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

13NFL1-Compulsory Voting
Page 146 of 163
www.victorybriefs.com
COMPULSORY VOTING MAKES IT LESS LIKELY THAT THE RESULT WILL BE INLINE
WITH CITIZENS PREFERENCES.
Selb and Lachat 09, Peter Selb Department of Politics and Management, University of Konstanz, Germany and Romain Lachat Institute of POoitical Science, University of Zurich, Switzerland, The More, the Better Counterfactual Evidence on the Effect of Compulsory Voting on the Consistency of Party Choice, European Journal of Political Research, 2009. This possible consequence of CV has been developed on a theoretical level by Jakee and Sun They show that an increase in the number of voters who cast an uninformed vote can affect the electoral outcome. The larger the proportion of uninformed voters, the higher is the probability that the result diverges from the average preferences of informed voters. Their reasoning is based on a formal model, which assumes that uninterested citizens have no clear preference fora given party or candidate and that their voting decision is a random choice. While the assumption of pure randomness is probably unrealistic, their model clearly identifies the mechanism through which CV may alter the outcome of the election. Furthermore, their general argument is still valid with less restrictive assumptions As long as the party choices of citizens who would abstain in a voluntary system are less predictable than those of motivated participants, CV may weaken the link between voters preferences and the electoral results.This claim is supported by research on the effects of political sophistication. Political experts not only have abetter knowledge of politics than political novices, but they also organize and process this information in a more meaningful way Voters with a high level of political sophistication are, for example, better able to locate parties in the political space This should also improve their ability to relate their own preferences to those of parties. In fact, it has been shown that uncertainty about parties positions weakens the relationship between issue preferences and voting choice Such uncertainty should characterize the citizens who only take part in the election because they are compelled to do so. The consequence, we argue, will be a less consistent relationship between voters preferences and the electoral outcome, as well as a less effective representation of these preferences.

Download 2 Mb.

Share with your friends: