Compulsory vs. Voluntary Voting

Apropos of a recent post on Economist’s View, I was going to explain that voter turnout has nothing to do with the free rider problem and that basic economic logic suggests that smaller turnouts are better than larger ones, but Radek (a.k.a. YouNotSneaky!) beat me to it.

In the end, though, I think Radek is wrong, because we need some political logic to supplement the economic logic. To begin with, economic logic will indicate that voting is, for the individual, irrational, unless it is mandatory. Therefore (here’s the political part), under a voluntary voting regime, only irrational people will vote. Do we really want government by the irrational, for the irrational, and of the irrational?

This may sound like a bit of sophistry, but I really think it has some relevance to the real world. Generally, people with strong opinions – opinions that are strong enough to make people do something irrational – will vote (plus maybe a few people whose only strong opinion is about their own civic duty). Radek seems to think this is good, because the people with strong opinions will be better informed and will have thought more about the choices. I’m willing to concede that point in some contexts – in particular, when we’re operating, as it were, close to the center of the distribution of policy possibilities. But when we get into the tails of the distribution, things get weird. The people with really crazy opinions – that Aryans are a master race, that Muslims must conquer the world and establish a Caliphate with worldwide dominion, etc. – are the ones who can most be counted on to do irrational things, like voting, to further their cause. If you have 60% voter turnout, one group of crazies can take over by converting 31% of the population. That’s a difficult task, but history suggests it’s sometimes possible. If you have compulsory voting, the crazies have the significantly more difficult (but, again, history suggests, not impossible) task of converting 51% (well, OK, maybe 48%, since there won’t be perfect compliance) of the population. Under normal circumstances, compulsory voting isn’t going to have a dramatic effect on election outcomes, because, let’s face it, the candidates usually aren’t all that different in the grand scheme of things. But in the occasional weird case where the election really matters a whole hell of a lot, compulsory voting reduces the chance that dangerously insane people can take over the country. That might be worth all the extra shoe leather.

Mark Thoma has a different take. He does seem to think that 100% voter turnout would be a good thing, but he thinks that compulsory voting would be too much of an imposition on people’s liberty. But I have a suggestion: Start with a compulsory voting regime. Enforce it by using fines. Rename the fines, and call them taxes. In the case of people who do vote, rename the absence of a fine, and call it a tax with an offsetting transfer, actually not so much a transfer as a payment for the service of voting. So now we have a lump sum tax offset in most cases by a payment for a public service performed by the individual. The individual is free to pay the tax and not do the service, but presumably we set the payment high enough that only a few people will choose that option. Does Mark still object?


[Update: Thinking about my last paragraph, I realize it has an obvious implication about whose political interests are served by compulsory voting: the interests of those whose shadow price of time is low – which is to say, poorer people (and perhaps retirees). If your shadow price of time is high, the penalty for not voting will be outweighed by the value of your time, so the voting requirement won’t change your behavior. If your shadow price of time is low, the penalty will outweigh the value of your time, and you’ll definitely vote. So the voting requirement will shift election outcomes toward the side of the these low-shadow-price people – presumably people who can’t get well-paid employment on the margin, which is to say, typically, poor people. Voluntary voting, on the other hand, is, relatively speaking, good for the political interests of corporate lawyers and investment bankers.]