A “No” To Mandatory Voting

Walter OlsonAustralia andsome other countries make voting compulsory by law, a perennial ideare ‐​floated two years ago in this country by a working group convened by the Brookings Institution and the Harvard Kennedy School ’s Ash Center and now by E.J. Dionne Jr. of Brookings and Miles Rapoport of the Ash Centerin a book. But as I argue in a newpiece in theNew York Post as well as a newCato podcast, the right answer remains “no way.”The Brookings/ ​Ash Center group — which deserves due credit for honesty on this point — acknowledges that when they polled about the idea, they found the American public heavily opposed to it, just as earlier surveys had found: only 26 percent were in favor and 64 percent against. The biggest reason given, by a wide margin, was: “People have a right to not participate in elections. ”That ’s both a very American reason and one grounded in a wider political understanding. The more you regard political participation as an individual right, the more you should recognize a corresponding right of political nonparticipation.Colleague Trevor Burrus, writing about this issue a few years back, rightly discerned a specter of compelled speech, particularly for those of us who see a refusal to vote as sending a distinctiveexpressive message.As for the imagined political benefits of forcing participation by nonvoters — a groupsurveys find to beless informed...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs