State Department photo by Ken White
Nov. 6, 2018
Chayenne Polimedio wrote for Polyarchy on Vox about compulsory voting.
Voter turnout could hit a 50-year record for the 2018 midterm elections.
Yet, even if 50 to 60 percent of eligible voters show up at the polls this year, that number will still be very low in comparison to most other developed countries’ turnout statistics. In the 2016 general election, turnout was 55.7 percent, which placed the U.S. 26th out of 32 highly developed democratic countries.
One solution gets a lot of attention right after every election cycle as a response to the abysmally low turnout numbers: make voting mandatory. Barack Obama once said compulsory voting could be “transformative” and could counteract the role of money in politics “more than anything.”
Compulsory voting is often pitched as the silver bullet to the many ills of American democracy, with the assumption that high turnout is always good. But an overview of the literature on compulsory voting and some case examples show that even worse than low turnout might be alienated voters.