Should voting in elections be mandatory?

People should have a right to opt out of voting

Question: Should voting in elections be mandatory?
Position‹2 of 2: Voting should not be mandatory
Argument1 of 3›: People should have a right to opt out of voting

The government has no right to force people to participate if they do not want to.

The argument

The first objection to compulsory voting here is conceptual. A right to vote, on this argument, implicitly implies a counter-right not to vote: a freedom that may only be exercised in one direction is not a right but an obligation. Abstention is treated as a meaningful act in its own right, a way of registering a protest about the direction of society by declining to participate in an election at all. The argument holds that preserving this capacity to withhold participation is as important as any societal good compulsory voting might deliver, because the good in question is bought by converting a right into a duty. The second objection is practical, and concerns whether compulsion achieves what it promises. The case for mandatory voting assumes that the people currently absent from the polls are apathetic or disenfranchised and would become engaged participants once required to turn out. This argument disputes that the requirement produces engagement. Compelling attendance compels attendance and nothing more, and the result is often simply a rise in the number of ballots that are spoilt or left blank. Those ballots register in the turnout figures while adding nothing to the outcome, so the reform can improve the statistics it was designed to improve without improving the participation those statistics are meant to measure. The third objection concerns who a mandate would fall on. There are vulnerable groups — the elderly and the disabled among them — who may not physically be able to vote, and a universal legal requirement penalises them for a limitation they did not choose. Even those otherwise sympathetic to compulsion, the argument holds, should accept at the very least an opt-out for vulnerable groups on health grounds. Because people should have a right to opt out for all of these reasons, voting should not be mandatory.

Premises

[P1]The right to vote implies a counter-right to abstain, which lets people register protest by not participating. [P2] Compulsory voting often just produces more spoilt or blank ballots rather than engaged voters. [P3] Vulnerable groups like the elderly or disabled may be physically unable to vote and need an opt-out. [C] Therefore, because people should have a right to opt out, voting should not be mandatory.

Counter-arguments

The societal good of mandatory voting and its ability to increase the turnout of elections and their democratic legitimacy far outweighs any inconvenience non-voters may experience. Even if apathetic voters elect to spoil their ballots or to leave them blank they will have registered their opposition, which is progress compared to the current electoral system where such votes are not formally counted.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The societal benefit of all people voting counterbalances any concept of a 'right not to vote'.