engleski

Compulsory Voting

The right to vote (the right of rights, the bedrock of democracy) is a result of a long struggle for equal participation in making political decisions that culminated in the 20th century (right to vote for women, for those who did not have that right due to their race, for people with mental impairment etc.). Nevertheless, nowadays many modern democracies face a low voter turnout. This fact questions the principle of political equality. Empirical studies have revealed that low voter turnout leads to unequal representation of different social-economic groups. Educated people and those with higher incomes vote more often and therefore political parties adjust their programs and politics to them. In that way active voters with relatively homogenous characteristics have disproportional effect on shaping of state politics. There are different means available to states in order to initiate voter turnout and thus gain better representativity. One of the most disputable means, despite the fact that its efficiency has been proven in many empirical studies, is implementation of compulsory voting. The reason why many states with low voter turnout do not take the implementation of this effective mean into consideration lies in liberal vision of what the right to vote actually stands for, i.e. in protection of autonomy and freedom of choice of citizens. This paper aims to examine the right to vote and to answer the following: does the right to vote include obstacles for introducing compulsory voting, i.e. does the right to vote necessarily entail the right not to vote.

the right to vote, the principle of political equality, compulsory voting, negative liberty, the free rider problem

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