Compulsory Voting Research Articles

Do Citizens Have the Duty to Vote?

Do Citizens Have the Duty to Vote?

Macro-level analyses of voter behaviour

ABSTRACTOur understanding of culture and public policy can arguably become richer with additional research that makes use of behavioural perspectives and tools. In this manuscript, we provide an example of how behavioural assessments can be conducted at the meso-/macro-level for such analyses. In particular, we analyzed historical voting data with interrupted time series designs by using aggregated behaviour as the dependent measure. The first analysis used a multiple-baseline design and t-tests to evaluate compulsory voting laws on voter turnout, the second used scatterplots and regression analysis to evaluate the relation between registered voter density to polling stations and voter turnout, and the final used a repeated A-B design and t-tests to evaluate how party control duration influenced voting. We identified several factors that might prove influential over voter turnout. This research yields information related to electoral public policy and behavioural methodology for groups, and calls for more behaviour-analytic research and application in public policy and cultural design.

The Distinctive Value of Elections and the Case for Compulsory Voting

AbstractIn this article, I defend compulsory voting on the grounds that it reinforces the distinctive and valuable role that elections play in contemporary democracy. Some scholars have suggested that mandatory voting laws can improve government responsiveness to members of poor and marginalized groups who are less likely to vote. Critics of compulsory voting object that citizens can participate in a wide variety of ways; voting is not important enough to justify forcing people to do it. These critics neglect the importance of voting's particular role in contemporary democratic practice, though. The case for compulsory voting rests on an implicit, but widely shared, understanding of elections as special moments of mass participation that manifest the equal political authority of all citizens. The most prominent objections to mandatory voting fail to appreciate this distinctive role for voting and the way it is embedded within a broader democratic framework.

What Affects Invalid Voting? A Review and Meta-Analysis

Research on invalid voting has expanded rapidly over the past few years. This review article for the first time examines its principal findings and provides a new theoretical perspective on the origins of invalid votes based on a two-dimensional framework. The main results of 54 studies using both individual-level and aggregate-level data as well as the results of experimental and qualitative studies are analysed. The meta-analysis of all existing aggregate-level studies finds that compulsory voting, quality of democracy, fragmentation and closeness of the electoral race play important roles in explaining invalid voting. On the other hand, the research is accompanied by many theoretical and empirical contradictions that hamper the accumulation of knowledge in this field. We therefore conclude by suggesting the challenges for future research.

Compulsory voting and ethnic diversity increase invalid voting while corruption does not: an analysis of 417 parliamentary elections in 73 countries

ABSTRACTInvalid voting, meaning blank and spoiled ballots, is a regular phenomenon in democracies around the world. When its share is larger than the margin of victory or greater than the vote share of some of the large parties in the country, invalid voting becomes a problem for democratic legitimacy. This article investigates its determinants in 417 democratic parliamentary elections in 73 countries on five continents from 1970 to 2011. The analysis shows that enforced compulsory voting and ethnic fragmentation are strong predictors for invalid voting while corruption has less impact. Our findings suggest that the societal structure is crucial in understanding invalid voting as a problem for democratic legitimacy because greater social diversity seems to lead to either a greater rate of mistakes or lesser attachments of social groups to the democratic process. Thus, rising levels of invalid voting are not only concerning in themselves but also for the divisive factors driving them.

Compulsory Voting and Parties’ Vote‐Seeking Strategies

AbstractI advance a theory about how compulsory voting affects the behavior of political parties. The theory suggests that parties will pivot toward programmatic vote‐seeking strategies and away from clientelistic tactics, such as vote buying, where voting is compulsory. I test my expectations in three separate studies, using several data sources and empirical approaches. In Study 1, cross‐national analyses show that parties behave more programmatically under compulsory voting and that vote buying is less common where voting is mandatory. In Study 2, synthetic control and difference‐in‐differences analyses show that a switch to compulsory voting in Thailand produced an increase in programmatic vote seeking. In Study 3, a list experiment conducted in tandem with a natural experiment shows that compulsory voting leads parties to rely less on vote‐buying tactics in Argentina. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings, which together are broadly supportive of my theoretical expectations.

