Recent research published in quarterly public opinion They provide evidence that requiring people to vote does not automatically increase interest in politics or support for democracy. This study suggests that removing penalties for not voting significantly reduces electoral participation, but leaves people’s political engagement and democratic attitudes almost unchanged.
Compulsory voting is a system in which eligible citizens are legally required to participate in elections. In many of the approximately 25 countries that use this system, failing to vote can result in fines and other penalties. Supporters of compulsory voting often argue that forcing people to attend polling places encourages people to learn about political issues and fosters a sense of civic duty.
This issue is becoming increasingly important as voting habits change around the world. “This debate is being held in part because of low election turnout, and in this way we are also addressing real-world problems,” said Dieter Stees, a postdoctoral researcher at the Flemish Research Foundation at the University of Leuven. This theory suggests that if everyone has to vote, political parties may expand their campaigns to educate a wider audience.
“The main motivation was the fact that there is a recurring argument in the debate about compulsory voting that has proven very difficult to test empirically: that forcing people to vote increases political engagement and interest,” Stairs explained. He pointed out that under a voluntary system, people can choose to ignore politics. “But by making voting compulsory, you are obligating yourself to make some effort. The argument is that since you will have to vote anyway, you will also be more likely to make at least some effort to learn about parties and candidates.”
Critics say the system could breed resentment among people forced to vote against their will. They also warn that compulsory voting could encourage disinterested citizens to vote randomly and reduce voters’ overall political knowledge.
Previous research on this topic has yielded very mixed results. Steers and co-author Shane P. Singh, the Joshua W. Jones Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, noted that past research has often struggled with methodological tradeoffs. Cross-national studies that compare different countries can be influenced by cultural or economic differences unrelated to voting laws.
On the other hand, laboratory experiments may not accurately reflect people’s behavior in the real world. “This is very difficult to test, and previous study designs face significant challenges,” Steese said.
To overcome these hurdles, the authors took advantage of a policy change that is unusual in Belgium. Belgium has had compulsory voting since 1893. In 2021, the Flemish regional government chose to abolish this obligation from local elections starting in 2024. The rest of the country, including Wallonia and the Brussels region, maintained compulsory voting rules.
This zoning provided a unique real-world laboratory to test how changes in election rules affect voters. “We identified a unique opportunity to test this argument in the real world,” Steers said. “Thus, with this study, we hope to contribute to the debate on compulsory voting with strong empirical validation.”
Researchers tracked the attitudes of Belgians throughout the 2024 election period. They utilized the Belgian Redistricting Panel, a dataset collected through a research firm. The survey was conducted in four parts to understand changes in public opinion over time.
The first wave included 6,067 respondents, the second wave 4,515, the third wave 3,343, and the final wave collected data from 2,744. The sample was matched for age, gender, education, and regional population quotas to ensure that it was representative of the broader Belgian population.
The timing of the survey waves was chosen specifically to isolate the effects of voting law changes. The first two waves occurred around the national and European elections in June 2024. Voting was still compulsory for all Belgian citizens during these June elections.
The third and fourth waves occurred around the local elections in October 2024. In these October elections, voting was optional for residents of Flanders, but remained mandatory for residents of the rest of the country.
The survey measured several aspects of political engagement and democratic attitudes. Participants were asked to rate their overall satisfaction with democracy on a scale of 0 to 10. They also indicated on a 5-point scale that they preferred democracy as a system of government. Interest in politics was measured by asking respondents to rate their interest in politics on a scale of 0 to 10.
The researchers also measured internal and external political efficacy. Internal efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in his or her ability to understand and participate in politics. External effectiveness refers to the belief that political systems actually listen to and respond to the voices of ordinary citizens. Both were measured using the level of agreement with specific statements.
Finally, the survey tested objective political knowledge with four factual questions about government to assess trust in political institutions. To analyze the data, the researchers used a statistical technique known as differential modeling. This approach goes beyond just comparing two areas at a single point in time. Instead, we measure how attitudes in each region have changed over time and compare those changes to each other.
