A Condorcetian Defence of Mandatory Voting

• In Event: Normative Reflections on Parties & Elections

Abstract

Debates concerning mandatory (or compulsory) voting in political science and normative political theory tend to revolve around rights, duties, and coercion. These debates tend to descend into intractable disputes about the existence of certain rights compared to others, how to circumvent the coercive dimensions of mandatory voting, as well as how a social/moral duty to vote should be instantiated.

The purpose of this paper is to present an instrumental justification for mandatory voting that circumvents intractable normative debates about legal and moral rights and duties or coercion. This is not to say that instrumental justifications for mandatory voting are not part of the extensive literature on the topic (see Malkopoulou 2020; Birch 2009; Chong and Olivera 2008), only that these instrumental justifications are often detailed with reference to specific policy areas or concerns, such as the free-rider problem (Umbers 2020), or “the alleviation of socio-economic bias in electoral turnout” (Pedersen, Thavsen and Albertsen 2023, 2). The approach I advance seeks to avoid being framed by specific policies and concerns, and instead provide a more general instrumental basis for mandatory voting.

It does so with reference to Marquis de Condorcet’s jury theorem. The jury theorem stipulates that conditional on assumptions of competence and independence, the more members that are added to a jury, the more likely the jury is to arrive at the right outcome. In the context of politics, the jury theorem has been detailed as an instrumental justification for democracy more broadly (see Dagger 1997; Goodin 2003; Grofman and Feld 1988; List and Goodin 2001). These approaches typically rely on a generalisation of the jury theorem, with a focus on epistemic theories of democracy or majority rule. They are also largely unconcerned with specific electoral institutions such as mandator voting or assume complete turnout (Goodin and Speikermann 2018; List and Goodin 2001 for example). Recent democratic theory, however, has moved away from Condorcet. Both the jury theorem itself and its application to democracy have been subject to a greater deal of scepticism (Brennan 2011; 2017; Anderson 2008; Dietrich 2008;). Bagg (2018) suggests that this is due to Condorcet’s assumptions being incompatible with the various conceptual commitments held by epistemic democrats.

In light of these criticisms, I instead suggest that the jury theorem is better suited to provide an instrumental basis for more specific features of, and debates concerning, electoral institutions, policies, and reforms such as mandatory voting. Despite the pervasiveness of the jury theorem in questions of democracy and politics, it has yet to be applied to more specific concerns and electoral institutions such as mandatory voting. Indeed, the jury theorem is absent from central studies of mandatory voting. As mandatory voting is a part of various non-democratic systems, it stands to reason that we can treat it as a distinct electoral institution, as opposed to an essential or central feature of democracy. In other words, I do not conflate mandatory voting with democracy.

This paper therefore contributes to our understanding of the political application of the jury theorem. Specifically, I provide a template for how to better employ the jury theorem: not as a generalisable basis or justification for democracy or majority rule, but as a justification for more specific electoral reforms and policies such as mandatory voting. I also contribute to ongoing debates in political science and normative political theory concerning the justification for mandatory voting. By avoiding intractable normative debates about rights, duties, and coercion, I demonstrate a more straightforward instrumental basis for mandatory voting.

Author

• Edmund Handby, Duke University