If Obama Got His Wish, America Would Be Like These Hellholes Where Voting Is Mandatory

On Wednesday, at a town hall in Cleveland, President Obama very gently floated the idea of making voting compulsory in the United States. "Other countries have mandatory voting," he said in response to a question about money's influence in politics. "It would be transformative if everybody voted—that would counteract money more than anything," he added.

And, as you might expect, conservatives spent the next day attacking him for it. The right wing blogosphere certainly exceeded its yearly allotment of scare quotes in headlines. All my favorite Twitter conservatives had a field day.

Hey, Obama, in addition to mandatory VOTING, how about you propose mandatory WORKING? — Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza)March 19, 2015

Even the Obama administration backed down from the president's comment, clarifying that it wasn't a policy proposal, just something he kinda liked. But was the backpedaling necessary? Most of the criticisms seemed to lack any data to back them up.

This may sound dumb to anyone who loves freedom, but 11 countries enforce mandatory voting laws, or 13, depending on how you count it. I'm excluding Switzerland because it's not mandatory in the whole country, and North Korea, because the status of democracy there is, let's say, shaky. Another 11 have laws that aren't enforced, so for the time being, let's focus on 11 dystopias where mandatory voting is enforced: Australia, Argentina,Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, Peru, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Cyprus,Singapore,and the tiny island nation of Nauru.

Each of these voting laws went into effect in the early-to-mid 20th century, so looking at how these countries have done since then should give us a snapshot of whether forcing people to vote actually makes shit better.

Voter Turnout:
The obvious thing that happens when you make not voting illegal is that more people show up to pull the levers. This works to varying degrees. In the US—where the punishment for not voting is not getting a sticker—the voter turnout is usually around 60 percent in general elections. In countries where the punishments for not voting include fines, permanent disenfranchisement, and difficulty getting a government job, voter turnout can shoot up to 97 percent.

To be fair, that 97 percent is in Nauru, where the population is only 9,322. (Many of the countries that require voting are also among the world's tiniest). Across the 11 countries, though, voter turnout hovers around 80 percent. In Singapore, where about 95 percent of the population votes, the high turnout is no surprise; The city-state has a baffling form of government, mixing democracy and mild totalitarianism, which is obviously the worst-case scenario envisioned by Obama's libertarian-leaning critics. Brazil, much less of a nanny state, has less impressive turnout rate, about 78 percent in the last election.

But all in all, more people vote when it's the law. Which is, of course, the point.

Development:
In terms of human development—a measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and living standards—countries with mandatory voting aren't doing too bad. All of them rank "high" to "very high" in the United Nation's Human Development Report, with the exception of Nauru. Formerly the richest country in the world per capita, Nauru now has epidemic obesity and poverty, due largely to the crash of the island's single-resource economy at the end of the last century, which most likely had nothing to do with too much voting, but who knows?

Australia, on the other hand, ranks No. 2 in the world for human development, behind Norway (which does not have compulsory voting). Singapore, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein are also ranked in the top 25. The US comes in at No. 5 on the list.

Even Peru and Brazil are doing reasonably well, despite struggles among the poor and indigenous populations in those countries. Sure, things aren't great in Brazil, and the economy is suffering, but human development is improving, thanks to increased life expectancy, and a steep decline in extreme poverty in the last two decades. In Peru, urban prosperity has historically contrasted with harsh living conditions for those living in rural and indigenous communities, but those groups have seen rapid improvement there as well.

Corruption:
A lack of corruption in countries where voting is mandatory would be a powerful argument for adopting such a policy. An organization called Transparency International keeps tabs on the perception of corruption in 175 countries, and ranks them accordingly, from best to worst. Among the countries with mandatory voting, Australia is the highest-ranked, coming in at No. 11.

Brazil once again works as a handy counterexample, though. The country has long been rife with corruption, and its president is currently embroiled in a bribery scandal. Argentina has an even worse corruption rating—107th out 175—and seems to be constantly caught up in political scandal. The trends aren't clear, but while mandatory voting may be able to "counteract money" in campaigns, as Obama suggested, that money may find its way into politics through other, more illicit channels.

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In a 2013 study of elections in Australia, Anthony Fowler of the government department at Harvard University observed an advantage for leftist parties in elections with mandatory voting. He found that "the policy increased voter turnout by 24 percentage points which in turn increased the vote shares and seat shares of the Labor Party by 7–10 percentage points." And not to state the obvious, but Obama is in a leftist party, and his critics are probably aware that the one measurable effect mandatory voting would likely have is that more Democrats would get elected.

But it almost certainly wouldn't be the salvation, nor the destruction of America.

Still there's a First Amendment point to be made: What separates the US from most of these countries is a constitution that guarantees a right to free speech. The contingent of, proud, thinkpiece-writing American non-voters deserves at least a little consideration. Your ability to "express yourself" by not voting—not just submitting an empty ballot, damn it—might not be a form of free expression many romanticize, but it's arguably just another weird part of the American experiment, and a freedom these other countries lack.

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