Compulsory voting isn’t as draconian as it sounds. No one is dragged to the polls against his or her will, and no one is thrown in jail for refusing to cast a ballot. Instead, a modest fine (about $20 in Australia) is levied on people who fail to show up and have no good excuse for their absence. There also isn’t any danger of political speech being compelled—a no-no under the First Amendment. People are free to do what they like with their ballots, including turning them in blank.

To find out what effect compulsory voting has on turnout, I used data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance to compare participation rates in countries that do and don’t require voting. Between 1945 and 2015, turnout hovered around 85 percent in compulsory voting countries (like Australia, Belgium, and Brazil). But it fell from 75 percent to 65 percent in countries with voluntary voting. Results like these may be why President Obama recently said, “If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.”

Turnout in Countries With Compulsory vs. Voluntary Voting





Nicholas Stephanopoulos / Data: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance

There is an air of unreality, though, to proposals to import compulsory voting to the United States. They resemble, at first glance, several other ideas favored by goo-goo reformers but by few others: proportional representation, public financing of elections, and the like. It’s hard to imagine a gridlocked Washington, vote-suppressing red states, or even risk-averse blue states, passing any of these laws.

But compulsory voting actually has a viable path to enactment. The trick is to harness the partisanship that runs through U.S. politics, and to exploit the system’s multiple levels of government. First Democrats and then Republicans, first at the local and then at the state or federal level, could be induced to support the policy.

To start, a blue city in a purple state—such as Miami, Florida, Columbus, Ohio, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—would have to adopt compulsory voting for its own elections. Its elections would also have to be held on the first Tuesday in November, allowing voters to cast ballots in municipal, state, and federal elections at the same time.

Why would the city make this switch? Partly to save money; it’s cheaper to administer one election than two or three. Partly because higher participation is itself a democratic good. But also for the sake of partisan advantage. Registered non-voters lean substantially more Democratic than registered voters. If they were required to go to the polls, election outcomes would shift markedly to the left.

At this point, redder jurisdictions would face enormous pressure to follow the blue city’s lead. Not doing so would award the Democrats an electoral bonanza: a surge in turnout in their urban stronghold unmatched by greater participation in suburbs and exurbs. To get a sense of how strong the Republicans’ incentive would be, think back to the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, both of which came down to a single swing state. Bush prevailed in Florida and again in Ohio. But he likely wouldn’t have won if Miami and Columbus had required all their eligible voters to go to the polls.