Make voting a duty for everyone, and require the state to make it possible for every person to vote
In short
- Every person with the right to vote must cast a ballot, either at a polling place or by mail.
- A blank ballot or a vote for "none of the candidates" counts as doing the duty.
- People who do not vote pay a small fine, unless they have a good reason.
- The state must provide automatic voter registration, voting on days off, and mobile polling places.
If this comes true
A male day laborer on a construction crew votes at his neighborhood community center on a Sunday, then tells his coworkers that candidates who used to walk right past now come to give speeches in the alleys of his district.
Perhaps
A mother who works three jobs might forget to send in the papers explaining why she could not vote, and might stare at the fine notice that arrives, sitting in her kitchen.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
The duty covers everyone who has the right to vote, in every election for public office, national and local. What the duty requires is handing in a ballot, not voting for any particular person. A blank ballot, or a mark in a box on the ballot saying "none of the candidates," also counts as doing the duty, and the number of such ballots is published along with the results. People who did not vote receive a notice after the election, and they are excused if they show a reason in a simple written form or online, such as illness, caregiving, work, travel, or religious belief. People who give no reason pay a small fine, but the amount is kept low, it is reduced for people with low incomes, and it is forbidden to detain anyone or take away their right to vote because they cannot pay. The duty also falls on the state and local governments. They automatically build the voter list from records such as residence registration, so that people can vote even if they have not registered themselves. Election day is a day off or spread over several days, and early voting, mail voting, and mobile polling places at hospitals, care facilities, and remote villages are always provided, along with help for people with disabilities and people who find reading and writing hard. In areas where these conditions are not in place, no fines can be given. The enforcement process is run not by an executive agency of the government but by an independent election administration body.
BenefitsPoliticians have to make promises to everyone
In a society where everyone votes, politicians cannot win by dealing only with the people who always show up. The lives of young people, poor people, and people who work long hours, who were long seen as not worth courting, enter the calculations of elections. When the lopsidedness of turnout disappears, the elected body also comes closer to the shape of society as a whole, and the direction of the policies it makes could change. Large-scale efforts to bring supporters to the polls also lose much of their point, and smears that discourage the other side's supporters and tricks that make voting harder stop working. Parties then put their energy into persuading people who have not made up their minds, and their claims swing less toward the extremes. And by imposing a duty, the state and local governments also take on a clear responsibility to provide automatic registration, voting on days off, and mobile polling places. Barriers that used to be left to the effort of the voter are removed by the state. When voting is not an act only for those who are interested but a shared duty that everyone carries a little of, the whole society also comes to accept election results more readily.
DrawbacksIt takes away the freedom not to vote, and fines weigh heavily on the vulnerable
Not voting is also a way of expressing a view. For people who cannot trust any candidate, or who think the election itself has no legitimacy, staying home is a form of protest. Even if blank ballots are allowed, a state pushing people to the polls with the threat of a fine is a heavy intervention in a free society. In countries where it is doubtful that elections are run fairly, high turnout could be used to dress up the government's legitimacy. Also, even if the fine is low, it weighs more heavily on people with little room in their lives. People who do not know about the exemption process, who have no time to send in papers, or who are not good at dealing with government offices could end up paying the fine anyway. The irony arises that a system meant to correct lopsided voting puts a further burden on the very people who have suffered from that lopsidedness. Furthermore, if people with no interest or knowledge vote only because they must, their votes may be decided by how a candidate's name sounds or the order on the ballot, and the criticism that this lowers the quality of elections remains hard to answer clearly. Even if turnout rises, it is not necessarily a pile of carefully thought-out votes.
Learn the background
In many democracies, the gap between those who vote and those who do not is not random but lopsided. Turnout is lower among young people, people with low incomes, people who move often, and people who work night shifts or day jobs, and it tends to be higher among people who receive pensions and people whose lives are stable. Naturally, politicians make promises to the people who reliably show up, and put the troubles of those who do not show up last. Then the people who do not show up feel even more that "voting changes nothing," and stay away even more. Appeals and awareness campaigns have been repeated to break this vicious circle, but little has changed. This is because the reasons for not voting are not only low interest but also a pile of small barriers placed on the voter, such as the trouble of registering, weekday voting days, and distant polling places. And under the current system, no one is responsible for removing those barriers. For parties that have won elections, today's voters are the very people who chose them, so their motive to change that is weak. At every election, each camp spends a great deal of money and effort bringing its supporters to the polls, and some even work to keep the other side's supporters from going.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23a) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes