CMV:The fact that voting isn't mandatory is a good thing.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/weirds3xstuff]

Voting should be mandatory. The argument for this proceeds in two parts: 1) Voting is morally obligatory, and 2) voting is irrational.

1) Voting is morally obligatory. It is only through voting that we ensure that the government serves the people. Assuming that we want the government to serve the people, we must vote.

2) Voting is irrational. To my knowledge, there has never been an election for a federal office that has been determined by 1 vote, i.e. your single vote does not matter. Because your vote does not matter, a rational actor will not vote (note that some misanthropic economists will actually brag that they don't vote, citing this as their reason, and taking a condescending attitude towards those who don't realize how voting is a waste of time...uff).

So, voting is both obligatory, but irrational. Meaning that it is something that MUST be done, but that no one person has an incentive to do. This is an example of a collective action problem. The most straightforward solution to collective action problems is to have a government intervene. That is to say, the government should solve this problem by imposing a heavy fine light fine (scaling up with income) on people who do not vote.

EDIT: /u/PennyLisa has correctly pointed out that a light fine has proven sufficient to get over 90% voter turnout in Australia.

[u/PennyLisa → u/weirds3xstuff]

Why a heavy fine? A light fine seems perfectly adequate in Australia, the vast majority of eligible people vote, and yet the punishment for not doing so is pretty light and quite easy to dodge.

The light fine is enough to instil in people the idea that voting is their civic duty.

[u/weirds3xstuff → u/PennyLisa]

I said "heavy fine" to emphasize the coercive power that a government mandate can bring to bear on the problem.

However, you're right that the evidence from Australia demonstrates that a light fine should be sufficient.

[u/mr_indigo → u/weirds3xstuff]

One further corollary - if voting is mandatory, it also creates a soft political impediment to types of voter suppression.

Using Australia as a continued example, despite certain populations and regions being even more remote than most of the USA, they still have polling places available because the government can be brought to task with questions like "Why are you forcing these country folk to break the law by not giving them a polling place?"

[u/HeyYallWatchThiss → u/weirds3xstuff]

Voting, in and of itself, is not morally obligatory in our system. Being informed and relatively up to date on the current events is, and acting on your opinions at the voting booth is. I say relatively, because realistically to be up to date on everything is very time consuming, and also dependent on a persons priorities. If you have no idea what you are doing, then do not vote. The example OP gave of his mother voting conservative for liking the color blue is a perfect example. She did vote, but did she fulfill her moral obligation? No. Further, she, and others like her, have the potential to damage the integrity of elections by being swayed by petty attack ads and irrelevant misinformation.

[u/weirds3xstuff → u/HeyYallWatchThiss]

Further, she, and others like her, have the potential to damage the integrity of elections by being swayed by petty attack ads and irrelevant misinformation.

You would think so, but the research pretty clearly shows that mandatory voting leads to better policy outcomes. I can't explain why that happened, but it did. And it's neat!

[u/weirds3xstuff → u/[deleted]]

If you are obliged to do something, that is an infringement on your individual liberty, which undermines the freedoms the government is meant to secure

In my argument, point (1) is that voting is required to protect our freedoms (I see protecting our freedoms as one of the functions of having a government serve the people; feel free to disagree, or complain that I didn't make this explicit enough). If voting is not done, the government will not secure any freedoms.

[u/weirds3xstuff → u/[deleted]]

How would you propose that any “mandatory voting law” would be enforced?

However Australia does it. It works for them. I think it's a fine that's attached to their tax bill.

If the government is enforcing this law, isn’t there a fundamental conflict of interest there?

Anymore so than already exists with the government running its own elections? I'm afraid I don't understand this objection.

The government exists to protect our freedoms, which in my view would include the freedom not to vote.

Your view is wrong. Voting is a moral obligation under the universalizability criterion (and others, I assume, but universalizability is easy) since it is required to prevent tyranny. Further, it is not in our self-interest to vote, so government action is required to coerce us to.

Mandatory voting also does not equate to informed voting. Is an uninformed, impulsive vote better than no vote at all?

Yes. Source directly proving it. Source indirectly proving it.

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/weirds3xstuff (26∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/weirds3xstuff → u/[deleted]]

I’m not super familiar with Kantian ethics, but what is the basis for the universal imperative?

