The report�s final claim is that compulsory voting will lead to a decrease in political polarization. The authors point out, correctly, that the people who vote now tend to be more committed partisans than the people who don�t
Universal voting won�t bring Americans together
Stephen L. Carter
Some bad ideas just wont go away. Last month the Brookings Institution joined the recent chorus of voices calling for compulsory voting in federal elections. The authors prefer the softer term universal, but its the same mischief: Vote or be punished.
Ive written about this issue several times now, ever since President Barack Obama, speaking off the cuff, brought it up earlier this year. The Brookings report, the latest in a cascade of endorsements, is titled The case for universal voting. It was written by William Galston and E.J. Dionne, both of whom I know and admire. Both men are important voices on the sensible side of many, many issues. But this time theyre wrong.
The Brookings report is optimistic. The authors are trying to deal with what they see as serious threats to democracy: increasing polarization and the underrepresentation of particular groups of voters. That second point is where they begin, with the familiar proposition that the electorate (especially in midterm elections) is demographically quite different from the population as a whole. In particular, citizens with lower levels of income and education are less likely to vote, as are young adults and recent immigrants. Because these groups are less likely to vote, the argument runs, they are less likely to be represented.
The implicit suggestion is that changing the demographics of the electorate would change the outcome of elections. Any number of observers have argued for compulsory voting on partisan grounds -- that the result would be a boost to the Democratic Party, or at least lead to more liberal policies. Galston and Dionne avoid this cynical view. Yet would
outcomes be different? The Pew Research Center, shortly before the 2014 midterm election, issued a report on what it labeled The Party of Nonvoters. No one will be surprised to learn that those who stay home are less affluent, less educated and less white than those who vote. But on the issues, they often line up closely with the voters: A plurality of nonvoters opposed the Affordable Care Act, for example, and, at the time of the poll, nonvoters were as hotly divided as likely voters on Obamas job performance.
Galston and Dionne also bemoan what they see as low turnout, even in presidential election years. Using figures from the American Presidency Project, they point out that Obama won elections in which turnout was 58.23 percent (2008) and 54.87 percent (2012). Those levels, they insist, are too low. By this logic, however, the most legitimate president was Rutherford B. Hayes, whose 1876 triumph brought 81.8 percent of eligible voters to the polls. The least legitimate was Bill Clinton, whose 1996 re-election marked the only presidential contest in U.S. history where a majority of eligible voters stayed home.
The reports final claim is that compulsory voting will lead to a decrease in political polarization. The authors point out, correctly, that the people who vote now tend to be more committed partisans than the people who dont. But thats just another way of saying that the people who care most about the outcome are most likely to vote. It seems odd to suggest that the cure for polarization is jail time for those who care less.
Thats right. Jail time. Supporters of compulsory voting always insist that they have nothing so extreme in mind. But in Australia, a mandatory voting nation that the authors used as a model, some 43 people were sent to jail after refusing to pay the fine for not voting in the 1993 election. The number of refusants in 2004 (the last year covered by the study) was 140, but the report was issued in 2005, and doesnt tell us how all their cases came out.
Bloomberg
