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POLITICS: 2009 VOL 29(3), 218–222
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Controversy
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Why Liberals Can Favour Compulsory
Attendance
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Bart Engelen
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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
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It has been argued that compulsory voting conflicts with a number of liberal commitments, such as
free thought, free speech and privacy. This article aims to show that compulsory voting, which is
actually a misnomer for compulsory attendance, can in fact be defended on a liberal basis. If
understood correctly, compulsory attendance laws and liberalism fit quite easily together.
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Annabelle Lever (2008) argues that any defence of compulsory voting on a liberal
basis, like that of Justine Lacroix (2007), cannot be maintained. In Lever’s view,
compulsory voting conflicts with a number of liberal commitments, such as free
thought, free speech and privacy. Forcing citizens to express what they think
violates their right to think and talk freely for themselves. In a liberal society, the
right to remain silent is a crucial one, not only when one is being interrogated by
the police but also when one’s political views are asked. At democratic elections,
this right – which is protected by the Fifth Amendment to the United States
Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights – boils down to the
right not to vote, which is violated if voting is made compulsory.
I want to argue that this line of reasoning is false, because it is based on a number
of misconceptions about both compulsory voting and liberalism. I will not question
the right to privacy, freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Neither will I
undermine the right to remain silent. As a liberal, I value these rights very highly
indeed. Instead, I will show that they are not being violated in the countries where
compulsory voting laws are in place. In order to argue that Lever’s criticism of such
laws is misguided, I need to make sure that these laws are understood correctly.
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Compulsory attendance
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A number of simple institutional measures can ensure that no citizen is ever obliged
by the state to express his or her political views, even in countries with compulsory
voting laws. In my view, these are required conditions that have to be fulfilled
before a country can legitimately implement such laws. They guarantee that each
and every citizen is allowed to think for him/herself, to speak for him/herself and,
if he or she wishes, to remain silent.
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First, there is the secrecy of the ballot. As a matter of fact, ‘compulsory voting’ is a
misnomer. What is made compulsory is not voting, but attendance at the polling
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station. All a citizen has to do to comply is register his or her presence. The state has
no control whatsoever over his or her choice inside the voting booth. As long as the
ballot is secret, voting simply cannot be made compulsory. In this sense, it would be
more accurate to speak of ‘compulsory attendance’ or ‘compulsory turnout’. As
Arendt Lijphart (1998, p. 10) – perhaps the best-known proponent of compulsory
attendance – rightly argues, ‘the secret ballot guarantees that the right not to vote
remains intact’. If a state not only obliges its citizens to show up at elections but also
publicly to express their vote, totalitarianism is lurking. However, in each of the
countries that implement such laws,1 the ballot’s secrecy is guaranteed.
Second, a blank option can and should be provided on the ballot. This way, voters
can refrain from choosing from any of the available parties and candidates. As
Lacroix (2007, p. 193) argues, people’s freedom of thought cannot be violated if
they have the option of casting such a blank vote. In my view, an additional ‘none
of the above’ option should be added, since this allows one to distinguish between
purely apathetic and apolitical voters on the one hand (blank) and anti-political
protest voters on the other hand (none of the above).
Third, one should refrain from sanctioning against abstainers too heavily. In fact,
most countries only impose small sanctions. In Australia and Belgium, for example,
which are known for their ‘strict’ enforcement, there is no systematic prosecution
of abstainers. What happens is that some of the abstainers receive a so-called ‘please
explain’ letter in which they are asked to fill in the reason for their abstention.
Those who fail to give a legitimate reason – like a stay abroad, illness or a more
principled objection – risk a fine of €25–50. While Lever (2008, p. 64) wants to
associate compulsory attendance with a totalitarian regime in which ‘otherwise
law-abiding citizens may be sent to prison for the failure to pay fines for not voting’,
it is safe to say that this is a vast exaggeration.2
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It is interesting to see that people who object on principle to participating in
elections are exempted from fines. These so-called ‘conscientious objectors’ fundamentally disagree with the system or regime as a whole. They refuse to vote not
because it is inconvenient or boring but because of politically principled reasons. I
certainly support the practice of exempting from fines citizens who provide plausible reasons why voting is against their conscience. In fact, I agree with Lever
(2008, p. 64) that both religious and secular reasons can be valid. In my view,
counting them as legitimate excuses in the ‘please explain’ letter effectively respects
people’s freedom of thought and speech.
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It may seem strange to defend compulsory attendance laws while stressing that
their enforcement should not be strict. Nevertheless, empirical research shows that
compulsory attendance laws, even when not actively enforced by means of harsh
penalties, engender compliance. Turnout in countries with no enforcement is about
6 per cent higher than in countries with no compulsory voting (IDEA, 2002, p.
110). Here, formal laws are mainly a symbolic reminder that going out to vote is
desirable. As such, they uphold the social norm and civic sense of duty to vote,
which suggests that ‘compulsory voting is a cultural rather than legal phenomenon’
(Hill, 2002, p. 95). In short, ‘compulsory voting can ... be very effective in raising
turnout – in spite of low penalties that are imposed for failing to vote (usually
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BART ENGELEN
similar to a parking violation), in spite of the lax enforcement (usually much less
stringent than the enforcement of parking rules are enforced), and in spite of the
secret ballot, which means that an actual vote cannot be compelled in the first
place’ (Lijphart, 1998, p. 2).
