COMMENTARY: Voting… a right, an obligation, or a legal requirement?

October 16, 2026  |  By Bill Schubart

Belgium has had compulsory voting since 1893 but assesses no fine for non-voting.

In 1924, Australia added compulsory voting, along with compulsory voter registration. This raised voting rates from 78% to 96%, whereas the U.S. voter turnout in 2024 was 63.7%. Australians who fail to vote are fined up to $125 U.S.

I believe mandatory voting is a good idea. It’s been shown to make electoral results more broadly representative and also to inhibit voter suppression. This strengthens democracy, especially in these times when national voter-suppression attempts are a manifest threat.

“Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people,” from Pericles’ Funeral Oration, delivered around 431 BCE at the public burial of the first Athenian soldiers who died in the Peloponnesian War.

The male vote has been understood to be a civic obligation and a hard-won goal since its inception in 5th century B.C. Athens. In more recent times, women, people of color, and legal immigrants have been added to our voter rolls, though today we’re seeing a broad range of disenfranchisement efforts under the current federal administration.

The upcoming midterm elections give us the opportunity, if not the obligation, to weigh in on our local, statewide, and national leaders in all three branches of government – although some states, like Vermont, appoint rather than elect judges, while state attorneys general are elected.

Along with our responsibility to vote comes an obligation to inform ourselves on community issues and how electoral candidates might respond to them.

Here are areas within which Vermonters are experiencing accelerating challenges: housing, hunger, healthcare access and affordability, property tax-funded public education, environmentally friendly public transportation, equitable criminal justice, federal expulsion of new immigrants – with inherent racism, and the lack of effective and responsive government systems to mandate and enforce appropriate regulation and equitable taxation. Every citizen is affected by one or more of these issues. As such, they become the basis of dialogue between candidates and voters.

Many Vermont community organizations and media have worked hard to create opportunities for dialogue between voters and candidates. Vermont Public has sponsored broadcast debates at most levels of leadership. SevenDaysVT has profiled most races, as has VTDigger. Many local papers have also profiled local and regional races. Vermonters have excellent opportunities to inform themselves about the issues they care about and to explore how their candidates will work to address them.

The big question: Among the many candidates for public office, which ones understand our specific issues and exhibit the leadership experience and vision to articulate, embrace, execute, monitor, and be held accountable for the long-term success of their solutions? Half-measures may alleviate acute pain, but they don’t address chronic problems.

In Vermont’s state leadership race, we have two native Vermont candidates, one with substantial experience in office, giving us the ability to assess his leadership skills. During the pandemic and during Vermont’s flooding, Gov. Phil Scott showed himself to be a strong crisis manager. But we must also ask about the extent to which he has demonstrated a strategic capacity to address the accelerating pain points Vermonters have been experiencing.

The other candidate, although new to the political scene in Vermont, has substantial international experience advising leaders on economic development and growth strategies. Amanda Janoo earned a master’s in the philosophy of development economics from the University of Cambridge in 2013. Since August of 2026, she has served as the economics and policy lead for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, working with the United Nations and international development organizations as an industrial policy and structural transformation specialist. 

So, we must ask ourselves if we’re willing to welcome a new player with transformative experience to our political landscape. We must also be aware of what’s within the purview of a given candidate’s power. Can the issue be resolved at the community level, state, regional level, or is it solely a national one?

By way of example, the federal policy of latent xenophobia and forced expulsion of new Americans creates economic pain in Vermont’s agricultural, hospitality and maintenance industries. How many Burlington restaurants are struggling to hire staff? How many farms are suffering the loss of critical workers? Other than demonstrating against ICE raids and offering legal help to new Americans in our community, Vermonters can’t have much effect at the national level, except to elect new presidential leadership in 2028.

Healthcare’s a somewhat more complicated example. Vermont has the most expensive healthcare insurance cost in the country.  But we can elect a governor and legislative leaders who will ensure the availability of primary care in most of our 250 communities instead of in our hospital emergency rooms, where the expense is far greater. Which candidates understand that to be financially viable in a small state, healthcare infrastructure must be deployed regionally, not locally, since every town cannot have its own full-service hospital?

Although we can effect changes that will make quality healthcare affordable and accessible to more Vermonters, if we really want a strategic solution, we’ll need to elect a president and Congress members willing to challenge the costly but lucrative status quo and initiate a national healthcare system like Medicare for All, as suggested by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But the bottom line is that we must think, ask, and challenge the candidates, and then go out and vote.

Our shared future is in our hands, but only if we fulfill our civic duty to vote. There are many citizens around the world who yearn for our right to fair, free, and open elections.

Let’s stand up and be counted.

Bill Schubart is a retired businessman, columnist and fiction writer. He lives and writes in Hinesburg.