Troy Stolt/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP
Early voting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, this week
A new report proposes changing American voting culture by making civic participation mandatory. Universal civic participation would in practice require all eligible voters to participate in every election by either choosing their preferred candidate or returning a blank ballot. It could be a way to stamp out voter suppression, according to the report’s authors, a group led by columnist E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, and Miles Rapoport of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Were the report’s proposals adopted, voting participation rates wouldn’t soar overnight. As members of the working group explained, the change would likely begin at the local level, but the impact there could build momentum.
“There is the potential to have a race to the top here,” said Brenda Wright, of Demos, in the report’s presentation on Zoom. “Let’s say you’re Philadelphia, and you propose universal civic duty, and the rest of the state doesn’t do so. People in Philadelphia will end up turning out in much greater numbers [and] have a bigger effect on state elections. Other jurisdictions in the state look at that and say, ‘Wait, if we don’t get our people to the polls in the same numbers, we’re going to be left out.’ And the same thing you could even conceive of happening at the national level.”
The report’s data show that while voter participation has increased since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the rates of voting of different demographic groups still vary widely. Unsurprisingly, people under 45 and people of color are the least likely to vote. Since 2020, the percentages of Hispanic and Asian American eligible voters have doubled, yet their participation has not grown at the same rate.
The reasons for decreased turnout are varied. In the United States, where voting practices differ widely, the state or even the county you live in determines your options for casting a ballot. Some jurisdictions offer a universally available mail-in ballot, while others tilt toward in-person voting available only on Election Day.
Although turnout is expected to be high in this November’s general election, it will happen in spite of the country’s current voting obstacles.
Strict voter ID laws, voter roll purges, and polling site reductions have been found to disproportionately affect people of color. And the utilization of these voter suppression tools has increased since 2013’s Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder to roll back preclearance of new voting laws by the Justice Department, which effectively negated the Voting Rights Act’s protections for (chiefly minority) voters in states with histories of voting rights abuses.
The changes detailed in the report would affect both election officials and elected officials. Increasing participation in local or primary elections from about 30 percent to 80 to 90 percent would compel state or local governments to better serve their citizens on and leading up to Election Day. Increased participation would also make all elected officials more accountable to voters, the authors argue.
One way to expand the franchise would make it easier for people to get involved in the process before Election Day, the report argues. More options for voter registration, or even automatic registration, and more resources for voter education would also be key to universal civic participation’s success. That responsibility would fall on election workers and boards of election, but it could also be shared by other institutions.
“Our feeling is that the institutional culture around voting would shift,” Rapoport says. “Various places would figure out what they would need to do [to respond]. If you were a high school principal and every single 18-year-old graduating was going to be required to vote, that would make you more likely to have a civic-education program.”
The very idea of universal voting couldn’t be more distant from the reality of voting in the United States. Although turnout is expected to be high in this November’s general election, it will happen in spite of the country’s current voting obstacles.
The report’s authors offer international examples of universal civic participation with a special focus on Australia, which has had voting “attendance” requirements since 1924. Similar to the ideas laid out in the report for Americans, Australians have to participate in elections even if that means just marking themselves present instead of voting for a candidate.
There are “valid and sufficient” reasons why someone may not vote in Australia, but in the first election after the 1924 implementation, voter turnout, which had been at roughly 60 percent, increased to more than 90 percent. The system has created a culture of voting, and this year 96.3 percent of eligible voters are registered to vote. By following the examples of countries that have implemented similar programs, the authors argue, Americans could reclaim their right to cast their ballots and better have their voices heard.
“It’s a way of breaking us out of this vicious cycle in which people don’t participate because of fear that government isn’t really listening to them, and the government doesn’t listen to them,” Wright says. “If we can turn that thinking around and people understand voting as an obligation and as a duty, then we can get people’s voices into the system.”
