I’m writing a chapter against compulsory voting for a textbook.

Prima facie, we should assume compulsory voting is wrong until shown otherwise. Compulsory voting is, after all, compulsory. When a government proposes to force people to do something, this is presumed wrong and unjust until shown otherwise.

In response to this point, I keep encountering the following objection:

Sure, compulsory voting violates citizens’ liberty. However, it’s only a petty or trivial violation. For most citizens, it is not very onerous. (And we should make it less onerous for the others.)

Okay, granted, for most citizens, compulsory voting is just a small violation of liberty. However, I don’t see how this point neutralizes the objection that it violates people’s liberty.

To illustrate why, imagine the government passed the following into law:

The Red Scarf Mandate

The government shall provide each citizen with a (hypoallergenic, non-Shatnez, humanely produced, etc.) red scarf. Each citizen must, at a  time of her own choosing, wear the scarf for a total of 2 minutes per year or face a $1 penalty.

(To alleviate concerns that enforcing this would require a police state, imagine the government just knows magically whether you’ve complied with the mandate or not.)

The Red Scarf Mandate is a petty violation of citizens’ liberty, much more petty than many real-life violations. However, even though it is petty, that doesn’t neutralize the objection that it violates citizens’ liberty. It would morally wrong for Congress to pass the Red Scarf Mandate unless it had compelling reasons. We have our own lives to lead. We are presumed free to live as we like until shown otherwise. The government may not push us around and tell us what to do unless it has extremely good grounds to override our freedom.

I don’t see this as a particularly libertarian point. Rather, it seems like something all liberals must accept. Liberals believe there is a presumption of liberty. Even the most minor and insignificant instances of compulsion have to be justified.