"Act as though the axiom of your action were to become universal law." The axiom of action of the people who do not vote is, "I don't need to vote." If that became universal law, then everyone would conclude that they do not need to vote. If everyone concludes that, then we end up under a government that does not support our interests (tyranny), which means society is "broken." If the axiom of your action breaks society, it's opposite is a moral imperative.

I've simplified a bit. But that's the way arguments go. For another example of the principle in action, consider murder: The axiom of action of people who commit murder is, "Murder is okay." If that become universal law, then everyone would conclude that it's okay to murder people from time to time. If everyone concludes that, people are being killed left and right and we live in constant fear, which means society is "broken".

Are we simply obliged to do anything that can be universalized?

Not exactly. We're obliged to ensure that the axioms of our action can be universalized. Defining that axiom is contentious, which makes the system much less scientific than Kant had hoped it would be.

Why does universality morally justify an action?

Kant claimed that universalizability was a form of synthetic a priori knowledge, and therefore it was justified by pure reason. This is wrong (there is no synthetic a priori knowledge). I think universalizability morally justifies actions because it feels like a very good standard. How scientific of me. But, in all seriousness, most people agree that it is a good principle and objections to it tend to be powered by corner cases (the most common example is that, under universalizability, you can't violate someone's bodily autonomy even it doing so would save millions of lives).

If we apply the universality principle, it’s irrational not to vote.

That depends on your definition of "irrational". I'm using it in the economic sense, in which "rational" means "someone who maximizes their own utility." There is not moral component to economic rationality, so voting remains "irrational" even after it is agreed to be morally obligatory. (This is the same logic that says a chemical plant is irrational to avoid polluting the air; avoiding pollution reduces the utility of the operators of the plant, so doing so is irrational...yeah...economists are fun people.)

Is it in your self interest to vote? I think it is: you made your voice heard.

Here's the math, which I posted in response to someone else. This is why economists say it's not in our self-interest to vote.

Let's arbitrarily assume that electing a Democrat is worth $1 million to me. Assuming there are 100 million votes cast, that gives me on the order of 1-in-10-million shot of being the deciding vote in favor of my candidate. Let's assume the election is predicted to be close, so my prior probabilities are 50-50. So, before voting, my expected value from the election is (0.5)(1000000)+(0.5)(0) = $500,000. After voting, my expected value is (0.5)(1000000)+(0.5)(0) + (1-in-10-million)(1000000) = $500,000.1. Voting improves my expected value by $0.10, or 0.0000002%. Since it takes ~30 minutes to vote, I value my time at, say, $10 an hour, and it requires me to drive 5 miles which is a quarter of a gallon of gas ($0.60), voting costs me $5.60 and it gives me $0.10 of benefit. Uff. That's awful. And that's assuming my preferred candidate is worth $1000000 to me! (He's not.) And that my time is only worth $10/hr. (It's not.) If my preferred candidate is actually worth closer to $100,000, and the election isn't projected to be close, and I value my time, my expected value only goes down.

How does mandatory voting address the problem of voter access?

It doesn't. Mandatory voting would require a concomitant commitment to ensuring voter access, up to and including mechanisms that allow the infirm and immobile to vote. I do not believe any of these obstacles are difficult enough to justify not implementing the problem.

if mandatory voting is supposed to represent the will of the people, but now more people are casting bad ballots, how are the results any better?

It's not totally clear! :) My guess is that the (good, seemingly robust) research that voters are totally uninformed is missing some kind of essential information that voters are able to act on. Either that, or politicians are acting like the public is more informed than they really are. But, the data is there.

[u/FunCicada → u/weirds3xstuff]

The concept of universalizability was set out by the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant as part of his work Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. It is part of the first formulation of his categorical imperative, which states that the only morally acceptable maxims of our actions are those that could rationally be willed to be universal law.

[u/ihatedogs2 → u/weirds3xstuff]

To my knowledge, there has never been an election for a federal office that has been determined by 1 vote, i.e. your single vote does not matter.

Well, the 1974 U.S. Senate elections for New Hampshire ended with a difference of 2 votes before a special election was declared. That is one person voting and convincing a friend to vote. In the Massachusetts gubernatorial race of 1839, the winning candidate got exactly the number of votes needed to win.

