Erica Mauter

ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

The Case for Compulsory Voting in Minnesota Erica L. Mauter St. Catherine University ORLD 6300 Strategic Communication Position Paper Final November 12, 2012

Erica Mauter

ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

Every election year, Minnesotans pride themselves on being at or near the top of the nation in voter turnout. 2012 was no exception: Minnesotans cast a record number of ballots with a turnout of 76% of eligible voters (Minnesota Office of the Secretary of State, 2012). Minnesota also has a long history of political progressivism balanced with pragmatism and a strong culture of civic engagement. The Amherst H. Wilder Foundations Minnesota Compass social indicators project uses voter turnout as one metric for civic engagement (Wilder Research, 2012). Given this political and cultural environment, I posit that efforts to improve voter turnout in Minnesota would be welcome and that one method for doing so would be to enact a system of compulsory voting for all eligible voters in Minnesota. Compulsory voting is simply a legal requirement to participate in elections. Typically in a compulsory voting system, all eligible voters are required to register to vote, and then once registered are required to cast a ballot in an election. Before we talk about the effects of compulsory voting on turnout, lets first talk about how we measure turnout. There are five different numbers to consider when talking about voter turnout. The first two talk about the number of people in the voting pool. The voting age population is simply the number of residents who are 18 years of age or older. An eligible voter is a resident who is of voting age and meets all other eligibility criteria. Given those numbers, turnout is measured in three ways: 1) as a percentage of the voting age population, 2) as a percentage of eligible voters, or 3) as a percentage of registered voters. Most international voter turnout data is presented as percentage of registered voters and percentage of voting age population. When we talk about turnout in the United States, we usually talk in terms of percentage of eligible voters.

Erica Mauter

ORLD 6300 - Position Paper The Benefits of Compulsory Voting

Proponents of compulsory voting identify the following benefits: elimination of partisan advantage imbued by turnout discrepancies, electoral engagement as reflected in voting participation rates, consideration of the entire electorate by candidates, improved legitimacy of the elected government, additional resources for the government, and fulfillment of citizens civic duty (Evans, 2006). Lets look at each of these factors. Partisan Advantage in Turnout Discrepancies Compulsory voting would eliminate voter access issues and hence reduce or eliminate partisan advantage caused by voter suppression or turnout activities. When the entire electorate is participating, these tactics are rendered moot. For example, it is a common political tactic to put divisive social issues on the ballot to drive turnout of voters who are most moved by such an issue and thus to have the side effect of increasing votes for candidates in a particular party. As another example, in the United States, common wisdom is that improved turnout tends to favor the Democratic Party. There are many recent examples of state-level legislation that restricts the ability to cast a ballot; those efforts have been led by the Republican party. Broader turnout also eliminates the effects of the enthusiasm gap between the registered and likely voters of each party. Electoral Engagement: Voting Participation Rates Evans (2006) report for the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) refutes opponents argument that compulsory voting leads to increased numbers of ballots representing a deliberate intent to not vote. In Australia, there are two such kinds of ballots: informal votes and donkey votes. Informal votes are incomplete or incorrectly completed ballots. Donkey votes are complete ballots submitted with non-random (thus, presumably, non-

Erica Mauter

ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

deliberate) answers, the equivalent of taking a multiple-choice test and answering every question with B. In Australia, the number of incomplete ballots cast is historically very small and also attributable to a misunderstanding of how to complete the ballot. Informal votes may be identified as protest votes, but the duty to vote itself may not be under protest. Think of the propensity of American citizens to submit fictional characters as write-in candidates. Lastly, while a donkey vote may appear to be a deliberate non-answer, there is no way to determine its intent. Opponents of compulsory voting argue that requiring citizens to vote, particularly when they are politically disengaged, may skew election results. In a voluntary voting system, presumably only those with a stake in the issues participate, so their interests are accordingly weighted more heavily. Broadening voter access creates a socio-demographic leveling effect, where turnout across socio-demographic groups is approximately the same (Louth & Hill, 2005). Compulsory voting is one mechanism to disrupt disenfranchisement of voters caused by social forces, though it should be noted that voter participation does not disrupt the social forces themselves (Fischer, 2011). The United States has the lowest voter turnout rates of any industrialized country and has a particularly strong correlation between turnout and socioeconomic status (Hill, 2006). Its clear that social forces cause disenfranchisement, that disenfranchisement increases as the socioeconomic status gap increases, and that some disruptive force is valuable and necessary. Consideration of the Entire Electorate Compulsory voting encourages candidates to appeal more broadly to the entire electorate. Currently, voters who are most likely to turn out tend to align with the extreme parts of a political partys platform. Instead of allowing a party to cater to its base,

