Should voting be mandatory?

Today in class, we discussed how voter turnout rates and some reasons why they are so low - primarily due to the belief that your vote doesn't matter. This low voter turnout rings internationally, reinforcing the paradox of America as a champion of democracy while being named a "flawed democracy" by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index.

So is mandatory voting the solution, which nearly 20 countries practice today? Currently, Australia practices this method since the 1920's, and has had nearly a 90% voter turnout rate since then for both. Mandatory voting increases the amount of true representation in government, and lets representatives are defined by who the majority want, not just a loud minority. However, countries that pass legislation requiring compulsory voting often have ulterior motives behind it as well. For example, Australia's aforementioned compulsory law was passed by the incumbent Labor party in order to counter the support of the better-funded Liberal National Coalition. Similarly, Belgian and Greece passed compulsory voting in order to benefit the upper class from being outsized by the working class.

There are also several fundamental benefits that seem to come from compulsory voting. Namely, income inequality is largely invalidated because more socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals are likely to come out when they are mandated to vote. Similarly, it's also linked to lower political corruption: Australia being ranked one of the least politically corrupt nations in the world by Transparency International.

Overall, compulsory voting would create higher voter turnouts and increase actual representation in the government. At the same time, it also creates several issues with voting being a right, implying that the right to abstain is also fundamentally protected. So compulsory voting must be researched further, but compulsory voting is the fastest and most efficient way of raising voting turnouts amongst declining voter turnouts.