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- Title
NO MORE HALF MEASURES: THE CASE FOR COMPULSORY VOTING IN UNITED STATES ELECTIONS.
- Authors
DRAPER, BRANDON MARC
- Abstract
As the 2020 election approaches, demands for greater access to the ballot have been justifiably reignited. The most meaningful measure of effective voter access is turnout. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act formula for determining which jurisdictions are "covered," a status that required administrative preclearance prior to changes in apportionment schemes. Following that ruling, several previously covered states enacted laws that hindered ballot access and, as a result, voter turnout decreased. To combat the ruling in Shelby, as well as subsequent legislative actions by those states, several other states enacted laws that sought to improve access and turnout, namely through laws that created or expanded automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, vote-by-mail, and early voting. Additionally, voting rights organizations have continued to lobby governments for greater access and urgently encouraged citizens to register to vote, vote, and run for office. Yet overall, even in states where voter access is relatively high and/or voting is strongly encouraged, voter turnout in these states, and in the United States as a whole, lags severely behind most developed countries. This Article contends that effectively increasing ballot access as a means of substantially increasing voter turnout requires drastic changes to our election systems. Such changes include making voting compulsory and replacing current majority rule and plurality rule/winner-take-all voting systems with a majority rule/rankedchoice system. These changes would greatly expand ballot access and likely lead to a rise in American voter turnout that could match the levels seen in most developed countries. Furthermore, the transition to compulsory voting would help guarantee the protections of the Fifteenth Amendment. Practically, however, implementation and enforcement of these changes face a variety of potentially fatal constitutional and administrative challenges. Such challenges include those made on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds, as well as those caused by the current and expected future makeup of Congress and the Judiciary. Despite these legitimate concerns, these are changes that have been proven to deliver the greatest contemporary levels of ballot access and voter turnout, and that the United States should seek to enact in order to create meaningful ballot access to all eligible citizens.
- Subjects
UNITED States; COMPULSORY voting; VOTER turnout; PLURALITY voting; EARLY voting; ELECTIONS; SUFFRAGE; DEVELOPING countries; VOTING Rights Act of 1965 (U.S.)
- Publication
Elon Law Review, 2021, Vol 13, Issue 1, p147
- ISSN
2154-0063
- Publication type
Article