I think that this is a great public forum topic: it relates to a current event that will educate students on some of the nuanc
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Lesson 4.2 Day 3
| 13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 40 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com On this topic, there’s no escaping the fact that topical presumption arguments go negative. To win presumption the neg should argue that we should err against wasting resources unless compulsory voting clearly generates asocial good, and that we should presume in favor of individual rights to free-choice and self-determination unless there is a compelling reason to override them. I think it’s worthwhile to start from the ground-up in approaching this topic, so I’m going to assess the different contention-level affirmative arguments made in the literature, and then discuss how those arguments might fit into different democracy based frameworks. While I think there is a definite neg-bias in terms of framework/philosophy literature on this topic, the overriding consensus in the literature seems to be that compulsory voting works , at least insofar as it brings voters to the polls, so I think a strong starting point for many ACs will be to capitalize on that fact and construct a framework around it. Compulsory voting is really good at getting voters to turnout. Since they made compulsory voting mandatory, Australia has had an average of 90%+ turnout for elections, and the story is similar for most other democratic states that use compulsory voting, raising voter turnout by an average of seven percentage points (Lever, Schafer). However, given concerns about a) violating individuals rights to freely abstain and b) wasting resources unnecessarily that might cause one to presume against compulsory voting, defenders of compulsory voting must make an independent argument for the value of higher turnout rates. Lijphart’s article Unequal Participation Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma brought the issue of compulsory voting to the attention of political theorists, and spawned a host of related debates. Lijphart argues that because low turnout is unequal turnout, the primary benefit of compulsory voting is to ensure that democratic governments accurately determine the majority will of their constituents. Since individuals who are likely to abstain from voting are more often than not in low-income brackets, voluntary voting systems risk excluding the voice of lower socioeconomic classes in favor of wealthier demographics with higher turnout rates. Lijphart also found that older voters are more likely to turnout than younger voters. As I understand it, Lijphart’s argument appeals to the democratic ideal of proportional representation. Since voluntary voting has the unintentional effect of under-representing young and low-income voters, Lijphart argues that the parties elected may not represent majority consensus on policy issues. Moreover, since the underrepresented parties generally lean left politically, voluntary voting deprives the left of a significant constituency base. |