This article presents and tests a new approach to early voting that pays attention to its institutional, political and demographic determinants. Using Australia's compulsory voting system as our case, we can compare early voting and election-day voting without having to consider the possibility of voter abstention that arises in voluntary voting systems. The research uses aggregate-level data from six national elections (2004 to 2019), as well as individual-level data drawn from Australian Electoral Study surveys of 2016 and 2019. The results show that institutional factors (density of polling places), political factors (level of competition between parties) and socioeconomic factors (age) all contribute to variations in early versus election-day voting. Levels of early voting are affected not simply by the characteristics of individual citizens but also by the institutional and political contexts within which those citizens vote.

We study the impact of compulsory voting in Brazil, where voting is mandatory from age 18 to 70 and voluntary for those aged 16, 17 and 70+. Using a survey sample of 8008 respondents, we document voter confusion about how the age criterion applies. Some people falsely believe that what matters is one's age in an election year rather than on Election Day. Next, we perform a regression discontinuity (RD) analysis of compulsory voting among young voters with register-based data from six Brazilian elections (2008–2018). We find that the effect of compulsory voting is seriously underestimated if we focus solely on the discontinuities prescribed by the law. Our findings carry important implications for studies adopting the RD design where knowledge of the cutoff is expected of the units of interest (like those about compulsory voting) and confirm that compulsory voting is a strong institutional arrangement that promotes greater electoral participation.

Adopting compulsory voting (CV) legislation is expected to produce near-universal turnout, which in turn is assumed to iron out class-based differences in political influence and representation. The article traces the historical process generating the sequential adoption of CV in 8 of the 17 Cisleithanian crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1907 and 1911, and leverages a difference-in-differences (DiD) method to estimate its causal effect on turnout and voting patterns in elections to the Imperial Council. Exploiting unique data on the turnout of citizens based on their occupational categories, it further examines whether the adoption of CV attenuated class bias in turnout. Despite a large boost to turnout, CV neither increased support for parties representing the working classes, nor attenuated the class bias in turnout.

It has normally been argued that because compulsory voting systems present higher turnout rates relative to voluntary voting systems, they do not generate as many biases between different groups of voters. This article qualifies that view. It argues that in cases in which compulsory voting does not ensure near-universal participation, there is no certainty that switching to voluntary voting will increase inequalities. This issue is examined by looking at Chile, a democracy that moved from compulsory voting to voluntary voting in 2012. The research finds that while the reform generated class bias in urban districts, it also substantially reduced age bias and, in national elections, equalized participation between small and large districts. The conclusion is that abandoning compulsory voting does not necessarily increase turnout biases, since much depends on the structure of preexisting biases and how these are conditioned by particular electoral institutions.

Turnout is in decline in established democracies around the world. Where, in the mid-1800s, 70–80 percent of eligible voters regularly participated in US Presidential elections, turnout has averaged just 53.7 percent since 1972. Average turnout in general elections in the UK has fallen from 76.6 percent during the period 1945–92, to 64.7 percent since 1997. Average turnout in Canadian federal elections has fallen from 74.5 percent during the period 1940–79, to 62.5 percent since 2000. For most democrats, these numbers are a cause for alarm. Compulsory voting is amongst the most effective means of raising turnout. However, compulsory voting is also controversial. Most of us think that coercion may only be employed against the citizenry if it is backed by a justification of the right kind. Opponents of compulsory voting charge that no such justification is available. This article resists this line of argument in two ways. First, I offer an argument from free-riding which, though gestured towards by others, and widely criticized, has yet to be defended in any depth. Second, I consider a range of objections to compulsory voting as such, arguing that none succeeds.

Because non-voters are less politically informed than voters, some propose that increasing voter turnout would reduce the quality of information among the active voting population, damaging electoral outcomes. However, the proposed tradeoff between increased participation and informed participation is a false dichotomy. This article demonstrates that political information is endogenous to participation. A field experiment integrates an intensive mobilization treatment into a panel survey conducted before and after a city-wide election. Subjects who were mobilized to vote also became more informed about the content of the election. The results suggest institutions that encourage participation not only increase voter turnout – mobilizing electoral participation also motivates citizens to become more politically informed.