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ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

compulsory voting requires a party to offer and defend solutions that reflect party principles and are acceptable to people who hold less extreme ideologies. As such, the results of elections where voting is compulsory will truly represent collective decisions made for the common good. While this is a compelling notion for fans of participatory democracy, this is perhaps the weakest argument in favor of compulsory voting. Opponents argue that it encourages exactly the polarization and swing state campaigning we currently experience in American politics (Chong, Davidson, & Frye, 2005). Additionally, this effect may be less pronounced in the United States where there is strong bias towards a two-party system, even though third parties do exist, and even in Minnesota where third parties have more prominence than in many other states. It was found that compulsory voting systems result in electoral support spread more broadly across multiple political parties, which in a parliamentary system elevates representation of smaller political parties and increases the likelihood of a coalition government scenario (Jensen & Spoon, 2011). At worst, with compulsory voting, the nature of campaigning in the United States remains the same. Legitimacy of the Elected Government Due to the aforementioned improvements in voter access and broader candidate appeal, compulsory voting lends legitimacy to the government that is elected. No one citizen can abdicate their responsibility for the government. You do not have a case where all of the government is determined by only some of the people. Laura Frederick Wang, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters Minnesota/LWV Minnesota Education Fund, recently said that she [agrees] that confidence in election system and accuracy of results is important if voters are to have faith in the system (Wang, 2012).

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ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

Resources for the Government Compulsory voting can be a source of revenue. The most common sanctions levied in compulsory voting systems are the requirement of an explanation for not voting and a modest fine. In some countries, the fines are allocated to public financing of campaigns. Given the changing landscape of public financing of campaigns in the United States, Minnesota state government would find greater and more immediate budgetary benefit by directing the proceeds from voting fines towards the administration of elections. If the State of Minnesota collected a $20 fine from just half of the registered voters who did not cast ballots in the 2012 election (approximately 136,000 voters, per the Minnesota Office of the Secretary of State), the total receipts would be over $1.3 million. Fulfillment of Civic Duty Voting in the United States is commonly upheld as a civil right. Not only is voting a right, its a civic duty. Voting is the most accessible way each citizen has to participate in our representative democracy. We are compelled to other civic duties such as paying taxes and jury duty, all of which are more demanding than voting once every two years. Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines a right as something someone has and chooses to use. It also defines civic duties as just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. Most importantly Article 29 allows that both rights and civic duties can and should co-exist in a democracy (as cited in Evans, 2006). Compulsory Voting Around the World Compulsory voting was law in 31 countries as of 2009. Not all countries with compulsory voting laws enforce them. Compulsory voting is found (and most often

Erica Mauter

ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

studied) in Australia, some northern European countries, and many South American countries. It should be noted that these countries all have some variety of representative democracy. In some cases, the compulsory voting law was installed at the time the representative democracy was installed. Most importantly, these are countries in which the compulsory voting law is administered in a congenial setting (Louth & Hill, 2005). You can imagine how compulsory voting under a dictatorship would be different. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance [IDEA] (2010), enforcement of compulsory voting takes many forms. As mentioned, required explanation and modest fines are the most common. Other known sanctions are possible imprisonment, infringement of civil rights or disenfranchisement, and social sanctions. There is no documented case of actual imprisonment due to a failure to vote, but there are cases of imprisonment due to failure to comply with other sanctions (e.g., repeatedly failing to pay the fine). In countries where voting is compulsory and strongly enforced, turnout as a percentage of the voting age population can exceed 85%. There are two things to note about how turnout differs in the United States. One is that there is a significant difference in U.S. turnout in presidential election years versus non-presidential election years. The other is the much larger gap between turnout as a percentage of registered voters and turnout as a percentage of the voting age population (International IDEA, 2010). This indicates that in the U.S. as compared to other countries, there are significantly more people who are not registered to begin with. This holds true in Minnesota as well. Louth and Hill (2005) make the case for the socio-demographic leveling effect with data from The Netherlands. Similar turnout rates were seen across socio-demographic groups in

