See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/282908557

Compulsory voting: For and against

Article  in  Acta Politica · October 2015

DOI: 10.1057/ap.2015.13

CITATIONS READS

0 536

1 author:

Anthoula Malkopoulou
Uppsala University
17 PUBLICATIONS   19 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

NEGARE View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Anthoula Malkopoulou on 03 September 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Book Review

Compulsory voting: For and against

Jason Brennan and Lisa Hill

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014, 240pp., £18.99/£55,
ISBN: 978-1107613928/978-1107041516.

Acta Politica (2015) 50, 506–509. doi:10.1057/ap.2015.13

The idea of imposing on citizens a legal requirement to show up at the polls, and
asking them to pay a fine if they fail to do so, has received significant traction over
the last two decades. In spite (or because) of an increasing amount of empirical and
theoretical literature on the subject, disagreement on the justifiability of the practice
seems to have become ever so wide, which is why this co-authored publication is
highly topical. This book is an articulate, coherent and balanced presentation of
arguments in support and in opposition to compulsory voting by two well-known
contributors to the debate, Lisa Hill an Australian political theorist and Jason
Brennan, an American analytical philosopher. Both of them adopt a similar fresh
methodological approach: normative reasoning that relies extensively on (other
people’s) empirical studies.
In the first half of the book, Brennan launches a sharp critique on compulsory
voting. He starts by assuming that the idea is by default unjustifiable and that he
therefore deserves the benefit of doubt (Chapter 1). He then goes on to de-construct
all existing arguments for compulsory voting, starting with its alleged good conse-
quences, for example, that it makes a government legitimate or more democratic
(Chapter 2). Next, he criticizes deontological claims, such as the duty to vote or
enhanced autonomy through compulsion. In his last chapter (Chapter 4), he provides
an independent argument against compulsory voting: that it produces worse
government, because it weighs in the voices of nonvoters, who are known to be
ignorant, misinformed, biased and bigoted (p. 104). He concludes with his emphatic
signature phrase ‘forcing everyone to vote is like forcing the drunk to drive’ (p. 106).
In the book’s second half, Hill takes up the chirurgical task of clarifying the
justifications for compulsory voting, which in the previous chapters were presented
schematically by Brennan. First, she describes the institutional preconditions for
compulsory voting – as practiced in her home country Australia – and its main
purpose, to decisively enhance electoral turnout (Chapter 5). She continues by
explaining that low turnouts are socially uneven at the expense of disadvantaged

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 0001-6810 Acta Politica Vol. 50, 4, 506–509
www.palgrave-journals.com/ap/
 Book Review

citizens, who fall within a norm-driven spiral of systematic abstention; thus,

voluntary voting systems fall short of basic criteria of democratic legitimacy – equal
opportunity of participation, inclusiveness and so on (Chapter 6). Hill refutes the
existence of a right not to vote, if anything because suffrage is a master right that
protects all other rights; therefore compelling it is in line with liberal values of
autonomy and non-domination (Chapter 7). Finally, she argues that universal turnout
does not distort electoral results, but contrarily produces more representative
governments and substantive equality (Chapter 8). She ends with a word of warning
that electoral disengagement is likely to endure and increase in the future ‘because it
is being led by the young’ (p. 199).
Both authors present their arguments in an organized manner and adopt a very
militant view in favor and against compulsory voting. Yet, they are not really in
conversation with one another, since each of them is writing their segment separately.
Thus, even if similar subjects are treated from opposed perspectives, they are in
different parts of the book, so that the reader needs to move back and forth to
compare the two views.
A significant problem that emerges from this organization of the material is the
tendency to make a schematic presentation of the opponent’s argument. This is especially
pertinent in Brennan’s section, which relies for his de-constructive analysis on inaccurate
synopses of arguments for compulsory voting. Thus, for example he suggests that
compulsory voting advocates say that ‘democratic governments are illegitimate unless
there is high voter turnout’ (p. 28), whereas all they actually claim is that ‘low-turnout
elections are less legitimate’ (p. 196). Similarly, he thinks they argue that ‘[C]itizens who
fail to vote are ungrateful for their hard-won liberties’ (p. 65), or that they free ride on the
provision of public goods (p. 73), when in reality they say the exact opposite that ‘people
don’t abstain to avoid doing their “fair share”; they do so because of perceived and real
obstacles’ (p. 193). Had Brennan carefully read (and quoted!) the sources of his
reconstructed arguments, his responses to them would not have been misplaced.
In fact, a major drawback of the first part of the book results from its metho-
dological approach. Brennan uses a myriad of examples to illustrate his points, which
although memorable and entertaining, are often irrelevant and even misleading as
they take matters out of context. For instance, he compares the moral duty with vote
and the obligation to be a non-cheating husband or to give money to charity (p. 63),
or the political good of voting with the creation of thrash metal music (or any other
professional service to the community) (p. 80), or the act of compelling citizens to
vote with compelling parents to marry (pp. 15–16, including an unreasonably long
list of references). Even his catchphrase about ignorant voters resembling ‘the drunk’
who drive feels like an impressionistic – if not elitist – attempt to attach a pejorative
frailty to habitual non-voters.
Furthermore, Brennan’s rhetorical move to frame the discussion in such a way as if
voluntary voting is a priori justifiable is an involuntary admission that he only has
one single argument in support of voluntary voting: nonvoters are misinformed and
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 0001-6810 Acta Politica Vol. 50, 4, 506–509 507
 Book Review

