But the more you ask the question, the dustier the answer. Switzerland, which asks the question continually, is flat bottom of the European league. We can see the future in Scotland and Wales and beyond. It reserves the management of politics, and of great decisions, for an elite of commitment. It exacerbates the alienation of the poor and the old and the dispossessed.
Democracy is supposed to unite society.
But now the balance is turning. The key benefit of compulsion, when you look at it, is not what happens at the end of the electoral process. Its force is in the vital earlier stages of registration and inclusion. It obliges the state to find the poor and the mobile young and indigent. It includes because it tells the bureaucrats and the politicians what their duty is, too.