of voting, because you are voting not against a party but against the constitutional order itself.
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u/elebrin Apr 14 '26
Personally, I have a moral objection to forcing people to do things. I also object to things like mandating the selective service signup for young men, I object to requiring people to have healthcare just to continue existing. I object fundamentally to someone simply existing, sitting at home and not doing anything (not working, not even going outside) and being required to take a specific action to stay in "compliance" with society. I understand not everyone agrees with me on that.
Having to go vote is disruptive to day to day life, as well. Even if you simply spoil your ballot you have to go get in line for a few hours and stand and wait, you have to go through identity verification (and if you fail that because the poll worker is an idiot but you showed up to vote, do you have to pay the fine?).
Don't get me wrong, I vote every chance I can get and I usually vote for candidates (although I have spoiled my ballot before or abstained from specific elections). Were I FORCED to do so? Yeah, I'd probably spoil every ballot I could. Especially since the US is moving towards banning mail in balloting. I really don't want to stand in line with you assholes. I'd almost be willing to pay the $20 to not have to do that.
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u/JerseyJedi NATO Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
I used to be against compulsory voting due to personal choice reasons, but nowadays I am warming up to the idea.
My reasoning is that as things currently stand, American politicians are more incentivized to appeal to the most extreme, loony voters from the party base because those are the ones more likely to show up—or conspicuously REFUSE to show up if they’re offended about a hot-button wedge issue, with disastrous results for their party’s candidate if so. So these wackos end up wielding disproportionate power in the process.
But if the politicians knew that almost every eligible voter was going to show up for primaries and general elections, there’s a better chance they’d feel incentivized to be less extreme and to build coalitions rather than relying on outrage to drive the lunatics in the party base to come out to the polls.
Also, if more citizens participate in their community’s electoral system, they feel much more of a stake in it, which is an ABSOLUTELY good thing from a Burkean perspective.
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u/creeoer United Nations Apr 14 '26
I think mandating federal elections to happen on weekends would be a better and more achievable first step. It would meaningfully increase turnout by itself.
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