Abolishing Compulsory Voting: The 2024 Experience in the Flemish Region of Belgium

ABSTRACT There are few clear-cut examples of countries that have abolished or introduced compulsory voting. When the Netherlands abolished the system in 1971, Irwin (1974) documented how this led to a sharp reduction in voter turnout, especially among young people, women, and those with little political interest. Flanders, the largest autonomous region of Belgium, abolished compulsory voting in October 2024, and we accessed panel data collected before and after the event. We replicate Irwin’s analysis because electoral participation in the region decreased by almost 26 percentage points. Remarkably, our results are similar regarding the effect of gender and political interest, but we do not find a significant effect of educational level. Therefore, the normative argument that abolishing compulsory voting leads to more inequality based on education is not supported by our results. We do not find substantial consequences for the average policy input.