How Could Universal Civic Duty Voting Improve American Democracy?

Heather McGhee describes how universal civic duty voting would give America a system in which everyone would count – poor and working people, young people, people from all communities of color – and how the voting electorate would look far more like America

By Heather McGhee September 12, 2022

Carnegie Reporter Winter 2022 Voting

Credit: Marilyn Nieves via Getty Images

Universal civic duty voting is the idea that every American citizen, as part of her basic civic duties, be required to participate in our nation’s democratic life.

Universal civic duty voting would give us a system in which everyone would count, and the people who represent us would have to speak to all of us. The percentages of poor and working people, of young people, and of people from all communities of color participating in voting would jump immediately if universal civic duty voting were adopted, and the voting electorate would look far more like America.

Many positive ripple effects would emerge from this one major change. All jurisdictions — federal, state, and local — would have incentives to enact a set of “gateway reforms” (such as same day registration and early voting), which would make it more possible and convenient for voters to fulfill their new legal responsibilities.

In addition, I expect a wide range of institutions would respond by promoting participation. Schools would increase their commitment to civic education. Companies would make sure their employees could fulfill their now-required civic duty. Civic and community organizations would make it a larger part of their activities and culture. Media and communications platforms would redouble their efforts to make sure people knew what to do.

The nature of political campaigns would change, too. Now, so much of campaigns are about finding “your” base and getting them to turn out. And, as we have seen all too often, if you can depress the other candidate’s or party’s base — either by erecting legal or procedural barriers, by negative campaigning, by misinformation, or even by intimidation — well, that’s fine, too.

But if everyone were voting, guaranteed, campaigns would have to craft messages that appealed to everyone, and voter suppression would become a thing of the past. And — call me an optimist — I think citizens would respond as well. Young people would develop the voting muscle much earlier, and people would educate themselves, both about procedures and about issues and candidates, in order to be able to fulfill their legal responsibilities. It would become part of the culture, like filling out the census, paying taxes, registering for selective service, and serving on a jury.

In their book 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting (The New Press, 2022), E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport have done all of us a great service by making the case for this game-changing policy as no one has done before. Universal civic duty voting should become a staple of the agenda of organizations trying to improve American democracy, and I hope some truly forward-looking cities and states will embrace and enact the idea, thereby fulfilling their role as laboratories of democracy. I look forward to being a part of this conversation, and I have no doubt that if we can make a democracy that truly reflects the sum of us, we will find our "solidarity dividend," and we will indeed all prosper together.

Heather McGhee is an expert in economic and social policy and the bestselling author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (One World, 2021). She is the former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos and currently chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.

This excerpt originally appeared in 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting by E.J. Dionne Jr. and Miles Rapoport. Copyright © 2022 by E. J. Dionne Jr. and Miles Rapoport. Foreword © 2022 by Heather McGhee. Published by The New Press. Reprinted here with permission. Carnegie Corporation of New York funded some of the research that led to the publication of the book.