Ill think of a title later AC

I affirm

Cross X checks theory violations. They must clarify the stance of the AC to get a violation failure to ask
means you shouldnt vote on arbitrary neg theory.

Shineman gives us the definition of compulsory voting
Shineman, V. "Compulsory voting as compulsory balloting: How mandatory balloting laws increase informed voting without increasing
uninformed voting." Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. 2010.
Compulsory voting (CV) refers to a legal requirement to vote, and the term is typically used to describe the voting system practiced in 31 democracies around the world today. The
legal requirement is typically accompanied by a penalty for non-compliance, ranging from a fine to public
sanction to a loss of social services.

I value morality as ought implies a moral obligation.

Epistemology comes before all other ethical foundations because labeling things moral or immoral is
just a function of our knowledge. We need to know how we know what right and wrong are before we
can pick the best definition.

And, A priori reasoning is impossible so the only epistemologically sound basis for
morality is experience.
Schwartz
A Defense of Nave Empiricism: It is Neither Self-Refuting Nor Dogmatic. Stephen P. Schwartz. Ithaca College. pp.1-14.
The empirical support for the fundamental principle of empiricismis diffuse but salient. Our common empirical experience and experimental psychology offer evidence that humans
do not have any capacity to garner knowledge except by empirical sources. The fact is that we believe that there is no
source of knowledge, information, or evidence apart from observation, empirical scientific investigations, and our sensory experience of the world, and we believe this on the basis of our empirical a posteriori
experiences and our general empirical view of how things work. For example, we believe on empirical evidence that humans are continuous with the rest of nature and that we rely
like other animals on our senses to tell us how things are. If humans are more successful than other animals, it is not because we possess special non-experiential ways of knowing, but because we are better at
cooperating, collating, and inferring. In particular we do not have any capacity for substantive a priori knowledge. There is no known
mechanism by which such knowledge would be made possible. This is an empirical claim.

Next, all humans experience the badness of pain and the goodness of pleasure
Nagel
Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere, HUP, 1986: 156-168.
I shall defend the unsurprising claimthat sensory pleasure is good and pain bad, no matter whose they are. The point of the exercise is to see how the pressures of
objectification operate in a simple case. Physical pleasure and pain do not usually depend on activities or desires which themselves raise questions of justification and value. They are just [is a] sensory experiences in relation to which we are fairly passive, but toward which we feel
involuntary desire or aversion. Almost everyone takes the avoidance of his own pain and the promotion of his own pleasure as subjective reasons for action in a fairly
simple way; they are not back up by any further reasons. On the other hand if someone pursues pain or avoids pleasure, either it as a means to some end or it is backed up by dark reasons like guilt or sexual masochism. What sort of general value, if any, ought to be assigned to pleasure
and pain when we consider these facts from an objective standpoint? What kind of judgment can we reasonably make about these things when we view them in abstraction from who we are? We can begin by asking why there is no plausibility
in the zero position, that pleasure and pain have no value of any kind that can be objectively
recognized. That would mean that I have no reason to take aspirin for a severe headache, however I may in fact be motivated; and that looking at it from outside, you couldn't even say that someone had a reason not to put his hand on a hot stove, just because of the
pain. Try looking at it from the outside and see whether you can manage to withhold that judgment. If the idea of objective practical reason makes any sense at all, so that there is some judgment to withhold, it does not seempossible. If the general arguments against the reality of
objective reasons are no good, then it is at least possible that I have a reason, and not just an inclination, to refrain from putting my hand on a
hot stove. But given the possibility, it seems meaningless to deny that this is so. Oddly enough, however, we can think of a story that would go with such a denial. It might be suggested that the aversion to pain is a useful phobiahaving nothing to do with the intrinsic
undesirability of pain itselfwhich helps us avoid or escape the injuries that are signaled by pain. (The same type of purely instrumental value might be ascribed to sensory pleasure: the pleasures of food, drink, and sex might be regarded as having no value in themselves, though our
natural attraction to themassists survival and reproduction.) There would then be nothing wrong with pain in itself, and someone who was never motivated deliberately to do anything just because he knew it would reduce or avoid pain would have nothing the matter with him. He would
still have involuntary avoidance reactions, otherwise it would be hard to say that he felt pain at all. And he would be motivated to reduce pain for other reasonsbecause it was an effective way to avoid the danger being signaled, or because interfered with some physical or mental
activity that was important to him. He just wouldn't regard the pain as itself something he had any reason to avoid, even though he hated the feeling just as much as the rest of us. (And of course he wouldn't be able to justify the avoidance of pain i n the way that we customarily justify
avoiding what we hate without reasonthat is, on the ground that even an irrational hatred makes its object very unpleasant!) There is nothing self-contradictory in this proposal, but it seems nevertheless insane. Without some positive
reason to think there is nothing in itself good or bad about having an experience you intensely like or
dislike, we can't seriously regard the common impression to the contrary as a collective illusion. Such things are at
least good or bad for us, if anything is. What seems to be going on here is that we cannot froman objective standpoint withhold a certain kind of endorsement of the most direct and immediate subjective value judgments we make concerning the contents of our own consciousness. We
regard ourselves as too close to those things to be mistaken in our immediate, nonideological evaluative impressions. No objective view we can attain could possibly overrule our subjective authority in such cases. There can be no reason to reject the appearances here.

Thus, because each agent values their own pleasure, they must also value the pleasure
of others.
Sayre-McCord
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey. "Mill's Proof of the Principle of Utility: A More than Half-Hearted Defense." Social Philosophy and Policy 18.02
(2001): 330-360.
According to the second argument, the evaluative starting point is again each person thinking "my own happiness is valuable," but
this fact about each person is taken as evidence, with respect to each bit of happiness that is valued, that that bit is valuable. Each
personis seen as ha[s]ving reason to think that the happiness she enjoys is valuable, and reason to think of others -- given that they are in a parallel situation with respect to the happiness they
enjoy -- that each person's happiness is such that there is the same evidence available to each for the value of
the happiness that another person enjoys as there is for the value of one's own happiness. If happiness is such that every
piece of it is desired by someone, then it seems as if, in taking ourselves to have reason to see the bit we value as valuable, we are
committed to acknowledging the value of all the rest.

Therefore, since we have no non-arbitrary reason to value our own happiness over the happiness of
others, the standard is maximizing happiness.
Furthermore, Util best respects human rationality by respecting the fundamental
equality of persons.
Cummiskey
Cummiskey, David. Kantian Consequentialism. Published by Oxford University Press. 1996.
the reasonable solution to such a dilemma involves promoting, insofar as one can, the conditions necessary for rational beings. If I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I
do not use them arbitrarily and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may
have dignity, an unconditional and incomparable value that transcends any market value, but, as rational beings, persons also have a fundamental
equality which dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others. The formula of the end-in-itself thus does not support
the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal
consideration dictates that one may sacrifice some to save many.

Moreover, the only way to guarantee the freedom and fundamental equality of
people is through voter participation. Our rights are in jeopardy unless we exercise
them.
Pracilio 12
Pracilio (Amy, journalist for 3rd Degree) Compulsory voting Does it keep the community at large more connected? Have First World countries
forgotten the value of the vote? Edith Cowan University, Parliamentary Research Internship, Nov 28, 2012
Political participation is the lifeblood of democracy, representative government proves obsolete
without the consent of the citizens through their electoral voice: the vote. The struggle for universal franchise utilises a long history, with battles
continually fought in several corners of the world today. The franchise is the first liberty, failure to exercise our voting rights imperils all of our rights including
the right to vote itself (Hill, 2010, p.921). Consequently, through voting, democratic ideals of freedom, liberty and equality
are continually sustained. In 1965, upon enfranchising African Americans, President Lyndon B. Johnson emulated the vote as the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls
which imprison men (in Garrow, 1980, p.138). Universal franchise protects rights, yet only through its exercise does the impact of
the vote materialise.

I contend that compulsory voting best maximizes happiness.