Erica Mauter

ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

The Netherlands when compulsory voting was in effect; when compulsory voting was removed, turnout variation amongst those groups increased. Additionally, in The Netherlands, even though the fine was modest (approximately $5 USD), a significant dropoff in overall turnout was seen after the compulsory voting law was repealed in 1970 (Hill, 2006). Similarly, in Swiss cantons, even though fines were low and barely enforced, turnout dropped off significantly when the law and hence the fines were repealed. These examples demonstrate that a modest penalty is sufficient proxy for a social norm (Hill, 2006). Even in countries with weak or no enforcement of compulsory voting laws, turnout is slightly higher than in countries with no such law, indicating that the social norm is created and upheld simply by the existence of the law (Engelen, 2009). It was found in Switzerland, where voting is compulsory in just one canton, that compulsory voting laws did enhance civic engagement by increasing the likelihood that citizens would engage in more frequent discussions of politics. Increased political discussion has two effects. The first effect is that by helping a citizen to obtain and process information about an election, it lowers the mental cost barrier to participation. The second effect is that increased political discussion overall exposes a person to more heterogeneous ideas and hence reduces the effects of a persons tendency to seek opinions that corroborate the opinions that person already holds (Milazzo, 2009). A study of students participating in a Quebec provincial election found no such increased engagement based solely on financial compulsion (Loewen, Milner, & Hicks, 2008). However, both Loewin, Milner, and Hicks (2008) study on informed citizens and Jensen and Spoons (2011) study of the effects of compulsory voting laws on turnout acknowledge that the surrounding culture that gave rise to the law or that has been established because of the law has an

Erica Mauter

ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

effect on citizen information and engagement independent of turnout. This leads me to conclude that Minnesota is fertile ground for the introduction of compulsory voting. Voting in Minnesota The federal constitution; the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Sixth federal constitutional amendments; and key pieces of legislation including the Voting Rights Act of 1965 all convey that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged based on certain criteria. The states are allowed to otherwise define voting eligibility. Voting eligibility in Minnesota is defined by age, citizenship, residency, competency, and criminal record (Minnesota Office of the Secretary of State, 2012). Minnesota also has a long history of political progressivism balanced with pragmatism, which Elazar (1999, para. 11-13) characterizes as epitomizing moralistic political culture: Politics, to the moralistic political culture, is an effort to exercise power for the betterment of the commonwealth. [B]oth the general public and the politicians conceive of politics as a public activity centered on some notion of the public good and properly devoted to the advancement of the public interest. Politics is ideally a matter of concern and duty for every citizen. The four factors that the Minnesota Compass project uses to define and measure civic engagement are: sense of community, perceived ability to improve community, volunteerism, and voter turnout. This model provides a useful framework for discussing compulsory voting as a tool to increase voter turnout for the purpose of enhancing civic engagement. Minnesota Compass states as its civic engagement goal, Our state will foster a climate of inclusion that encourages active participation from everyone living in our community. (Wilder Research, 2012)

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ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

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According to Metropolitan State Universitys Civic Confidence Survey, a majority of Twin Cities-area voters consider state and local government to be responsive to their needs and believe that, most often, local government can be trusted to do what is right (Ohara, Israel, & Schweigert, 2009). This reflects a perception that ones vote actually has an effect, which encourages continued engagement, creating a cycle of positive reinforcement. At the same time, thinking back to the correlation between socioeconomic status and turnout, enacting a compulsory voting law is disruptive because it creates a norm of voting amongst disenfranchised populations where, under a voluntary voting scheme, it is normal to abstain, even when abstaining is the irrational choice because it is not in ones political interest to abstain (Hill, 2006). So, while many think the government is responsive and effective, there are many more who are still disengaged. This is a good starting point, and yet there is room to improve. The Civic Confidence Survey also shows a recent decrease in confidence that ballots are accurately counted (Ohara, Israel, & Schweigert, 2009). While most survey respondents indicated that campaign spending and the length of campaigns were their primary concerns, there is clearly an indication that reform of some kind is welcome. However, as evidenced by the 2012 rejection of a constitutional amendment requiring Voter ID, restricting access to voting is not seen as the answer. This is also a good starting point for a compulsory voting discussion. There are modifications to a compulsory voting system that can be adopted which would keep the intended result intact but also accommodate our local political culture. For those who do not wish to cast a vote based on their principled objection to the candidates or ballot questions, there would be a mechanism to submit a ballot with a non-vote, or to

