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 145 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com AT CIVIC EDUCATION STUDIES SHOW COMPULSORY VOTING ONLY BRINGS DISINTERESTED VOTERS TO THE POLLS. 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. Much research has shown that a higher level of education, of political interest, or of political sophistication, increases the probability of turning out to vote Thus, in a voluntary voting system, citizens who participate should come disproportionately from those with high education, interest, or sophistication. Under CV, by contrast, this bias should be weaker. This has been illustrated by Jackman, for example, who compares Australia and the United States In the latter country, citizens with a low level of political sophistication are strongly underrepresented among voters. In Australia, by contrast, CV brings more citizens with a low level of political sophistication to the polls. While this claim seems to be intuitive, there is a counterargument that must be considered seriously. As emphasized in the introduction, advocates of CV suggest that this institution may foster civic education CV might incite less interested voters to become more informed about politics Yet, empirical evidence in favour of this argument is quite thin. Gordon and Segura are among the few who have analyzed the impact of CV on political sophistication This was part of a more general attempt to study how contextual factors may shape the costs and benefits of political information. In their analysis of 12 Western European countries, including three in which voting is compulsory, they report a small, positive impact of this institution on the level of political sophistication. However, the significant impact they find is due to a methodological artefact. Their analysis, which combines characteristics of both voters and countries, is performed at the individual level. This design strongly underestimates the uncertainty surrounding the effects of contextual factors. This is the problem of the miraculous multiplication of the number of units Once the model is properly specified, the effect of CV disappears The same problem affects an analysis by Berggren,15 who uses the data of Gordon and Segura to test a slightly different causal model.These results do not support the claim that CV will make citizens more knowledgeable or interested in politics. While electoral participation may have positive effects on citizens, such as on their degree of external political efficacy there is little evidence that participation makes citizens politically more sophisticated We must thus consider seriously the risk that CV brings citizens to the polls who would otherwise not vote, but will not increase their level of political sophistication. This situation, we argue, will make the relationship between political preferences and party choices less consistent. Their voting decisions will be more loosely related to their political preferences. In other words, it should be more difficult to predict their vote on the basis of their policy preferences. This relationship will be more variable among compelled than among motivated voters. Download 2 Mb. Share with your friends:
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