Random votes under compulsory voting: Evidence from Brazil

Freire, Alessandro; Turgeon, Mathieu

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2020.102168

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Beyond turnout, scholars have recently identified several downstream consequences of a voting requirement for individuals and parties. These include increased invalid balloting (e.g., Power and Garand, 2007;Uggla, 2008;Cohen, 2018;Singh, 2019a); election results that are less reflective of ideological preferences (e.g., Selb and Lachat, 2009;Singh, 2016;Dassonneville et al, 2019;Freire and Turgeon, 2020; but see Singh (2022)); more and stronger psychological attachments to political parties (e.g., Dalton and Weldon, 2007;Singh and Thornton, 2013); and programmatic vote seeking (Singh, 2019b). In each case, the link between CV and the downstream outcome is thought to be, at least in part, mechanized by compelled voting among people who would normally stay home.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is compulsory voting a solution to low and declining turnout? Cross-national evidence since 1945

Kostelka

Singh

Blais

2022

PSRM

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Despite the substantial body of research on compulsory voting's (CV) relationship with turnout, much remains unknown about the role of different types of CV rules, their enforcement, and their ability to prevent the secular turnout decline observed around the world. Moreover, existing studies that leverage changes to CV laws are limited to a single country. We assemble rich new data on voter turnout and electoral legislation that, we believe, include the most accurate and extensive cross-national measure of CV to date. We test three theoretically derived hypotheses: that CV enforcement matters for participation; that enforcement's effect is conditioned by state capacity; and that, only when CV is enforced, will it mitigate voter turnout's post-1970 tendency to decline. We find support for each. We also find that the nature of sanctions for non-voting is irrelevant for participation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is compulsory voting a solution to low and declining turnout? Cross-national evidence since 1945

Kostelka

Singh

Blais

2022

PSRM

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“…Arguments about positive educational impact (e.g., Bruce and Costa Lima, 2019;Elliott, 2017;Sheppard, 2015) often collide with counter-arguments about the cost of this impact. For example, Miles and Mullinix (2019) record an increased level of anger among CV-obligated respondents, Singh and Roy (2018)weak information seeking, and several recent studies in a rowa higher proportion of random votes and spoiled ballots (Freire and Turgeon, 2020;Katz and Levin, 2018;Singh, 2019b). All these spillovers may well result in a "no" vote, when a person does not know whom he wants to support, but knows exactly whom he wants to punish.…”

Section: Changing Beneficiaries Of High Turnoutmentioning

confidence: 98%

Assessing the Relationship Between Compulsory Voting and the Over-Representation of Extreme Parties

Ankudinov

2024

Journal of Politics in Latin America

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In this paper, we address the issue of partisan bias in compulsory voting systems. Given the current global trends – declining trust in mainstream political parties, rising support for left- and right-wing radicals, growing populism and anti-elite sentiment – we seek to determine how they manifest themselves in an environment where citizens are required to vote by law. To answer this question, a quasi-experimental design is proposed. The data show that forced activity does not affect either extreme forces support rates (from a cross-country perspective) or the rationality of their voters (from an individual-level perspective). As far as we know, this is the first attempt to generalize the role of compulsory voting in extreme politics, as well as the first one to refute this role with ample evidence.

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“…19 On the other hand, the link between citizens’ policy preferences and their vote choices (i.e. proximity voting) is weakened in CV systems (Dassonneville et al, 2017; Singh, 2016) and this seems particularly true of so-called reluctant voters, that is, voters who would not vote if voting was voluntary (Dassonneville et al, 2019; Freire and Turgeon, 2020; Hooghe and Stiers, 2017; Selb and Lachat, 2009; Singh, 2019; Singh and Roy, 2018).…”

Section: Democratic and Compulsory Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compelled Turnout and Democratic Turnout: Why They Are Different

Destri

2023

Political Studies

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One strategy in defence of compulsory voting is based on what I call the non-instrumental value of high turnout: the idea that almost-universal participation in elections is valuable per se. This article argues that we do not have democratic reasons to value compelled turnout. First, thanks to an original analysis of the practice of voting, I identify three constitutive rules that make the physical acts of marking and casting a ballot count as proper voting. This preliminary analysis serves to illuminate the fact that the act of voting has democratic value if it is performed in a free and reason-responsive way. Second, I identify political equality and popular control as democratic values that high turnout expresses. Finally, the article rejects the non-instrumental case for compulsory voting because it cannot ensure that people vote in a reason-responsive way and, if they do not, high turnout lacks democratic value.

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Random votes under compulsory voting: Evidence from Brazil

Cited by 11 publications

References 56 publications

Is compulsory voting a solution to low and declining turnout? Cross-national evidence since 1945

Is compulsory voting a solution to low and declining turnout? Cross-national evidence since 1945

Assessing the Relationship Between Compulsory Voting and the Over-Representation of Extreme Parties

Compelled Turnout and Democratic Turnout: Why They Are Different

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