First, The poor are uniquely under-represented under voluntary systems utility is
lower for the poor voter, offering a compelling causal explanation.
Carey and Horiuchi 13
Carey, John M., and Yusaku Horiuchi. "Compulsory Voting and Income Inequality." Available at SSRN 2374092 (2014).
The first assumption is that when voting is voluntary, wealthier people vote at higher rates than do poorer ones. This
pattern has been found to be empirically robust over time and across most countries (Jackson, Brown, and Wright 1998; Leighley and Nagler 1992; Singh 2011; Tingsten 1937). 1 The top panel in Figure
1 shows a hypothetical distribution of voters, arrayed fromthe poor to the rich across the horizontal axis, with the vertical axis representing their utility fromvoting. The potential benefits of voting are assumed to be constant across citizens,2 but the costs are
higher andthus, overall utility is lower for the poor. These costs can be informational (Downs 1957; Matsusaka 1995). For example, since poverty
corresponds everywhere with low education levels, the efforts required for voters to gain information about candidates and policy platforms should be larger for the poor than the rich (Gordon
and Segura 1997). The costs can also be logistical. Poor would-be voters may lack access to transportation to get to the polls, or
flexible work schedules, that allow wealthier citizens more easily to cast their ballots. For these reasons, the scatter plot in the top
panel, which uses simulated data, posits lower expected utility of voting for the poor than the rich.

We see that citizens who choose not to vote do so largely because they rightly feel the system is not
looking out for their interests, the bias toward the rich leaves them alienated from politics.
Even if some genuinely do not want to vote for other reasons it is not a violation of liberty to compel
them because negative liberty ends at the point that ones actions harm others. By choosing to not
engage in the political process, abstainers harm those who share similar interest by decreasing the
political power of those groups.
Compulsory voting solves reduces inequality and promotes freedom and liberties
and minimizes harm to others.
Hill
Hill, Lisa. "Compulsory Voting: What Choices Matter?."
By preventing decline and ensuring that voting participation is not confined to the more prosperous members of
society, compulsory voting serves to protect such important democratic values as representativeness,
legitimacy, accountability, political equality and minimisation of elite power. Compulsory voting
regimes havea number of other advantages over voluntary regimes: they have better (i.e more even) income distribution, lower levels of political
corruption and higher levels of satisfaction with the way democracy is working (Birch, 2009). Contrary to the claims of critics, all
these benefits are achieved fairly cheaply; in fact, the average cost of a formal vote in Australian elections is around 179 cents. Further, as the Australian example clearly demonstrates, the practical difficulties of
ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to vote are far frominsurmountable.

