Isolating the effect of compulsory voting laws on political sophistication: Leveraging intra-national variation in mandatory voting laws between the Austrian Provinces

2021 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 102265
Author(s):  
Victoria Shineman
Keyword(s):  
Political Sophistication ◽  
Compulsory Voting ◽  
Mandatory Voting ◽  
Voting Laws

The Consequences of Compulsory Voting

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Shane P. Singh
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
Voter Participation ◽  
Compulsory Voting ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mandatory Voting ◽  
Voting Laws

This chapter reviews the growing literature on compulsory voting’s consequences. Compulsory voting has an unsurprising upward impact on voter participation, which lessens the impact of many socioeconomic and demographic forerunners of turnout, thereby making the composition of the voting population better reflect the distribution of eligible voters. Further, invalid balloting tends to be more common under compulsory voting. Compelled voters are also less likely to cast ballots that correspond with their preferences. Many studies indicate that mandatory voting has an educative effect and can socialize people into political engagement, with others casting strong doubt on this possibility. A small number of studies have assessed whether compulsory voting shapes attitudes, election outcomes, the behavior of political parties, policy characteristics, and income growth and inequality, with few clear patterns yet established. Compulsory voting laws have the greatest impact where sanctions for abstention are enforced and meaningful.

The Effects of Compulsory Voting on Individuals

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-132
Author(s):  
Shane P. Singh
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Multilevel Models ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Compulsory Voting ◽  
The Comparative Study

This chapter empirically tests the expectation that compulsory voting moderates the effects of orientations toward democracy on political attitudes, behavior, and sophistication. It first employs cross-national survey data from the AmericasBarometer and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems to estimate multilevel models. It also uses cross-cantonal data from the Swiss Election Study, and novel survey data from Argentina collected for this book. The analyses of the Swiss and Argentine data leverage age-based thresholds in the application of compulsory voting with discontinuity models. Results suggest that, in line with the predictions of the theory advanced in Chapter 3, compulsory voting polarizes behavior and attitudes, and broadens gaps in political sophistication levels, among those with negative and positive orientations toward democracy.

scholarly journals Compulsory voting and voter information seeking

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316801775199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane P. Singh ◽  
Jason Roy
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Independent Effect ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
Compulsory Voting ◽  
Voter Information ◽  
Information Searches

Compulsory voting is known to produce a relatively weak match between voters’ ballot choices and their preferences. We theorize that this link, in part, exists because compelled voters are relatively unlikely to seek out political information during an election campaign, even after differences in political sophistication across compelled and voluntary voters are taken into account. To test our expectations, we use a simulation of an Australian election, through which we track participants’ information searches. Our findings show that those who do not turn out voluntarily under Australia’s compulsory voting law tend to spend less time seeking out political information, and they engage with less information. While differences in political sophistication between those who feel compelled to vote and those who do not account for a portion of this pattern, feeling compelled also has an independent effect on information seeking. This suggests that the negative relationship between compulsory voting and the “quality” of votes is partly due to the fact that those who are compelled to turn out expend less effort when deciding how to cast their ballots.

scholarly journals Mandatory Voting: The Wrong Response to Low Voter Turnout

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-26
Author(s):  
Jared Burton
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Wrong Response ◽  
Compulsory Voting ◽  
Voting Age ◽  
Registered Voter ◽  
Do So ◽  
Mandatory Voting

The trend of declining voter turnout across the western world has led some in Canada to call for mandatory voting. Australia is often cited as a successful example of compulsory voting in a Westminster system. While the aim to increase voter turnout is noble, there are many non-coercive methods of improving democracy and voter turnout that Canada ought to adapt before resorting to mandatory voting. Assessed methods include electoral reform, lowering the voting age, and instituting online voting; all are non-coercive ways to improve public satisfaction with the political process in Canada. Additionally, mandatory voting reduces Canadians’ ability to abstain from participating in the political system should they choose to do so which could have important philosophical implications. Furthermore,voter turnout data for Australia does not take into account important differences between registered voter turnout and voting age population turnout. Importantly, when analyzed these numbers indicate that compulsory voting in Australia is not as successful as many believe. Despite its ostensible attraction as a clear way to increase voter turnout, a legal requirement to vote is not a panacea to the issues of political distrust, dissatisfaction, and disengagement in Canada that are the root causes of low voter turnout.

Beyond Turnout

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane P. Singh
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
National Data ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Compulsory Voting ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cross National

Compulsory voting is widely used in the democratic world, and it is well established that it increases electoral participation. This book assesses the effects of compulsory voting beyond turnout. The author first summarizes the normative arguments for and against compulsory voting, provides information on its contemporary use, reviews recent events pertaining to its (proposed) adoption and abolition, and provides an extensive account of extant research on its consequences. The author then advances a theory that compulsory voting polarizes behavior and attitudes, and broadens gaps in political sophistication levels, among those with negative and positive orientations toward democracy. Recognizing the impact of mandatory voting on the electorate, political parties then alter the ways in which they seek votes, with mainstream parties moderating their platforms and smaller parties taking more extreme positions. The author uses survey data from countries with compulsory voting to show that support for the requirement to vote is driven by individuals’ orientations toward democracy. The theory is then comprehensively tested using: cross-national data, cross-cantonal data from Switzerland, and survey data from Argentina. Empirical results are largely indicative of the theorized process whereby compulsory voting has divergent effects on citizens and political parties. The book concludes with a discussion of future directions for academic research, implications for those who craft electoral policy, and alternative ways of boosting turnout.

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