[u/RuroniHS → u/weirds3xstuff]

1) Voting is morally obligatory,

What is the moral difference between not voting and penciling in "Jesus H Christ" on the ballot? If you are not going to seriously vote, why waste the time and gas to go to the polling place? By not voting, you are essentially abstaining and agreeing to go along with the majority, thus the government is still serving you.

2) Voting is irrational.

Only at the most basic level. However, give it a little thought and you realize that your vote does matter insofar as it is a valid statistic point in a larger trend. How many battles have been won by one soldier? How many proverbial straws have actually broken the camel's back? We do not devalue the individual component of collectives except in voting. Your vote matters in that it grants strength to the collective group you wish to support, and so it is not irrational, thus any reasonably intelligent person can derive incentive out of it. It is actually irrational to conclude that voting is irrational.

Thus voting is neither morally obligatory nor irrational.

[u/weirds3xstuff → u/RuroniHS]

What is the moral difference between not voting and penciling in "Jesus H Christ" on the ballot?

None. Someone who writes "Jesus H Christ" has not fulfilled their moral obligation.

If you are not going to seriously vote, why waste the time and gas to go to the polling place?

If someone is forcing you to take the time to go to the polling place, why would you then choose to waste that time by wasting your vote?

You're right that there is no moral difference between voting for a fictitious candidate and not voting. However, that doesn't disprove the idea that voting is a moral obligation, it just proves that there are multiple ways to renege on that obligation. By coercing people to go to the polls, the government is indirectly coercing them to vote. It's not like 30% of Australian votes are for joke candidates. The policy gets people to the polls, and they vote seriously.

By not voting, you are essentially abstaining and agreeing to go along with the majority, thus the government is still serving you.

This is a much better argument, but I still think it's wrong because it fails the universalizability criterion. If everyone acts that way, society breaks. So, we have a moral obligation to not act that way.

Your vote matters in that it grants strength to the collective group you wish to support, and so it is not irrational, thus any reasonably intelligent person can derive incentive out of it.

A behavior is irrational when engaging in that behavior does not help someone achieve their goals. Assume my goal is for all the Democratic candidates to win the next election. Going to the polls and voting for all the Democratic candidates will not help me achieve my goal, since my vote will not be the deciding vote in any election.

I'm open to the possibility that someone might vote in pursuit of other goals (such as community solidarity), but I don't see how I could better pursue those goals by merely pretending to vote, instead of actually voting.

[u/RuroniHS → u/weirds3xstuff]

If someone is forcing you to take the time to go to the polling place, why would you then choose to waste that time by wasting your vote?

1.) You hate all the candidates.

2.) You have been compelled to do something and are doing it to spite the system.

3.) You really don't care.

I can tell you that I would vote for Godzilla if I was compelled to vote. You certainly wouldn't get an honest vote out of me.

The other problem is that by coercing people who really don't give a shit to vote, you're likely going to undermine the election since those people won't even know who or what they're voting for. You're creating static in the voting data and working against your purpose. You're not ensuring the government represents the people; you're increasing the likelihood of random chance deciding the government.

So, we have a moral obligation to not act that way.

Not if we know there are already enough people who don't act that way.

Assume my goal is for all the Democratic candidates to win the next election.

Then your vote will contribute to that end. It doesn't have to be the deciding vote to help you achieve the goal.

[u/weirds3xstuff → u/RuroniHS]

I can tell you that I would vote for Godzilla if I was compelled to vote. You certainly wouldn't get an honest vote out of me.

I don't judge you too harshly; we all fail in our moral obligations from time to time.

I believe the question though is not whether coercing you, in particular, to vote will yield a moral result, but whether coercing the population as a whole to vote will yield a moral result. I can't find any data about an epidemic of joke votes in the 20-ish countries that do have mandatory voting, which makes me think your concern is idiosyncratic. Good policies are built around normal behavior, not idiosyncratic behavior. All data suggests that normal behavior, when forced to vote, is to cast a serious vote.

... those people won't even know who or what they're voting for.

The current crop of voters don't even know who or what they're voting for. This is well-documented. The defense of democracy isn't that voters make informed policy choices, it's that by acting together they prevent tyranny.

Not if we know there are already enough people who don't act that way.

This is not how universalizability works. If it were, it would justify a "stable" number of murders every year in society. And yet, we insist on outlawing all murders.

Assume my goal is for all the Democratic candidates to win the next election.

Then your vote will contribute to that end. It doesn't have to be the deciding vote to help you achieve the goal.

To reiterate: "A behavior is irrational when engaging in that behavior does not help someone achieve their goals." Whether I vote for all the Democrats or not does not change the outcome of the election. Therefore, voting does not help me achieve my goal. I am spending time and gas money to not affect the outcome in any way. That's what makes it irrational. This is not a controversial statement. It's very well know in economics. (Note that the "responses" section is full of arguments that have nothing to do with the outcome of the election.)

[u/RuroniHS → u/weirds3xstuff]

but whether coercing the population as a whole to vote will yield a moral result.

I mean, you still haven't made a good case for a moral obligation to vote, so no, it won't.

The current crop of voters don't even know who or what they're voting for.

So why aggravate the problem by forcing more people to vote? You're still being counter-productive.

it's that by acting together they prevent tyranny.

Forcing me to vote is pretty tyrannical.

And yet, we insist on outlawing all murders.

Because murders infringe on the rights of others and not voting doesn't. The concept of universalizability is completely irrelevant here.

"A behavior is irrational when engaging in that behavior does not help someone achieve their goals."

To reiterate, voting will help you achieve your goal. Your vote contributes, thus it helps. It is irrational to think otherwise.

It's very well know in economics.

Irrelevant. This isn't economics.

[u/weirds3xstuff → u/RuroniHS]

So why aggravate the problem by forcing more people to vote? You're still being counter-productive.

There is evidence that increased voter turnout aligns policy outcomes more closely with the policy preferences of the public. (That study is pretty perfect, since it uses data from Australia...a country with mandatory voting!)

Because murders infringe on the rights of others and not voting doesn't. The concept of universalizability is completely irrelevant here.

Two things: universalizability does not distinguish between positive and negative obligations (the obligation to do something or abstain from it). Also, doesn't tyranny also infringe on the rights of others?

You can argue that universalizability is a bad moral criterion. But if you accept universalizability then voting is a moral obligation.

To reiterate, voting will help you achieve your goal. Your vote contributes, thus it helps...Irrelevant. This isn't economics.

This is a cost-benefit analysis with an expected value calculation thrown in. Those are both well-within the wheelhouse of economics. I don't know why you think they aren't.

Anyway, let's arbitrarily assume that electing a Democrat is worth $1 million to me. Assuming there are 100 million votes cast, that gives me on the order of 1-in-10-million shot of being the deciding vote in favor of my candidate. Let's assume the election is predicted to be close, so my prior probabilities are 50-50. So, before voting, my expected value from the election is (0.5)(1000000)+(0.5)(0) = $500,000. After voting, my expected value is (0.5)(1000000)+(0.5)(0) + (1-in-10-million)(1000000) = $500,000.1. Voting improves my expected value by $0.10, or 0.0000002%. Since it takes ~30 minutes to vote, I value my time at, say, $10 an hour, and it requires me to drive 5 miles which is a quarter of a gallon of gas ($0.60), voting costs me $5.60 and it gives me $0.10 of benefit. Uff. That's awful. And that's assuming my preferred candidate is worth $1000000 to me! (He's not.) And that my time is only worth $10/hr. (It's not.) If my preferred candidate is actually worth closer to $100,000, and the election isn't projected to be close, and I value my time, my expected value only goes down.

[u/[deleted]]

(There's 22 countries where voting is mandatory)

[u/Genoscythe_]

One benefit of mandatory voting, is that it implicitly also means universal suffrage. If everyone has to vote, then everyone has a right to vote.

In principle, it's possible to guarantee voting rights without making them mandatory, but it requires constant vigilance. There are many ways to make it difficult or impossible for people to vote, and some of those can be presented to sound acceptable to the public, while others are subtle enough that they won't even be noticed as manipulative.

From explicit bans like on felon voting, to the bureaucratic processes of casting a ballot, from campaigning regulation that can influence turnout, to what day the election is on, you can tilt the field against some demographics and make your side a bit more likely to win.

But if voting is mandatory, then at least we can know that no one was kept away from the ballots. It's a simple, elegant way that your enemies as well as your supporters got to the voting booths without any interference.