It cannot be denied that mandatory voting laws can improve government responsiveness to members of poor and marginalised groups who are less likely to vote. Yet, whenever such a change was mooted here in Malta, the objection was that citizens can participate in a wide variety of ways or that voting is not important enough to justify forcing people to do it.
However, concern about the gap between public opinion and policy outcomes and about the disproportionate influence of a few individuals has recently reinvigorated the debate over compulsory voting. To my mind, the declining and unequal voter turnout rates have exacerbated the responsiveness gap in our contemporary democracy. Enforced compulsory voting is among the most effective ways of increasing voter turnout.
There are no significant downsides to mandatory voting, as it does not violate any significant liberties because it does not actually force people to vote as opposed to requiring them to turn out. Voting, voluntarily or otherwise, has an educational effect on citizens. Political parties can derive financial benefits from mandatory voting since they do not have to spend resources convincing the electorate that it should, in general, turn out to vote.
The case for compulsory voting rests on an implicit recognition of the unique and valuable role that elections play in our democratic system as periodic moments in which there is an ambition towards universal participation. Understanding the distinctive value of elections strengthens the case for compulsory voting. Anyone who denies the value of high turnout achieved through compulsion fails to give sufficient attention to voting's unique role in our constitutional set-up.
Greater political equality, understood as a government that is more equally responsive to all citizens, and greater democratic legitimacy are worthwhile goals to pursue. Such goals are best achieved through increased voter turnout. This is why and where the case for turning a moral obligation to vote into a legal one gathers ground.
The propensity to vote is overwhelmingly characteristic of the more established and better educated members of society. Mandatory voting can be justified as a way to combat the free-riding of non-voters on voters. Such free-riding is an unjustified exploitation of the collective good, in other words, the democratic political system, and, unless curbed, is likely to undermine it.
In the long run, mandatory voting should have a beneficial effect on political engagement more generally, encompassing political interest, knowledge, and participation. It could prove to be more effective in promoting better public knowledge of politics or in increasing political engagement. During the last few years, the younger generations have participated at a decreased rate. So, it is possible that expectations and social norms that, in the past, created high turnouts have now been significantly, perhaps fatally, weakened.
My fear is that as the older, more regular voters die, we will be left with a significant number of people for whom voting is neither a habit nor a duty. Socio-economic status, whether measured by income, class, or education, is not as significant a factor as age in determining whether a person will vote or not. Now, as it happens, it is age rather than wealth or income that is the best predictor of who votes.
The fact that it is age and education rather than race, income, and wealth that directly determine voting makes it harder to know how troubling disparities in turnout really are. In principle, young people can expect to have older people who care about them and who are likely to vote with their interests in mind. In practice, this may not be the case. In so far as young people are born to young parents, which is particularly likely if they are relatively uneducated and socio-economically deprived, young non-voters may, in fact, have young non-voting parents, family members, and friends. In those circumstances, they may well lack anyone among those who vote who shares their interests and concerns.
When the percentage of the electorate that votes for the winning party continues to fall, the legitimacy of the government begins to drain away. Lower turnout threatens the legitimacy of the government and electoral system because it significantly increases the likelihood that governments will reflect a minority, rather than a majority, of registered voters and of the voting population itself.
If only just over half of us bother to vote at all in national elections and scarcely a third in local elections, the bureaucracy begins to think of elections as a tiresome and increasingly insignificant interruption in its continuous exercise of power. What develops is executive democracy, or, worse, elective dictatorship.
To date, while registration and voting have been made easier, with voting taking place at weekends and more active campaigning by all voters being promoted, none of these are guaranteed to have any significant effect on turnouts or on inequality. Such effects, in any case, are likely to be medium- to long-term. By contrast, mandatory voting should logically have immediate and dramatic effects on turnout. Of course, the possibility will always remain that forcing the population to vote might yield an increased number of invalid and blank votes.
Mandatory voting might have other good effects beyond immediate and significant increases in turnout. It may cut down on the cost of campaigns, encourage politicians to engage with those who are least interested in politics, and minimise negative campaigning as well.
Above all, non-voting does not necessarily reflect contentment with the available political choices.