13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 76 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com NON-VOTING DOES NOT INHERENTLY MEAN THAT DISADVANTAGED GROUPS ARE SATISFIED WITH PUBLIC POLICY HLR
– 2007. The Case for Compulsory Voting in the United
States Harvard Law Review, Vol.
121, No. 2 (Dec, 2007), pp. 591-612. Many would dismiss these concerns about underrepresentation by pointing out that no one is denying the rights of nonwhites
or the poor to vote rather, individuals in those demographic groups are simply choosing not to exercise their rights. If they were sufficiently dissatisfied
with the government, then presumably they would change their minds and vote. Given the rational basis
for nonvoting discussed above, however, individual dissatisfaction is hardly guaranteed to encourage voting. Even a dissatisfied individual will be unlikely to vote if she realizes that her vote has a negligible chance of affecting the outcome of an election. Thus, even among relatively
distinct demographic groups, a majority of whose members maybe seriously dissatisfied [*596] with the
national political leadership, collective action problems pose a substantial obstacle to any attempts to increase voter turnout.
