Should Voting Be Compulsory? Democracy and the Ethics of Voting

Annabelle Lever (1) , Alexandru Volacu

1 CEVIPOF - Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (Sciences Po, CNRS)

The ethics of voting is a new field of academic research, uniting debates in ethics and public policy, democratic theory and more empirical studies of politics. A central question in this emerging field is whether or not voters should be legally required to vote. This chapter examines different arguments on behalf of compulsory voting, arguing that these do not generally succeed, although compulsory voting might be justified in certain special cases. However, adequately specifying the forms of voluntary voting that are consistent with democratic norms is likely to be philosophically complex and politically controversial.

Keywords: Voting; Ethics; Democracy

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Political science; Humanities and Social Sciences; Sociology

Annabelle Lever, Alexandru Volacu. Should Voting Be Compulsory? Democracy and the Ethics of Voting. Annabelle Lever; Andrei Poama. The Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy, Routledge, pp.242 - 254, 2018, 9781138201279. ⟨hal-02506504⟩