Should Voting Be Mandatory?

Reflections on the American Experiment in Democracy — #3

As virtually everyone on the planet, above the age of twelve, already knows, the United States held a presidential election in 2020. The election was a referendum on Donald Trump, one of the most controversial people to ever hold our highest office. Controversy always generates interest, and a total of 158,383,403 persons, or 65.6% of the potential electorate, voted. That was, in fact, the highest percentage in over a century.

Of course, if 65.6% of the potential electorate voted, you don’t have to be a mathematical genius to calculate that 34.4% did not perform this particular civic duty. In raw numbers, roughly 83,038,393 people who were potentially eligible to participate in the 2020 election failed to do so. We can put that number into perspective by noting that Joe Biden won the presidency with 81,268,924 votes — which was 51.3% of the votes cast. However, his share of the potential electorate (which includes eligible adults who didn’t register and/or vote, along with those who did) was only 33.7%.

Former President Trump was the choice of 74,216,154 voters (46.9% of the total). But again, this was only 30.7% of the potential electorate. In other words, nonvoters exceeded the number of people supporting either candidate. Some may respond to this…