High turnout is necessary to represent the voices of all voters otherwise politicians
will have no reason to represent those who dont vote.
Birch 09
Sarah Birch. The Case for Compulsory Voting. Public Policy Research. March-May 2009
The link between political fairness and full electoral participation is perhaps the most intuitively obvious. In a democracy, political fairness is understood largely in terms of political equality, for it is on the principle of equal voice that our entire democratic systemrests. Yet
current electoral events fail to grant everyone equal voice, because they fail to record all voices. And
without a record of everyones view, it is not possible to formulate a collective view that reflects the
perspectives of all citizens An election can be thought of as a political census in which near universal partici pation is required to generate political decisions that are an accurate reflection of what the population actually wants. When
less than two-thirds of the electorate goes to the polls, the government that results from this election typically has the expressed support of well under a third of those eligible to vote.
Democratic legitimacy concerns may not weigh heavily with the ordinary voter, but they certainly do trouble the collective minds of governments, and it is no wonder that falling turnout should have generated hand-wringing among the political elite. Compulsory
turnout would ensure that virtually all voices are taken into account, and that the outputs of the
electoral process thus have full democratic legitimacy. Social fairness One of the direct substantive results of incomplete turnout is social injustice. There is unequal turnout in Britain and
turnout inequality has grown considerably since the 1960s (Keaney and Rogers 2006). Comparative data tells us that higher rates of electoral participation are associated with greater wealth distribution (Hicks and Swank 1992, Lijphart 1997, Mueller and Stratmann 2003). Finally, there is
evidence to suggest that states with compulsory turnout have lower levels of income inequality than those where voting is voluntary (Chong and Olivera 2005). In Europe and Latin America, compulsory turnout is associated with a 5.52 per cent relative reduction in the Gini Index (Birch
2009). In short, where voting is voluntary, the views that contribute to policymaking are skewed towards the
rich, and the result is a widening of the wealth gap. Why do the poor not come together to exercise their electoral muscle? The fact is that the economically
deprived face a severe coordination problem in the political sphere. Often poor also in the resources most useful in politics time, money,
connections, sophisticated communication skills they have only their vote. At the same time, they have little reason to use their vote if others in their position do not
do so, and little means of coordinating with those others to ensure that they collectively act to represent their interests. Political parties might in theory serve this coordination role, but it is not clear that in the UK today there is
any political party that genuinely represents the interests of the poor. Indeed, parties lack incentive to tune
into the interests of non-voters, especially when those with the most intractable problems make up a disproportionate number of this group. For all its faults, the British political
system is relatively good at keeping political parties more or less responsive to the electorate most of the time. It is not so
good at keeping parties responsive to the non-electorate, for there is no mechanism in our current set-up to encourage such responsiveness. This generates
a cycle of neglect by politicians, breeding electoral alienation, which in turn provides an excuse for
further neglect.
Compulsory voting increases voter turnout and creates a social norm of voting,
encouraging higher political participation.
Matsler 02
SEAN MATSLER. University of Southern California Law School. COMPULSORY VOTING IN AMERICA. S. Cal. L. Rev. 76 (2002): 953-978
Under a compulsory voting regime, failure to vote, like a failure to register for the Selective Service or to serve on a jury, would be treated as a violation of
a legal duty. Reprimands for such a failure, though not severe, would be persuasive. For instance, nonvoting might result in an inability to
receive federal student loans. Alternatively, a small (that is, $50) fine comparable to a traffic infraction could be levied on nonvoters with
an increasing scale to accommodate repeat nonvoters. Importantly, under the system proposed in this essay, a final none of the above
option would be included on the ballot after the traditional choices for office. Although technically abstention, selecting the
none of the above choice would satisfy a citizens legal duty to vote. It may also serve to defeat a First Amendment compelled speech attack against
compulsory voting. If the experience of other industrialized democracies can be used as an example, a law or constitutional amendment mandating voting in the United States should propel
voter turnout as a percentage of the eligible voter population to nearly 100%.13 Suchan astronomically high
participationlevel would legitimize Americas democratically elected government and, ideally, encourage a knowledgeable
electorate.14 Over time, compulsory voting should also foster a social norm of voting in America. Violation of
this norm, like violations of the norm of littering in public or of smoking cigarettes in front of children,
would elicit social condemnation.

Increasing political participation increases happiness in the aggregate.
Shapiro Rebecca and Winters 08
Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca, and Matthew S. Winters. Political participation and quality of life. No. 638. Working paper//Inter-American
Development Bank, Research Department, 2008.
In the aggregate, then, political participation likely has important effects on policy choices and outcomes. In addition to
the effects of participation on policy outcomes, however, political participation may matter in a very different way, by provid[es]ing an individual with direct utility and
thereby increasing happiness and satisfaction with life (SWL) in general. In Development as Freedom, the economist Amartya Sen speaks of the freedomto
participate as being a key form of development. Sen views participation in making decisions that affect ones life and the li ves of others as fundamental to human well-being. With his co-author Jean Drze, Sen writes, Participation can also be
seen to have intrinsic value for the quality of life. Indeed, being able to do something through political
actionfor oneself or for othersis one of the elementary freedoms that people have reason to
value (2002: 359).

Moreover, compulsory voting increases informed voting while not increasing uninformed voting. my
study controlled for external variables and is comparative.
Shineman 2
Victoria Anne Shineman (Visiting Scholar Center for the Study of Democratic Politics Princeton
University). Compulsory Voting as Compulsory Balloting: How Mandatory Balloting Laws Increase
Informed Voting Without Increasing Uninformed Voting. Mimeo, Princeton University, 2010
The predictions of the CB Model were tested through a computerized laboratory experiment. The
experiment enabled full control of external variables, and provided a direct test of the models
predictions. The experimental results found strong support for the substantive predictions of the model:
CB did increase informed turnout in some cases, but did not increase uninformed turnout. Although the
cut point predictions of the model were not always realized, the comparative static predictions were
supported, a result commonly found in voting studies (see Morton and Williams 2010). The
experimental results also found that CB further increased informed turnout in cases where behavioral
changes were not predicted: in regions where informed turnout was never predicted, and where it was
always predicted.