are thus better excluded from the process. This is at best a laboratory view of
electoral processes that considers political information to constitute a piece of
static, objective knowledge. As such it ignores that political interests and public
policies are shaped dynamically through a continuous exchange between repre-
sented and representatives.
The only argument he seems to concede to the compulsory voting defense is
representativeness. As a better alternative, he proposes the use of voting lotteries,
whereby a sample of the electorate would be offered a large sum of money to vote.
But this idea is flawed too, because the carrot approach is rarely effective (p. 119),
random sampling is not so reliable (p. 136), and it would de facto alienate
the masses; besides, the sample would anyway not be representative without
mandatory universal turnout.
Of course, it is impossible to take politics out of a political theorist’s mind.
Brennan is in Hill’s words a ‘voting libertarian’; for him, liberty is absence of state
coercion, but he also does not hide his enthusiasm for neo-liberal economics
(p. 58, p. 99). By contrast, Hill identifies herself as an egalitarian-pluralist
democrat inspired by Robert Dahl, with a penchant for utilitarian and rights-based
justifications. She makes her case for compulsory voting convincingly and
considers carefully opposite arguments by Brennan and others, even if at times
she states the obvious in her defense (p. 112 ‘because participatory electoral
democracies are what we do have’). Her case is significantly strengthened by
reference to numerous empirical researches, for example on turnout, and case-
studies on the effects of compulsory voting (see, however, a minor error about
Luxembourg, p. 116 n.15 and p. 119).
In closing, two critical notes to the debate deserve attention. First, although the
combination of normative and empirical research adds a comparative benefit to the
book, the over-reliance on empirical data steers the discussion to a sociological
type of thinking. To be more precise, conceptualizing the electorate as class-based
and socially divided in groups of disadvantaged citizens inhibits an understanding
of the complex identities and multiple political-ideological motives that drive
electoral choice. This non-sociological approach could offer not only new insights
to electoral behavior, but most importantly it could unlock a justification of
universal inclusion as a necessary method for representing the full complexity,
plurality and diversity of the demos.
Second, neither Brennan nor Hill pays enough attention to the link between
compulsory voting and political stability. Although Hill notices that non-voters tend
to be less partisan (p. 143), she dismisses the negative effects of compulsion on
political extremism due to the lack of empirical evidence (p. 145). However, this link
deserves to be revisited not only because of increased far-right extremism today, but
also because the historical emergence of compulsory voting seems to have originated
in the evaluation of the moderating effects of universal participation. Surely, more
knowledge on compulsory voting is needed and the theoretical debate remains
508 © 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 0001-6810 Acta Politica Vol. 50, 4, 506–509
 Book Review

inconclusive, although this book offers a highly valuable resource and source of
guidance to both.

Anthoula Malkopoulou
Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 0001-6810 Acta Politica Vol. 50, 4, 506–509 509

View publication stats