Pros and cons of compulsory voting

Donald Trump may be returning to the White House after winning what he called "an unprecedented and powerful mandate" but several commentators have noted that more Americans chose to stay home on Election Day than voted for either candidate.

Out of the 245 million Americans eligible to vote, almost 90 million did not exercise that right in November 2024 – and that's significantly more than the 77 million who put Trump back into power, or the 75 million who turned out to vote for Kamala Harris.

Such stark evidence that elections can be decided as much by who doesn't vote as by who does presents a strong argument for making voting compulsory, said US political scientist Austin Sarat in Salon. "Only by doing so," he said, could the US political system become more democratic, more representative and more resilient to threats to democracy.

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Compulsory voting would be nothing new in the US. In the colonial era, non-voters in Georgia and Virginia could be penalised with fines. Today, however, only around 20 countries in the world have mandatory voting, with enforcement varying from modest fines for those who fail to turn up on polling day to the naming and shaming of non-voters.

Pro: higher and more representative turnout

This may seem obvious, but compulsory voting leads to drastically higher voter turnout rates. In Australia, where mandatory voting was first introduced in 1925, turnout for elections hovers at around 90% of all registered voters, way more than the UK's 2024 general-election turnout of 59.7%.

Additionally, it has made taking part in elections be seen as both "a right and a duty", according to progressive journal Independent Australia. Compulsory voting underpins Australia's democracy, "and Australians have readily accepted this with their enthusiastic participation in the electoral process".

Beyond changing the culture around elections, mandatory voting has been proven to improve accessibility. Australia has taken extensive action to ensure most people have "the opportunity to vote – even the most disadvantaged", said the Harvard International Review.

"Those countries who have compulsory voting, where the penalty for not voting is a fine, and where spoiling your ballot paper is allowed as a way of signalling general discontent, tend to have healthier democracies," said Alastair Campbell for the i news site, "and healthier democracies tend to be happier places."

Con: infringes on individual liberty

Critics have long argued that people have a right not to cast a vote, and on a "philosophical and legal level" compulsory voting "raises the question of whether requiring citizens to vote is an appropriate infringement on individual liberty", said Policy Options.

Indeed, said Rohan Silva in The Times, "to a British sensibility the core of the Aussie electoral system feels deeply uncivic and illiberal: the legal requirement to turn up and vote or else be clobbered with a government fine of up to £100 and potentially hauled in front of a judge".

Furthermore, the US Supreme Court has already recognised the right not to speak, added the Free Speech Center, and compulsory voting could be seen as compelled speech. Choosing not to go to the polls is a form of freedom of expression.

Pro: minimises polarisation

"Casting votes regularly makes you a part of the American system," said Marcela Valdes in The New York Times. This, then, means voters are not so drawn to "ideas on the margins", in contrast to those who never or rarely vote.

"If the full range of voters actually voted, our political leaders, who are exquisitely attuned followers, would go where the votes are: away from the extremes," Eric Lui, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, wrote in Time. 

"Academic studies corroborate this view," said Silva in The Times, "suggesting that the more people who turn out to vote, the more centrist the outcome." This is said to be because "parties can't simply pander to their hardcore supporters, who tend to be more ideological and less representative of the general population".

Con: the 'uninformed voter' effect

One of the major arguments against compulsory voting is that it leads to a greater number of so-called "uninformed voters", with those who currently choose not to vote generally less educated on political issues than those who do.

Evidence suggests that new voters are more susceptible to misinformation during a campaign. The Australian political scientist Haydon Manning wrote for CNN that compulsory voting often "requires banal sloganeering and crass misleading negative advertising".

There was little evidence, for example, that mandatory voting in Brazil has led to greater knowledge about the issues in the country or elsewhere, said The Economist. Neither does a higher turnout mean that voters perceive governments to be more legitimate, it added.

There is also concern that uninformed voters, or those who simply do not care about the outcome of an election, may end up voting randomly. The impact of "random" votes "ends up being particularly detrimental because it fails to increase civic engagement and may skew election results", reported Fair Vote.

Pro: counteracts money in politics

In 2015, the then US president Barack Obama suggested "it would be transformative if everybody voted" and it would "counteract money more than anything" as an influence in politics.

"The people who tend not to vote are young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities," he said. "There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls."

The tendency towards non-voting is not evenly distributed among the population, but rather heavily correlated with age and class. The overall result of such differentials is "an electorate that skews notably older, wealthier, whiter, and more educated than the makeup of the population as a whole", said David Klemperer for The Constitution Society.

Con: criminalises non-voters

While Australia has shown that only a small percentage of voters refuse to abide by the law, in a country the size of the UK or even US this would still equate to tens or hundreds of thousands of normally law-abiding citizens being penalised for not voting.

In countries that have compulsory voting, its enforcement "varies from being strict to being weak", said Policy Options. Australia, for example, imposes modest fines on citizens who do not turn up to vote, with exceptions made for those who have "valid and sufficient reasons", while other countries use "shaming", posting the names of non-voters.

But this is an uncomfortable thought for many opposed to a big state. "If Nadine Dorries is vexed about compulsory BBC licence fees, the thought of enforced voting would probably prompt her to start an armed militia," said Silva.