The Sovereign Obligations of We, the People: An Argument for Compulsory Voting in the United States

This article presents an argument for compulsory voting in the United States on the grounds that the practice best meets our civic obligations under popular sovereignty. When popular sovereignty was established by the Constitution, it transferred not only rights but the sovereign responsibilities set out in Declaration of Independence to “the People,” as well. Most basic and inalienable of these sovereign duties is the obligation to participate in governance. Because the people in representative democracy “govern” through their vote, the basic principles of both the Declaration and the Constitution reasonably support a legal obligation to participate in national elections. In reorienting the compulsory voting debate away from higher turnout concerns and towards democratic theory, the paper also examines jury service as an analogous civic obligation. I argue that coercion in jury service reinforces, rather than undermines, democratic values of equality and individual public worth, and that the same affirmative principles for civic obligation should inhere to voting. The paper then sketches the elements of a fair and administrable compulsory voting policy in the United States, based largely on the Australian model (successful since 1924). Closing with responses to the most likely internal and external critiques of the main arguments presented, the paper ultimately aims to stimulate the debate on compulsory voting by inviting further challenges to – and support for – the policy.