The Friday Review: "Should Voting be Mandatory?"

"Should we make voting mandatory?" asks a political debate going on in the New York Times.  It's a fascinating discussion from a varied group of people, including Lisa Hill, a political scientist from the University of Adelaide.  Australia is, of course, the most often cited example of where voting is mandatory (though there are other countries that require voting as well).

She argues that mandatory voting is the only way to actually push turnout to near universal levels.  And she says that has an added effect: reducing the social bias in voting where those who don't vote are usually those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

Others are more skeptical.  Jason Brennan says that "The median voter is incompetent at politics," saying that high turnout would actually be a problem.

Richard Pildes is more pragmatic, saying that we need to improve electoral competitiveness as meaningful choices are more important than getting people to vote.

But perhaps the most insightful comment comes from Marion Just, who notes that "Recent research shows a vicious cycle in which nonvoters do not believe government will help them and government returns the favor by making policies that favor the middle and top of the income distribution and a negative impact on those at the bottom."

This echoes to a great degree some of the findings in our forthcoming report on politically disengaged Canadians.  What we are finding is that what happens between elections is just as important, if not more important, than how many people are voting.

Voting is not the be all and end all of democracy.  Most certainly it is an important part.  

But figuring out how to involve more people in the political process, whether at the ballot box, or in other ways, is certainly something that we need to be concerned about.