Free Riding and Compulsory Voting

This article addresses one of the most salient arguments for compulsory voting, according to which electoral abstention constitutes a type of free-riding behavior that the state is justified in mitigating through coercive action. The argument is grounded by two distinct claims, one related to fairness and the other to compulsion. While previous works have focused on the latter, I presently aim to provide an in-depth analysis of the former, showing that this claim fails in both of its two principal accounts offered so far. By contrast, I argue that the fairness claim can be appropriately specified for a combination of public good and contributory action but that, even in such a plausible account, it can at best function as a moral requirement regarding electoral behavior, without being able to provide support for the political institution of compulsory voting.