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Liberalism
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According to Lever (2008, p. 62), no general duty to vote can exist for those who
want to hold on to the liberal ‘commitment to respect people’s conscientious
convictions’. I believe to have shown above that compulsory attendance can and
in fact does respect people’s deepest convictions. I thus believe Lever’s criticism to
be based on a misconception of the actual practice of compulsory attendance.3 In
addition, however, I want to argue that her understanding of liberalism is problematic as well. According to Lever, liberals cannot support compulsory voting
because it promotes a view of what the good life consists of, namely a life of
active political engagement. Liberals should design electoral systems in such a
way that they respect reasonable disagreement among citizens on the value of
political participation. However, liberals in favour of compulsory attendance do
not refer to some comprehensive doctrine, according to which political participation is part of the good life and should therefore be made mandatory by law.
Instead, all they claim is that voting is a civic duty that can be legally formalised
in order to avoid free-riding problems. Precisely as a liberal state has the legitimate power to make its citizens pay taxes and serve in juries, it can stimulate its
citizens to vote in democratic elections. Since it does not impose a specific conception of the good life that is not shared by all reasonable citizens, this is perfectly consistent with the liberal aim to design rules that enable members of a
society to live together in mutual respect for each other as free and equal human
beings.
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The issue at stake here is, of course, what a liberal state can legitimately enforce
upon its citizens. Since reasons of space prohibit a detailed discussion of this
important issue, I only want to show that Lever in fact comes closer to what is called
‘libertarianism’ than ‘liberalism’. In her view, compulsory attendance is illegitimate
and undemocratic in principle, because it infringes on individual citizens’ fundamental liberties, full stop. This view is highly problematic, since it entails that no
‘liberal’ democracy can legitimately compel its citizens to do something that not all
of them would choose to do voluntarily. Lever thus seems to interpret the basic
liberal values of freedom of thought and privacy too broadly and to attach too much
weight to them.
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Conclusion
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To conclude, I believe that Lever’s ‘liberal’ criticism of ‘compulsory voting’ is
misguided in two ways. First, if understood correctly, ‘compulsory voting’ – or
better, compulsory attendance – does not violate anyone’s privacy, freedom of
thought or freedom of speech. Second, the underlying ‘liberal’ idea that every
citizen should be guaranteed an absolute freedom of choice – including the choice
not to choose – is problematic, because it thinks of any government intervention
as an illegitimate demand on its citizens. Lever’s own juxtaposition of liberalism
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and democracy (Lever, 2008, p. 63) is paradigmatic in this respect. It inhibits her
from seeing that both the liberties of the moderns, such as freedom of thought
and speech, and the liberties of the ancients, such as political participation, are
essentially interwoven (Habermas, 1995, pp. 127–129). Both liberalism and
democracy are ultimately grounded on and co-originate from the fundamental
principle of mutual respect for each person as a free and equal human being.
Without individual rights and liberties, democracies continuously face the threat
of totalitarianism. However, without popular sovereignty – guaranteed by a
democracy in which people participate in the decisions that will bind them –
individual rights and liberties remain purely formal and empty. The basic insight
that both elements are based on the same principle of moral and political
autonomy is shared by Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Rawls and Habermas. Lacroix
(2007, p. 193) rightly stresses that political participation is crucial for any sensible
liberal project that aims to strive for liberty as autonomy, which ‘does not mean
the absence of law but rather the respect of the laws that men have made and
accepted for themselves’. Instead of exclusively focusing on the liberties of the
moderns, like Lever does, I thus want to join Lacroix in stressing the liberties of
the ancients and the importance of effective political participation in any liberal
democracy that values self-determination. In this respect, I believe compulsory
attendance should be conceived of as enhancing rather than violating the basic
liberal value of autonomy.
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Author contact details
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Bart Engelen, Centre for Economics and Ethics, Naamsestraat 69-3000 Leuven, Belgium. E-mail:
[email protected].
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Notes
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1 There is a broad consensus that the following countries currently have some kind of compulsory
attendance laws: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Dominican
Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Fiji, Greece, Honduras, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mexico, Nauru,
Paraguay, Peru, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay.
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2 For an overview of the sanctions that can be imposed, see Gratschew (2001). In the above-mentioned
countries, there are no documented cases in which citizens are imprisoned for not voting. Courts may
impose a prison sentence (in exceptional cases) if an abstainer refuses several times to pay the required
fine. As Gratschew (2001) rightly stresses, however, ‘this is usually classified as imprisonment for
failure to pay the fine, not imprisonment for failure to vote’.
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3 Lever (2008, p. 64) at one point argues that people’s freedom of conscience is still violated even if they
are allowed to vote blank and even if conscientious objectors do not have sanctions imposed. I quite
simply fail to see what this might mean.
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References
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Gratschew, M. (2001), ‘Compulsory Voting’, available at: http://www.idea.int/vt/compulsory_voting.cfm,
accessed 9 January 2009.
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Habermas, J. (1995), ‘Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’s Political
Liberalism’, The Journal of Philosophy 92(3), pp. 109–131.
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Hill, L. (2002), ‘On the Reasonableness of Compelling Citizens to “Vote”: The Australian Case’, Political
Studies 50(1), pp. 80–101.
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IDEA (2002), ‘Voter Turnout since 1945: A Global Report’, available at: http://www.idea.int/publications/
vt/upload/VT_screenopt_2002.pdf, accessed 9 January 2009.
© 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © 2009 Political Studies Association
POLITICS: 2009 VOL 29(3)
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BART ENGELEN
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Lacroix, J. (2007), ‘A Liberal Defence of Compulsory Voting’, Politics 27(3), pp. 190–195.
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Lever, A. (2008), ‘ “A Liberal Defence of Compulsory Voting”: Some Reasons for Scepticism’, Politics 28(1),
pp. 61–64.
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Lijphart, A. (1998), ‘The Problem of Low and Unequal Voter Turnout – and What We Can Do about It’,
Political Science Series 54, pp. 1–13.
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