Compulsory voting: An epistemic perspective

Compulsory voting is defended as the most effective institutional mechanism for ensuring high turnout in response to the problem of insufficient participation in democratic elections. Although arguments in favor of this practice implicitly rely on assumptions about knowledge, competence, or the quality of democratic decision-making, the epistemic dimension of compulsory voting has so far not been examined in a systematic way. This paper analyzes how epistemic considerations enter existing normative arguments in favor of compulsory voting: arguments based on rights and duties, arguments concerning democratic legitimacy, and consequentialist arguments. It examines both the scope and the limits of epistemic justification for compulsory voting, as well as some explicitly epistemic objections to the practice. The paper addresses the question of whether compulsory voting can be defended on purely epistemic grounds and concludes that, although the epistemic approach plays an important role in its defense, it is not sufficient on its own to justify compulsory voting.