From the Heartland

By Stephen Earl Bennett

In an op-ed article which appeared in the New York Times on August 10 (“Vote—or Else”), American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein called for mandatory voting as a way to offset “ever-greater polarization in the country and in Washington, which in turn has led to ever-more rancor and ever-less legislative progress.”

Ornstein wrote in the aftermath of Ned Lamont’s victory over Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic primary, a contest which attracted the votes of only 15 percent of that state’s voting-age population.

Low turnouts are a bane of virtually every election in the United States. In 2004, for example, only 60 percent of the voting-age population went to the polls, and approximately 35 percent cast ballots in the 2002 “off-year” races. Ornstein believes that low turnouts lead the political parties to focus on divisive issues in order to maximize voting by their respective “bases.”

Several countries, such as Cyprus, Austria, Belgium, and, most notably, Australia, have compulsory voting laws. In Australia, which Ornstein notes is “a sprawling polity like ours,” citizens who cannot provide a valid reason for abstaining from voting pay a fine, roughly the equivalent of $15, and that amount increases each time a citizen does not vote and cannot provide a good reason. According to Ornstein, “The fine, of course, is an incentive to vote. But the system has also instilled the idea that voting is a societal obligation.” One result is that turnout rates in Australia average 95 percent of their voting-age population.

Having a national conversation about the enactment of compulsory voting could be useful, although moving to some form of mandatory voting does entail a certain loss of freedom.

I am much more concerned about “the unintended consequences” of a too-hastily adopted “reform.” American history is replete with unintended consequences of reforms that were adopted to correct some real or alleged “wrong.” Take just two examples:

Scholars such as Austin Ranney, Nelson Polsby, and the late Aaron Wildavsky have pointed out that post-1968 reforms adopted by the political parties, allegedly to “democratize” the process of nominating presidential candidates, strengthened the influence of ideologically oriented “purists,” to the detriment of party “professionals” who had steered the major parties toward the political center.

Second, the so-called McCain-Feingold law that was supposed to curb the impact of money on American elections actually empowered the so-called “527" organizations, which are largely made up of ideological “purists,” and negatively affected both major political parties.

Returning to mandatory voting laws, I can think of at least one “unintended consequence” that many students of democracy might find deleterious. While voters are hardly paragons of civic virtue when it comes to political information, nonvoters are considerably less informed.   

If we look at presidential elections in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004, we can create six-item Political Information Scales from items contained on American National Election Studies. (For more on this, see the December 2005 issue of Public Opinion Pros.) Typically, an ANES asks respondents which political job is held by four national or international personalities, and which political party held the most seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate prior to that year’s election.

I understand that some may discount the value of this kind of “test,” although, along with Philip Converse, I think a case can be made for the measure’s validity. At any rate, the data from presidential election years between 1992 and 2004 are clear. Respondents who claim to have voted average 1.4 more correct answers (out of 6) than those who admit they did not go to the polls. Voters are more informed than nonvoters even when education—a key determinant of political information—is taken into account.

Perhaps John Stuart Mill was right that participating in the electoral process would be educational. Perhaps.

One thing is evident. Most theories of democracy call for an informed electorate, so that voters can cast competent votes. As University of Maryland professor William Galston noted a few years back, “Competent democratic citizens need not be policy experts, but there is a level of basic knowledge below which the ability to make a full range of reasoned civic judgments is impaired.”

There are undoubtedly other “unintended consequences” of enacting a mandatory voting law, but the thought of compelling minimally informed citizens, who may easily fall prey to manipulation, to vote gives me pause.

Like Norman Ornstein, I am on record railing against low turnouts in American elections. Enacting compulsory voting laws, however, is worrisome, for the “cure” may be as bad, or even worse, than the problem.

Stephen Earl Bennett is adjunct professor of political science at the University of Southern Indiana.

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