MAGA’s 2024 win made the case: Make voting in America compulsory

If democracy dies in this country, it can be blamed on people who did not bother to vote last November. Another 17% said they did not vote because they “did not care about the outcome.” The rest of the non-voters didn’t turn out because they were not registered or voting was inconvenient. 8% said “they forgot to vote.” Part of the problem of non-voting can be attributed to the fact that “Our system doesn’t make it particularly easy to vote.” Overcoming barriers to voting requires “a sense of motivation that’s hard for some Americans to muster every two or four years — enthusiasm about the candidates, belief in the importance of voting itself, a sense that anything can change as the result of a single vote.” Those who study American politics have been trying for a very long time to figure out the non-voting problem and how to motivate non-voters to show up. Later, “North Dakota and Massachusetts amended their constitutions to allow for compulsory voting, but these states never enacted statutes to implement it.” The Massachusetts Constitution still grants the state legislature the authority to do so. They should do so because, as Arend Lijphart puts it, “Mandatory voting is a moral issue.” In addition, wherever it is tried, we can expect compulsory voting to achieve at least two things.