ABSTRACT
What can be done to ensure that voting is for young people just as much as it is for other age groups? There is no shortage of ideas among scholars and political commentators. All of these ideas are certainly well intentioned, and I have no qualms in recommending any of them. But if one really wants to solve the problem, and not just make a dent in it, then only one proven solution exists. In the end, I have to agree with Arend Lijphart, who has persuasively argued that “Compulsory voting is the only institutional mechanism . . . that can assure high turnout virtually by itself.” 124 This chapter explains how I arrived at this conclusion, first reviewing the other major proposals and then explaining why compulsory voting appears to be the only proven answer to the problem.
