Compulsory Voting: For and Against

261 Pages·2014·1.6 MB·English

by  Jason Brennan

Compulsory Voting
In many democracies, voter turnout is low and getting lower. If the people
choose not to govern themselves, should they be forced to do so?
For Jason Brennan, compulsory voting is unjust and a petty violation of
citizens’ liberty. The median nonvoter is less informed and rational, as well as
more biased, than the median voter.
According to Lisa Hill, compulsory voting is a reasonable imposition on
personal liberty. Hill points to the discernible benefits of compulsory voting and
argues that high-turnout elections are more democratically legitimate.
The authors – both well known for their work on voting and civic engagement
– debate such questions as
Do citizens have a duty to vote, and is it an enforceable duty?
Does compulsory voting violate citizens’ liberty? If so, is this sufficient
ground to oppose it? Or is it a justifiable violation? Might it instead
promote liberty on the whole?
Is low turnout a problem or a blessing?
Does compulsory voting produce better government? Or might it instead
produce worse government? Might it, in fact, have little effect overall on
the quality of government?
JASON BRENNAN is Assistant Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and
Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business and Assistant Professor of
Philosophy at Georgetown University. Formerly, he was Assistant Professor of
Philosophy at Brown University, where he was also Assistant Director of the
Political Theory Project, an interdisciplinary research center. He received his
PhD in philosophy from the University of Arizona in 2007. Brennan is the
author of Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know (2012); The Ethics of
Voting (2011); and, with David Schmidtz, A Brief History of Liberty (2010).
LISA HILL is Professor of Politics at the University of Adelaide, and formerly
an ARC Senior Fellow (University of Adelaide) and a five-year Fellow in the
Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
National University. Prior to that she was a lecturer in Government at the
University of Sydney and took a D. Phil. in Politics at the University of Oxford.
Her current areas of interest are political theory, history of political thought, and
issues in electoral law. In 2011 Hill was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the
Social Sciences of Australia. Her most recent book, co-authored with Bruce
Buchan, is An Intellectual History of Political Corruption (2014).
Compulsory Voting
For and Against
Jason Brennan
Georgetown University
Lisa Hill
University of Adelaide
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
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© Jason Brennan and Lisa Hill 2014
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the
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part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University
Press.
First published 2014
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Brennan, Jason, 1979–
Compulsory voting : for and against / Jason Brennan, Lisa Hill.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-04151-6 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-10761392-8 (paperback)
1. Voting, Compulsory. I. Hill, Lisa, 1961– II. Title.
JF1031.B74 2014
325.6′5–dc23 2014001487
ISBN 978-1-107-04151-6 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-10761392-8 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this
publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will
remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I. Medicine Worse Than the Disease? Against Compulsory Voting
Jason Brennan
1. The Heavy Burden of Proof
2. Democratic Legitimacy and the Consequences of Compulsion
3. Do Your Share or Else
4. Should We Force the Drunk to Drive?
Part II. Compulsory Voting Defended
Lisa Hill
5. Compulsory Voting: Background, Effects, Feasibility, and Basic Premises
6. Turnout, Abstention, and Democratic Legitimacy
7. Is Compulsory Voting an Unjustified Burden on Personal Autonomy? Is
There a Right Not to Vote?
8. Is Requiring People to Vote Contrary to Democratic Values?
9. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Jason benefited greatly from discussing these issues with his colleagues at
Georgetown and elsewhere. He thanks Loren Lomasky, John Hasnas, Dennis
Quinn, Peter Jaworski, Bryan Caplan, John Tomasi, David Estlund, Peter
Boettke, Geoffrey Brennan, David Schmidtz, Matt Zwolinski, Kevin Vallier, Bas
van der Vossen, Andrew J. Cohen, Andrew I. Cohen, Hélène Landemore,
William Galston, Alfred Apps, the philosophy department at Georgia State
University, and the audience and fellow panelists at the American Political
Science Association 2013 Annual Meeting. Thanks especially to Lisa Hill for
agreeing to work on this project.
Lisa Hill wishes to thank her research assistants, Brendan Drew, Carolyn
Walsh, and especially Kelly McKinley, for their able assistance in the
completion of this manuscript as well as the Australian Research Council, whose
funding made its completion possible. She also thanks Jason Brennan for
conceiving this project and generously suggesting it to her.
We are both grateful to editors at the New York Times, who helped bring us
together in the first place to debate this topic, and to Robert Dreesen at
Cambridge University Press for his support for this project.
Part I Medicine Worse Than the
Disease?
Against Compulsory Voting
Jason Brennan
1 The Heavy Burden of Proof
1.1 Where Are We the People?
Democracy is rule by the people. But what if the people refuse to rule? Many
people worry if we do not have government by the people, then we will not have
government for the people – at least not for all of them.
During presidential elections in the late nineteenth century, 70–80 percent of
eligible Americans voted. For whatever reason, in the twentieth century,
participation rates seem to have dropped to 50–60 percent.1 Midterm national,
state, and local elections averaged a mere 40 percent.
A U.S. president has never been elected by a majority of eligible voters. In the
1964 election, 61.05 percent of voters cast their ballots for Lyndon Johnson – the
largest majority any president has ever enjoyed. Yet, at the same time, because
turnout was so low, Johnson was in fact elected by less than 38 percent of all
voting-eligible Americans. We call Reagan’s 1984 victory a “landslide,” but less
than a third of voting-age Americans actually voted for him. Less than a quarter
of eligible Americans voted to reelect Bill Clinton in 1996. In all elections, a
minority of the voting-eligible population imposes a president on the majority.
When most people hear these numbers, they shake their heads and wring their
hands. They conclude that Americans fail to take the responsibility of self-
government seriously. They worry that Americans – especially young adults, of
course – are complacent, apathetic, and self-centered.2 I have heard conservative
Americans complain, “Our brave troops died to protect our democratic
freedoms, yet half of us can’t be bothered to vote.” The thought: democratic
apathy means they died in vain.
Low turnout is not a distinctly American condition. Canada’s rates are
similarly low. Swiss national election rates are significantly lower.
Many pundits, politicians, philosophers, and political theorists believe low
turnout is a problem. Democracy is dying. Low turnout shows we have low civic
virtue. Low turnout means worse government.
Suppose they are right. If so, there seems to be a simple solution. If the people