The Subversion of Shareholder Democracy and the Rise of Hedge-Fund Activism

This paper explains how hedge-fund activists are exerting power over corporate resource allocation far in excess of the actual voting power of their shareholdings. The power of these “minority-shareholding corporate raiders” derives from misguided regulatory “reforms” carried out in the 1980s and 1990s in the name of “shareholder democracy”. Sanctioned and overseen by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), these reforms include the introduction of compulsory voting by institutional investors and proxy-voting rule changes that greatly facilitated hedge-fund activists’ aggregation of the proxy votes of institutional investors. In addition, the introduction of the 1996 National Securities Markets Improvement Act (NSMIA) that allowed hedge funds to draw funds from institutional investors effectively with no limit also played an important role in the rise of hedge-fund activism. The paper concludes with policy proposals to rebalance value creation and value extraction by rebuilding the engagement and proxy voting system including (1) making it mandatory for shareholders to submit justifications in shareholder proposals on value creation or capital formation of corporations concerned; (2) removing voting as a fiduciary duty of institutional investors; (3) introducing differentiated voting rights that favor long-term shareholders; and (4) making it mandatory for both shareholders and management to reveal to the public what they discussed in engagement sessions.

El efecto de las generaciones políticas sobre la participación electoral. El caso de Chile, 1999-2013

Given the succession of democratic interruptions in Latin America in the decades of the 60s and 70s, and the end of authoritarian regimes in the 80s, the region is in a good laboratory to explore the effect of political generations on voter turnout. We show this effect in the context of compulsory voting and voluntary voting. By multivariate statistical analysis of pre-election polls from 1999 to 2013 in Chile, we conclude that, unlike Europe, Canada and United States generational effect on participation is reduced over the years. We note that compulsory voting age, political generation, ideological identification and even —in some cases— the socioeconomic status of respondents are robust predictors of participation. With voluntary voting, however, these predictors disappear, surviving only the effect of ideological identification and, very partially, age interacting with the political generation of respondents.

The extent and characteristics of driving anxiety

Research over the last two decades has resulted in improved understandings of the nature and characteristics of driving anxiety. However, we still do not know the extent of driving anxiety in the general population, as most studies have focused on clinical or vehicle accident samples, and the only population study is of older adults. The present study addressed this gap in knowledge using data from 441 people who responded to a survey sent to a random sample of 1500 adults recruited from the compulsory voting register in New Zealand. While 31% reported no driving anxiety, 52% endorsed mild driving anxiety and 16% reported moderate to severe driving anxiety. There were small but significant differences in the average age at which participants in these three groups started to learn to drive, but there were no differences in driving-related accidents and incidents over the past 12 months. Those with higher driving anxiety endorsed more anxiety about road rage, lower feelings of safety while driving, and more driving-related avoidance and negative cognitions than the less anxious participants. However, levels of helpseeking were low, and suggest the need to develop online self-help packages that are more accessible and acceptable to those experiencing driving anxiety.

The limits of the law, the socioeconomic bias in turnout, and the justification of compulsory voting

Since nonvoting is concentrated among badly off electors, the introduction of compulsory voting will raise electoral turnout among badly off electors more than among well off electors. Therefore, compulsory voting increases the political influence of the worst off. This well-founded empirical claim is central to the two most prominent arguments in favor of compulsory voting. According to both arguments, compulsory voting is justified because of the good consequences of increasing the political influence of badly off electors. It is, however, not possible to justify compelling well off electors to vote on the grounds that it is desirable to raise turnout among badly off electors. Therefore, both arguments fail.

Early voting in Australia: the costs and benefits of convenience

ABSTRACTPre-election day voting increases the opportunities for citizens to vote in an election. This paper asks who votes before election day in Australia and whether early voters and election day voters decide their vote differently. In Australia’s compulsory voting system early voting lowers the costs of voting for citizens who would otherwise be compelled to vote on a prescribed day. We may therefore expect that in a compulsory system, early voting has the effect of bringing forward some voter turnout, while aggregate turnout is unaffected. Using 2016 Australian Election Study data, we find that early voters do not appear to suffer time constraints distinguishing them from election day voters: they are no more likely to have caring responsibilities nor to work in time-inflexible occupations. Early voters tend to be older than election day voters, and are more likely to strongly dislike the leader of their non- preferred party. However, feelings towards the parties generally and the state of the economy are not related to early voting. This research suggests that of expanding the voting period in compulsory systems provides greater voter convenience but reduces the capacity of campaign promises and events to affect vote choice.