For this statistical method to be reliable, the two groups must show similar trends before a policy change is made. The researchers tested this by looking at survey data from the June election, when voting was still mandatory everywhere. They found that political attitudes in Flanders and the rest of Belgium fluctuated in almost perfect parallel over this period. This provided strong evidence that the sudden deviation in October could be directly attributed to the new voting law.
This policy change resulted in a large disparity in voter turnout. Before the rule change, voter turnout in local elections was similar across the country, with around 92% in Flanders and 87% in the rest of Belgium in the 2018 election. In the October 2024 election, turnout in regions that continued compulsory voting decreased slightly to about 84%. In Flanders, voting was made optional and turnout plummeted to around 63%.
“When compulsory voting was abolished in local elections in Flanders, voter behavior in the elections was very close to what would be expected in elections without compulsory voting,” Steers said. “For example, while there was an expectation that turnout levels were still fairly high and could decline gradually in future elections, we saw an immediate and sharp decline. Also, other analyzes we conducted were consistent with voluntary elections; this change was more sudden than expected.”
Despite this significant decline in electoral participation, the researchers found no significant differences in how political attitudes evolved across regions. Across the country, citizens tended to exhibit slightly stronger democratic attitudes and engagement immediately following elections. This post-election boost is a known phenomenon in political science.
However, the data reveals that this increase in engagement is virtually the same in Flanders and the rest of Belgium. The abolition of compulsory voting in Flanders had no negative impact on people’s satisfaction with democracy, nor did it reduce political interest or knowledge. Similarly, forced voting in other parts of the country did not provide any special educational or civic benefits compared to the Flemish voluntary voting system.
These findings suggest that the act of voting itself, whether mandatory or voluntary, does not produce profound changes in people’s core political attitudes. “If we take this study at face value, we find no evidence that people’s democratic attitudes or engagement in elections change differently depending on whether or not they are required to vote,” Steers said. Steers added that there was no need to discuss the actual size or magnitude of the effect, as the study found essentially zero effect.
The researchers also investigated whether the rule changes affected certain types of people differently. They ran additional analyzes to see if factors such as gender, income level, education, and age influenced people’s reactions to voluntary voting. They found no evidence of subgroup-specific effects.
The authors specifically looked at individuals who admitted they stopped voting after this requirement was lifted. Even among these newly disengaged citizens, there was no appreciable decline in political interest or support for democracy compared to other citizens.
An important caveat is that this study relies on an online panel of individuals who have opted into the research company’s participant pool. This means that while the sample is demographically representative, it is not completely random. This factor may limit how fully the findings can be generalized to the absolute whole of the Belgian population.
It is also unclear whether these results apply to countries other than Belgium. Cultural norms regarding voting and civic duty vary widely around the world. Citizens with more than a century of experience with compulsory voting may react differently to its repeal than countries implementing the policy for the first time. The findings are also limited to local elections, which may carry different emotional or political weight than high-stakes national elections.
“As with any scientific study, there are of course important nuances and caveats,” Steers points out. “The most important caveat is that we study the effects immediately after the first election without mandatory voting. Democratic attitudes and engagement are likely to be fairly stable and will not change easily or quickly.”
A possible explanation for the stability in attitudes is that Flemish citizens still had to vote in national elections that were mandatory just a few months ago. This recent participation may have kept their political engagement artificially high during local elections.
Future research should follow citizens over longer periods of time to see whether a permanent shift to voluntary voting ultimately erodes political interest. “We find that some changes, such as participation rates, were quite large, but attitudes change more slowly than behavior, and there may be differences in the long term that future research may uncover,” Steers explained.
Scientists might also investigate whether introducing new voting requirements into a traditionally discretionary system has different psychological effects than removing old requirements. “The main goal of the larger project this article is a part of is to uncover the effects of compulsory voting beyond turnout,” Steers said. “Investigating these spillover effects can inform the debate around compulsory voting by providing a more comprehensive view of their impact on voters and elections.”
The study, “Does compulsory voting improve democratic attitudes and engagement? Quasi-experimental evidence from Belgium,” was authored by Dieter Steers and Shane P. Singh.
