13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 142 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com COMPULSORY VOTING UNDERMINES THE VIRTUE OF DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION AND THE VALUE OF POLITICAL EQUALITY Annabelle
Lever Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method London School of Economics and Political Science, Compulsory
Voting A Criminal Perspective British Journal of Political Science (December, 2008).
Forcing people to vote, whether they want to or not, undercuts the idea that voluntary political participation
is a distinctive human good, and that democracies are justified in part by their ability to realize that good, and
to make it available to most, nearly all, of their populations. Forcing people to vote undercuts a democratic
conception of equality, too for it implies that there is something uniquely important about electing representatives to a legislature although intelligent, informed and experienced people evidently disagree on the matter.
To mandate voting, in the face of this disagreement, is effectively to say that some peoples views are entitled to more respect
and weight than others – though neither reason nor necessity normally require us to reach a collective judgement on the importance of voting, let
alone of voting in national, rather than other, elections. 44