Subnational Patterns of Participation: Compulsory Voting and the Conditional Impact of Institutional Design

Cross-national studies of turnout find that compulsory voting has the strongest impact on participation, boosting turnout by 10 to 18 percent. We argue that in the absence of compulsory voting, other institutional factors such as small district size, strong electoral competition, and moderate candidate fragmentation may be similarly effective at mobilizing turnout. Where voting is mandatory, these factors should instead primarily influence how people vote once they are at the polls—diminishing levels of invalid voting, and consequently increasing effective turnout. We take advantage of the abolition of compulsory voting in Chile to test our expectations immediately before and after reform, in the exact same electoral districts. Using this unique subnational research design, we leverage data from more than 1,000 mayoral elections over the course of three electoral cycles and across 345 municipalities to examine patterns of turnout and invalid voting. Results show that small district size, strong electoral competition, and moderate candidate fragmentation are effective at reducing invalid voting when turnout is compulsory, and fostering higher levels of turnout when voting is voluntary.

Compulsory Voting Rules, Reluctant Voters and Ideological Proximity Voting

Political theorists have argued that democracies should strive for high turnout, leading to an argument for the introduction of compulsory voting, one of the surest ways to increase turnout. Others have warned that this obligation comes at a cost of lower quality votes. We investigate these claims by examining the impact of compulsory voting on proximity voting. First, we examine individuals’ voting behavior in three countries with strong compulsory voting laws: Australia, Belgium and Brazil. Election surveys in these countries include a hypothetical question about the likelihood of voting without legal obligation. We continue with an examination of the effects of compulsory voting in Switzerland, which varies across cantons. Our results support the ‘reluctant voter’ hypothesis: Compelling voters to vote tends to weaken the impact of proximity considerations on electoral behaviour, although this effect remains limited and is only significant in half of the elections that were investigated.

Compulsory voting and voter information seeking

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.

The Subversion of Shareholder Democracy and the Rise of Hedge-Fund Activism

This paper explains how hedge-fund activists are exerting power over corporate resource allocation far in excess of the actual voting power of their shareholdings. The power of these `minority-shareholding corporate raiders` derives from misguided regulatory `reforms` carried out in the 1980s and 1990s in the name of `shareholder democracy`. Sanctioned and overseen by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), these reforms include the introduction of compulsory voting by institutional investors and proxy-voting rule changes that greatly facilitated hedge-fund activists` aggregation of the proxy votes of institutional investors. In addition, the introduction of the 1996 National Securities Markets Improvement Act (NSMIA) that allowed hedge funds to draw funds from institutional investors effectively with no limit also played an important role in the rise of hedge-fund activism. The paper concludes with policy proposals to rebalance value creation and value extraction by rebuilding the engagement and proxy voting system including (1) making it mandatory for shareholders to submit justifications in shareholder proposals on value creation or capital formation of corporations concerned; (2) removing voting as a fiduciary duty of institutional investors; (3) introducing differentiated voting rights that favor long-term shareholders; and (4) making it mandatory for both shareholders and management to reveal to the public what they discussed in engagement sessions.

Forced to vote, but not for women. The effect of compulsory voting on voting for women

Compulsory voting is an underexposed factor of the electoral system that possibly influences women’s descriptive representation. Studlar and McAllister (Eur J Polit Res 41(2):233–253, 2002) found a negative effect, but no theoretical explanations were given. We develop two possible explanations: voters who only vote because they have to are less politically sophisticated, and therefore vote less sophisticatedly, and/or they have different attitudes about women in political life. From our study, we are able to detect a gendered effect of compulsory voting in Belgium’s flexible-list PR system, but only the vote sophistication explanation is confirmed. Voters who would no longer vote without compulsory voting significantly vote more for top candidates (mostly men) and give significantly less preference votes for candidates lower down the list. This points us to the complexity of the ballot structure as an important new dimension that could help explain gendered voting effects of compulsory voting systems. Finally, since different effects for formal and descriptive representation appear, we posit that compulsory voting constitutes a dilemma for women activists.

