Abstract
Scholars who study compulsory voting realize their research in countries where compulsory voting already exists. On the contrary, there are not many studies that deal with ex ante analyses of the economic and political consequences of voter behavior caused by a new element in public elections—compulsory voting. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to find out what voters’ reactions will cause when compulsory voting is introduced in the Czech Republic. This paper has the ambition to contribute to the understanding of the economic and political context of sanctions for non-voters. The analysis of non-voters’ willingness to change their behavior due to the fine and the determination of the amount of this fine in the Czech Republic are the practical benefits of this study. In this way, we determine the “abstention price” of a vote. The input data of the analysis are data obtained by a questionnaire survey conducted in the Czech Republic in 2020; the target group is 807 respondents. The basic statistical operations, and binary and multinomial logistic regressions were employed in this study. The results of the research show that compulsory voting has only a minimal effect on the turnout. The introduction of compulsory voting changes the characteristics of the typical voter. Voters with lower political interest and political knowledge will take part in the elections more often. The fine that non-voters would be willing to pay is approx. 6% of their average monthly income.
Highlights
According to Downs (1957), political markets can be compared to economic markets in certain contexts
The results show that the introduction of compulsory voting will not have a significant mobilizing effect in the Czech Republic (Halaskova and Halaskova 2020)
The issue of compulsory voting in public elections is not one of those most frequently realized by research teams
Summary
According to Downs (1957), political markets can be compared to economic markets in certain contexts. One of the areas in which similarity can be found is the voter/consumer’s decision-making process. The voter, like the consumer in the economic market, compares marginal benefits with marginal costs to realize a positive net benefit. The benefits realized by the choice must outweigh the costs of the choice The willingness to make decisions (choose/consume) depends on many factors and determinants, such as the availability of information, available resources, time, knowledge, etc. The question remains whether these costs can be quantified and, if so, where there is a threshold at which the costs are already so high that the voter chooses not to vote
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