Sept/Oct 2013 Neg: No Change in Outcome foundationbriefs.com Page 57 of 104 Compulsory voting does not change outcome Removing compulsory voting does not change the outcome of an election. RMF Selb, Peter, and Romain Lachat. "The More, the Better Counterfactual Evidence on the Effect of Compulsory Voting on the Consistency of Party Choice" European Journal of Political Research (2009). Webb Wherever these differences come from, we observe that voters prone to abstain if CV were abolished are less inclined to make their decisions in away that coherently reflects their issue preferences. Yet do their party choices also systematically differ from those of the voluntary voters In other words, would election results change in a predictable direction if these voters actually could abstain Moreover, what would election results look like if these voters chose parties on issue grounds in the same way as did the voluntary voters … As to the first counterfactual, we find barely any differences between the results. Obviously, the self-declared abstainers do not systematically differ in their party choices from the voters who expressed more willingness to participate under the voluntary vote. Thus, frequently expressed concerns that the left parties, in particular, would suffer electoral losses if CV were abolished are not supported by our data. Likewise, our second counterfactual suggests that election results would not differ dramatically if the probable abstainers voted as coherently in accordance with their policy preferences as did the voluntary voters. (589-590) These researchers used poll data from Belgium, where compulsory voting was in place fora election. Polling of voters identified who would vote regardless of the compulsory voting law, and who would not vote if not forced to do so. By filtering these groups of people, the researchers found that the election results would likely be similar regardless of the compulsory voting law.
