Yup. that's me, You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. Well I live in one of the 22 countries. we're voting is mandatory and I forgot to cast my ballot. Okay, I've been a little dramatic. um there's no democracy police after me, but in all seriousness in Belgium, Australia, Brazil and nineteen other democracies When you don't vote, you could suffer the consequences typically a fine at first in some places. If you keep skipping out, you could lose your right to vote sound a little extreme, maybe but in countries that do enforce the rule, it gets people out to the voting booths. So we wanted to ask the question if we started America from scratch today, would we make it illegal? To not vote, Schwartz points to a groundbreaking comparative study, which shows that countries that strongly enforce compulsory voting have populations that are more politically informed. Let's start with the state of voting today in the 2016 US presidential election, the voter turnout, meaning the percentage of people who are eligible to vote who cast a ballot was 55.7% give or take some spoiled. What about the younger generations even worse, a little less than half of. Cast a vote in the most recent presidential election among some other groups such as people of color and the poor. The percentages are also even lower and in non presidential election years, more than half of those eligible to vote. do not why is voter turnout so low in the US compared to the rest of the world, whether a ton of explanations and if there were one easy answer, we would have figured this problem out by now, sometimes it's barriers people who can't get a ride to the polls or people who don't either understand or take advantage of what it means to register to vote and actually go and vote so actually logistical and physical barriers. But then there's a different kind of barrier and that's the barrier of. People who think their vote doesn't count. I think that their vote doesn't matter and then there's the people who think sure it might count sure it might matter, but they are disillusioned or even disgusted with politics with the candidates with what's being said, and what's not being said, and they choose very consciously choose to sit it out almost like an act of protest and so it comes in a variety of themes and flavors, but we do have an issue in this country of not voting in the numbers that we should. so how do we stack up with the rest of the world? Well, let's ask. Sidekick and statistics expert scratchy you that well Tucson compared to the other democracies. It's not too impressive within the organization for Economic Cooperation and development. We placed 26 out of 36 other similarly, Democratic and developed countries and the other countries in the OECD Don't all have mandatory voting laws only six of them do thanks for that scratching. so despite all the commotion on election years in the US, not even 60% of the people that can vote do vote. Why are we concerned if there's low voter turnout? I think the concern is if some people are systematically. More likely to vote than others if there's something that suggests that the people who are voting have a different set of preferences in the people who aren't that's the point in which we should get concerned about low voter turnout in it's last federal election, Belgium, the teacher's pet in this topic had about an 87% turnout of it's registered voters. That's pretty impressive the highest rate in the US has experienced was an 1876 when nearly 82% of eligible folks cast a vote in the president. Contest between Rutherford B Hayes and Samuel J Tilden presidential Election Voting rights have' tipped over 60% since 1968, I didn't even want to tell you how lousy your local election turnouts are in ten of the United States, Thirty largest cities turn out for mayoral elections is lower than 15% and the average age of a voter is fifty-seven scratching. The eagle is crying. But could a mandatory voting law even work for us uh election laws is done at the state level and administered at the very local level, and so if this reform were to come about it would need to be from the bottom up as opposed to the top down and I think if you look across the country, there's huge variation in every facet of election law, and I think it'd be very hard to get widespread mandatory voting so even in countries with mandatory voting laws, you don't have 100. Of the population who is choosing to participate to vote and so that means that even when the costs are lowered or or there are costs imposed on not voting, there are people who still choose to make that choice. There's really interesting work in political science that actually shows that some people are just more biologically predisposed to participate and that it's not um you know no matter what you do to sort of ease the pathway. they're gonna be people who make the decision not to. A mandatory voting issue there is a big elephant in the room and that elephant is called if a democracy is forced. Is it a democracy at all? I would stop short of making them vote and the reason I say that is I think the right to vote, which I encourage everyone to exercise all the time is also the right not to vote if everyone is required to vote, but we don't deal with the underlying problems about why people aren't voting in the first place. you could imagine a scenario. Right now, people are just either disenfranchised or feeling disconnected from the system and not participating but requiring them to vote and not dealing with those barriers and those hurdles could mean that then on top of that they're also having to pay a penalty because they didn't vote. Actually there is a problem in this country with a voter participation, we do vote in a much lower rate than a lot of other democracies, but there's so many other things we could do to make voting easier. We shouldn't be making it harder to vote. We should be making it easier to vote. So what are some ways that we can improve the voter turnout, so we have the most. And difficult system of voting and that results in us having very low voter turnout, we should have online voter registration in all fifty states we should consider having polling centers and not pulling places, meaning you can vote at any polling center in your state. It doesn't need to be a designated one. We should let every person registered to vote on Election day at the polls if they have ID uh the reason that voter registration deadlines are about. Days before the election is that they pre-date computers, so they're left over from every single voter registration form needed to be processed by hand and we should absolutely vote on a weekend and not a weekday because people are at work when we choose as a day for elections in 1845, we chose it because it was the day before farmers came to market so it was a convenient time for the majority of Americans to vote and now 100. 3 years later, it is an inconvenient time for the majority of Americans to vote throughout your experience in your tenure in your career, you've seen a lot of experience a lot have you do do you think that we take voting for granted. I can't put it any better than the words I saw a few years ago on a T-shirt and the T-shirt said. Failure to vote is not an act of rebellion. It's an act of surrender I get that people regardless of age, have this impulse from time-to-time. Even I have it And I'm an elected official to say you. I'm throwing my hands up wake me when it's over this is too intense, but in the end, don't give into that impulse. don't surrender cuz that's what it is. It's a surrender. It's not a protest. It's not striking a blow for some cause to sit at home and let people who have totally opposite views and values from you have their way in the end while you're at home, I totally agree with that, particularly for younger people, which is to say, look when you turn eighteen in this country, you get a lot of things. Hopefully it a slice of birthday cake. A couple of presents have had on the rack. Congratulations. You know what else you get formal political power. It may not always feel like it's. But we all have the opportunity to have a voice in our government right now, whether you use that voice is your choice. but what do you think should we make voting mandatory? Hey everybody. Thanks for watching the episode of Mandatory voting. I'm the host and if you wanna get the nitty gritty on that episode and the rest of our episodes go to any streaming site for podcasts that's anywhere in type of America from scratch. This program is made possible by the Corporation for public Broadcasting.