Should Professors Compel Their Students to Vote?
George C. Leef, The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy

In an article published recently in the TC Record (which bills itself modestly as "The Voice of Scholarship in Education") Drew University English professor Merrill Maguire Skaggs explained why she felt justified in making it a requirement in one of her classes that students register and vote. She wrote that while attending a meeting of the Society for Values in Higher Education earlier this year, she was dismayed to learn that only 37 percent of college students had voted in the 2000 presidential election. From that, Professor Skaggs concluded that if students participated in elections in greater numbers, they had "the capacity to swing an election." But because relatively few students vote, candidates do not "bother to address student issues thoroughly."

Feeling the need to do something, Professor Skaggs hit upon the idea of requiring all of her English students to vote. Although she tosses in such bromides as "citizenship comes first" (quoting a martial arts instructor who required all of his students to register and vote), she makes no effort to conceal the fact that her motivation was personal: "For me, making what I myself could consider a meaningful gesture was the important thing -- the personal satisfaction of finding something I could do."

So is this a good thing to do? Should professors across the country (not to mention martial arts instructors) adopt Skaggs' idea and make voting mandatory? Is this a laudable attempt to promote good citizenship -- or an indefensible abuse of power for personal satisfaction?

Sorry, Professor, but I take the latter view.

The job of an English professor is to teach English. That's it. Adding non-academic requirements to a course is objectionable, no matter how important the professor may believe them to be. Suppose that another English professor who feels passionately that students need to get in better physical shape (for their own benefit, and also to reduce the strain that overweight, sickly people put on our semi-socialist health care system) mandates that in order to pass the course, all students must be able to run a mile in less than 8 minutes -- undoubtedly, a "meaningful gesture" in the critical war against obesity. True, getting in shape for the run would take a lot more time from the students than registering and voting, but it's a difference only in degree, not in kind.

Such a fitness requirement would be roundly condemned as none of the professor's business. I can see no reason to regard a voting requirement differently.

Professor Skaggs tells us that she agonized over the decision and consulted many of her colleagues. A number of them thought the idea of mandatory voting was "totalitarian." But then she learned that Australia has a law that requires voting and punishes citizens who don't. Since, she writes, "Australia is not normally considered totalitarian," that clinched it.

Logicians will quickly see a problem here -- the fallacy of division. That is the logical error in concluding that because X is true of the whole, X must also be true for all its constituent parts. Let us agree with the premise, "Australia is not a totalitarian nation." Does it follow that "No law enacted by Australia is totalitarian?" ("Authoritarian" would be a better word here, but never mind.) No, it doesn't. The morality of each law must be evaluated independently. To my way of thinking, punishing people for choosing not to participate in an election is about as bad a victimless crime law as you'll find. The fact that Australia has mandatory voting does not serve as a justification for American professors to impose a voting requirement on their students.

There are a number of good reasons why an individual might choose to remain uninvolved in the political process. For one, there is the well-known "lesser of two evils" problem. Many people realize that there are grounds for objecting to both (or all) of the candidates for an office. Since you can't register your approval of individual positions candidates take, but instead have to vote for one entire candidate bundle or another, some citizens prefer not to lend their sanction to the system by voting for someone whom they do not trust to represent their interests or protect their rights. Maybe Professor Skaggs didn't have any "conscientious objectors" in her class, but if she had, would they have been excused from the voting requirement?

More commonly, people don't vote because they just don't think it matters and therefore isn't worth the time. They might conclude that because a single vote almost never "swings" an election, it isn't worth the trouble. (That would still be true even if all professors had a mandatory voting policy.) Or they might conclude that the time it would take in order to become truly well informed is too much for them and they'd just as soon not vote if they aren't well informed. (Skaggs admits that she considered having in-class discussions of election issues, but decided against doing so because she didn't think she could keep her own views to herself; the fact that an English class is not the place for political discussion apparently was not a factor in that decision.)

Probably the most common reason why people choose not to vote is that they don't think it will make any difference in their lives. "Who cares whether Tweedle-dee or Tweedle-dum wins?" they ask. To people like Professor Skaggs who are in the thrall of politics, this position seems absurd. "Don't you realize that Candidate A's position on Issue X will promote the public interest, while Candidate B's position is nothing but a sop to special interests?!" But a lot of people, including some students, realize that life is more complicated than that. I'm not saying that all political positions are equally good, but merely pointing out that just because the candidate with the position you like on Issue X wins doesn't mean that he will actually try to do anything to bring it about, or succeed even if he does try. If a student sees it that way, forcing him to vote in order to pass a class is nothing more than mandating that he waste some of his time.

Therefore, political non-involvement is entirely rational and certainly does not rise to the level of "turpitude" as Skaggs says.

Skaggs opines that "it's time for students to seize their power." Alas, the chief problem with the United States is rooted in groups "seizing their power" and using the political system to help them get what they want, inevitably at the expense of others. With her "you must vote because I say so" attitude, she has set a bad example and given a small boost to the authoritarianism she thinks she is combatting.

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