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ORLD 6300 - Position Paper

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register conscientious objection. This maintains the freedom of choice in exercising the right to vote and maintains the right to keep ones ballot secret. For those who are unable to participate on election day, penalty can be avoided by providing sufficient reason in advance or by partaking in alternative voting options such as absentee voting. In Australia, please explain letters are sent following the election which give citizens the opportunity to make their excuse or go ahead and submit the fine (Hill, 2006). This would be a simple and straightforward mechanism, using data the state already has, to enforce the requirement to cast a ballot. Given the conditions of congenial public administration in the United States, enacting compulsory voting in Minnesota can improve voter turnout. Minnesotans can continue to brag as we rise head and shoulders above our fellow, high-turnout, upper midwestern states. But we would not just be raising turnout simply for turnouts sake. Minnesotas existing moral political culture and spirit of civic engagement is entirely compatible with the notion of making civic participation even more inclusive. Minnesotas history of rewarding responsive elected officials and punishing ineffective ones, coupled with its recent history of closely-contested elections, shows that Minnesota voters both believe and demonstrate that each and every vote does matter. Our democracy can only be improved by having every citizens voice heard via the ballot box.

Erica Mauter

ORLD 6300 - Position Paper References

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Chong, D., Davidson, S., & Fry, T. (2005). Its an evil thing to oblige people to vote. (cover story). Policy, 21(4), 10-16. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=19488230&site= ehost-live Elazar, D.J. (1999). Minnesota: The epitome of the moralistic political culture. In D.J. Elazar, V. Gray, & W. Span (Eds.), Minnesota Government and Politics (pp. 19-30). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Retrieved from: http://jcpa.org/dje/articles2/minn3.htm Engelen, B. (2009). Why liberals can favour compulsory attendance. Politics, 29(3), 218222. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2009.01358.x Evans, T. (2006). Compulsory voting in Australia. Retrieved from http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/publications/voting/index.htm Fischer, C. (2011). Compulsory voting and inclusion: A response to Saunders. Politics, 31(1), 37-41. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2010.01400.x Hill, L. (2006). Low voter turnout in the united states. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 18(2), 207-232. doi: 10.1177/0951629806061868 International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. (2010). Compulsory Voting. Retrieved from: http://www.idea.int/vt/compulsory_voting.cfm

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International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. (2010) Voter Turnout. Retrieved from: http://www.idea.int/vt/ Jensen, C. B., & Spoon, J. (2011). Compelled without direction: Compulsory voting and party system spreading. Electoral Studies, 30(4), 700-711. doi: 10.1016/j.electstud.2011.06.014 Loewen, P. J., Milner, H., & Hicks, B. M. (2008). Does compulsory voting lead to more informed and engaged citizens? an experimental test. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 41(3), 655-672. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=35112315&site =ehost-live Louth, J., & Hill, L. (November 2005). Compulsory voting in australia: Turnout with and without it. Australian Review of Public Affairs, 6(1), 25-37. Milazzo, C. (2009). Institutions and engagement: The impact of compulsory voting on political discussion in switzerland. Conference Papers -- Midwestern Political Science Association, 1. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.pearl.stkate.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=45 300741&site=ehost-live Minnesota Office of the Secretary of State. (2012). Voter Information. Retrieved from: http://www.sos.state.mn.us/index.aspx?page=134 Ohara, D., Israel, R., & Schweigert, F. (2009). Metropolitan State University Civic Confidence Survey Executive Summary. Retrieved from: http://www.metrostate.edu/msweb/explore/com/news/civicsurvey.html

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Wang, L.F. (2012, October 12). Photo ID shouldnt be required to vote. Minneapolis StarTribune. Retrieved from: http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/173790251.html Wilder Research (2012). Minnesota Compass Civic Engagement Overview. Retrieved from: http://www.mncompass.org/civicengagement/index.php