If democracy dies in this country, it can be blamed on people who did not bother to vote last November.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump fought tooth and nail over almost everything. But, in the run-up to the November election, both urged Americans to vote like never before, saying over and over again that “This will be the most important election in the history of our country.”
Yet, despite the stakes of the 2024 election, millions of Americans sat out the election and did not vote. There were about 90 million of them, a number that dwarfs the 77 million people who voted for Donald Trump. Now, with less than a month to go before Trump returns to the Oval Office, progressive commentators have kept up a steady drumbeat of warnings that we are facing a threat to democracy unlike any in American history.
Compulsory voting is not unknown in this country.
The United States can respond to looming threats to democracy by tackling the non-voting problem directly. That means making voting mandatory. Only by doing so do we have any chance to make the political system more democratic and more representative, and thus more resilient.
Before saying more about the virtues of mandatory voting, I should note that by historical standards, turnout in the last three presidential elections was quite good. In 2016, sixty percent of those eligible to vote did so. In 2020, that number was 66 percent, the highest since 1904. 2024 saw a slight decline, with 64 percent of eligible voters turning out for the election. Still, the 36 percent of eligible voters who didn’t cast a ballot in 2024 is a serious problem in a country where democracy is threatened. And, as the New York Times’ Marcela Valdes explains, “Elections, historically, are decided not only by those who cast votes but also by those who don’t.”
This was as true in 2024 as it has been in the past. Another Times reporter, Michael Bender argues, “Mr. Trump won the White House not only because he turned out his supporters and persuaded skeptics, but also because many Democrats sat this election out, presumably turned off by both candidates.”
“The drop-off,” Bender continues, “spanned demographics and economics. It was clear in counties with the highest job growth rates, counties with the most job losses and counties with the highest percentage of college-educated voters. Turnout was down, too, across groups that are traditionally strong for Democrats — including areas with large numbers of Black Christians and Jewish voters.”
These findings should be a cautionary tale for those who see the Trump victory as the dawn of a new era in American politics. Whether it is or not may depend on if the pattern of non-voting that we saw this year continues in future elections.
Those who did not vote in 2024 were younger than those who voted. The Pew Research Center observes that they also were “more racially and ethnically diverse,…less affluent and less educated ” than those who voted.
Pew notes many reasons eligible voters did not vote in 2024. 35% believed that “their vote would not make a difference.” 31% said they did not vote because they generally do not like politics. Another 17% said they did not vote because they “did not care about the outcome.”
The rest of the non-voters didn’t turn out because they were not registered or voting was inconvenient. 8% said “they forgot to vote.”
Part of the problem of non-voting can be attributed to the fact that “Our system doesn’t make it particularly easy to vote.” Overcoming barriers to voting requires “a sense of motivation that’s hard for some Americans to muster every two or four years — enthusiasm about the candidates, belief in the importance of voting itself, a sense that anything can change as the result of a single vote.”
Those who study American politics have been trying for a very long time to figure out the non-voting problem and how to motivate non-voters to show up. In 1956, Williams College Professor Philip K. Hastings argued that not voting was part of a syndrome of general disengagement from civic and social life. “The non-voters,” Hastings observed, “took part minimally in organized activities and exposed themselves relatively in the mass media. Their political information was comparatively meager, and their attitudes uncrystallized. Non-voters identified themselves more closely with non-political leaders and were generally more isolated and immobile.”
And when, more than forty years later, Harvard’s Robert Putnam wrote the now classic book Bowling Alone, he also saw non-voting as part of a broad pattern of social disengagement.
However, nonvoters aren’t entirely oblivious to the political world. Studies show that around 75 percent of nonvoters pay at least some attention to politics.
Rusk and Ragsdale suggest, "’American nonvoters are not neutral bystanders.’ They’re more like spectators who keep one eye on the score but choose not to join the game.” Drawing them into the game would be good for them and for democracy.
As Valdes puts it, “Casting votes regularly makes you a part of the American system, so you’re not as drawn to ideas on the margins, like socialist or authoritarian appeals.” This is especially important for the millions of young people who don’t vote.
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Political parties, candidates, and civic organizations have put enormous effort into trying to turn non-voters into voters, with mixed success. That was as true in 2024 as in any other year.
Still, the non-voting problem persists. That is why it is time to turn to compulsory voting.
Twenty-six other countries make voting compulsory. It works.
Australia has had it for almost one hundred years. As former Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapaport and historian Alex Keyssar explain, “In Australia, all registered citizens must vote, and almost everyone is registered; the enforcement mechanism is a fine of about $15, and people can cast blank or “none of the above” ballots to express their indifference to the offered slate of candidates. The result has been turnout of about 90 percent in every Australian election since 1924.”
This country has never achieved that level of participation in any presidential election. The high-water mark was 82 percent in 1876.
Moreover, compulsory voting is not unknown in this country. In the early eighteenth century, Georgia and Virginia used fines to penalize people for not voting. Later, “North Dakota (1898) and Massachusetts (1918) amended their constitutions to allow for compulsory voting, but these states never enacted statutes to implement it.” The Massachusetts Constitution still grants the state legislature the authority to do so.
Our federal system means that states like Massachusetts and North Dakota could lead the way in instituting such systems, and other states could learn from what they do. They should do so because, as Arend Lijphart puts it, “Mandatory voting is a moral issue.”
In addition, wherever it is tried, we can expect compulsory voting to achieve at least two things. First, it will help “equalize voting rates by bringing less participatory groups—typically the socioeconomically disadvantaged—to the polls.” Second, it would send a powerful signal that “voting is desirable” and that citizen participation matters.
As we contemplate the start of Trump’s second term, sending that signal is more important than it has ever been.
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