The US has one of the lowest voter turnouts of any developed nation. In recent years experts have floated the idea that #compulsoryvoting could help. I looked into it for @qz, and here’s what I found. 1/7 https://qz.com/1920978/does-compulsory-voting-hurt-or-benefit-democracy/

Countries have lots of variations in the specifics of their mandatory voting laws and how they’re enforced. In Australia it’s easy to push off the fine for not voting, but in Belgium, if you skip 4 elections in a row, you lose the right to vote for 10 years. 2/7

If we’re just looking to boost voter turnout, then yes, compulsory voting does the job—countries with it get on average 7% higher voter turnout. 3/7

And there’s reason to think compulsory voting would redistribute wealth, because lower-income groups that didn’t have the time to vote or keep up with politics now get their voice heard. This tends to work better in developed nations. 4/7

But compulsory voting doesn’t seem to make countries more democratic per se. I analyzed the EIU democracy index scores of democracies with and without CV, and those without had a higher average score. 5/7

There are downsides to compulsory voting. It’s more logistically complicated. There will be more spoiled ballots. There can be unintended consequences, like how before 2012 Chilean voters were older than the average citizen. 6/7

I ended up somewhat in favor of CV for the US, though it doesn’t seem like there’s much political will to make it happen. But there are other ways to fix our voting system, like automatic registration, federal election oversight, and making voting a holiday. 7/7

Anyway, since it's not required, it bears repeating: GO VOTE!