August 17, 2006 10:46AM 

# Against Forcing Voters to be Free 

By [John Samples](https://www.cato.org/people/john-samples) 

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Around election time pundits begin to fret about low voter turnout in the United States. Norman Ornstein has even called for mandatory voting, complete with sanctions. The voters should be, as it were, forced to be free.

[Ilya Somin](http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_08_13-2006_08_19.shtml#1155812746) at the Volokh Conspiracy shows why such concerns are misplaced. We should be worrying, Ilya says, about the rational ignorance of voters who do go to the polls. His longer argument about voter ignorance may be found [here](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2372).

##### Related Tags 

[General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) 

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