Decision-making and satisfaction in campus e-voting: moderating effect of trust in the system

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants that influence students’ decision-making and satisfaction in campus e-voting, and to investigate the moderating effect on students’ decision-making and satisfaction in campus e-voting between students with different levels of trust in the system.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a quantitative method and applied the use of self-administered questionnaires among university students who have at least experienced once in casting votes electronically in the past year during the campus e-voting period. The data were analysed using partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.FindingsThe PLS-SEM approach revealed that voters’ commitment to vote was the strongest determinant of students’ decision-making and satisfaction in campus e-voting. Voters’ high satisfaction with campus e-voting was based on the commitment and requirement of students of the university to vote. Compulsory voting was not a hassle for them in order to achieve campus development and sustainability. A moderation analysis revealed that the relative influence of commitment to vote on students’ satisfaction in campus e-voting was higher in the group with medium level of trust than among the group with high level of trust.Practical implicationsThe election commission of the university and the university management should increase students’ turnout and commitment to vote during campus e-voting by outlining effective marketing strategies, campaigns and promotions across a number of digital platforms, including mobile SNS. They need to ensure that voters can sense their involvement is warranted and will continue to vote electronically in the next campus election.Originality/valueThe research yielded an exclusive perspective into students’ decision-making and satisfaction in campus e-voting. It also uncovered the influence of moderating effect of trust in the system in developing countries which is marginally concealed in the literature. The measurements produced can be used as a research tool for more exploratory and explanatory research related to political marketing among young adult voters.

Compulsory Voting and TV News Consumption

Abstract Do people acquire more information when they are encouraged to participate in elections? This paper presents empirical evidence on the effects of compulsory voting laws on the consumption of TV news. In Brazil, literate citizens over the age of eighteen are subject to a number of legal penalties if they fail to turn out on election day. This allows us to identify the causal effect of being under a compulsory voting regime on information acquisition. We find that compulsory voting has a significant and substantial positive impact on the probability of an individual to watch Brazil's main TV newscast. Additionally, the effect is stronger for individuals with neutral evaluations of the incumbent president. Our regression discontinuity results are restricted to young voters who just turned eighteen and are robust to different polynomials and bandwidth lengths.

The case for nil votes: Voter behavior under asymmetric information in compulsory and voluntary voting systems

In an informational voting environment, we study the impact of an explicit nil vote option on the ballot when some voters are uninformed and face the swing voters curse. We postulate a simple model of strategic voting in which voters entertain heterogeneous thresholds on legitimacy of different voting actions. We predict that introducing a nil vote option reduces the number of uninformed and invalid votes, increasing expected welfare in both voluntary and compulsory voting. We test our model in a pen-and-paper laboratory experiment, and find that the predictions of the model hold in the data, for both voting systems.

The Constitutional and Regulatory Dimensions of Plebiscites in Australia

In September 2016, the Federal Government introduced legislation to enable a plebiscite on same-sex marriage to be held in February 2017. It was subsequently voted down in the Senate and it is now unlikely that a vote will be held. Nonetheless, the debate surrounding the proposed poll placed a spotlight on the use of the plebiscite as a democratic device. One topic that warrants more attention is the constitutional and regulatory framework within which plebiscites operate. The Constitution does not contemplate plebiscites, and they are an unfamiliar presence in a parliamentary democracy that entrusts almost all law-making and policy decisions to elected representatives. There is, moreover, no standing legislation on how federal plebiscites should be run. This article examines how the ill-defined constitutional and legal status of plebiscites affects how they are initiated and conducted. It considers these issues in a general sense, but also analyses how they arose with respect to the proposed vote on same-sex marriage. It argues that the absence of express constitutional authority and established rules of practice means that federal governments face choices, and considerable uncertainty, about the most basic matters, including: the constitutional foundation of the vote; the use of compulsory voting; the consequences of a plebiscite if it is carried; the drafting of the question; the breadth of the franchise; the method of conducting the vote; and the rules around campaign information, funding and expenditure. The article suggests that long-term measures, such as standing legislation, should be considered, but that this should be preceded by a broader debate about the appropriate use of plebiscites within Australia’s constitutional arrangements.