Can we complain if we didn't vote?

"If you don't vote, don't complain," is a slogan seen on bumper stickers plastered on cars, laptops, bulletin boards, and anywhere else the public might get the message. The message is clear: "If you don't vote, you forfeited your right to complain about how government is being run."

But is it fair to shut down others' opinions because they chose not to vote in an election? Millions of eligible Americans simply don't show up to vote.

More Americans typically show up to vote in presidential elections and the midterm elections two years later than they do in local elections. But even in these elections, the turnout barely reaches the halfway mark of all eligible voters. For the 2016 presidential election in the United States, 55.7% of eligible voters cast a ballot. For the 2018 midterm elections, more than 49% of eligible voters cast a ballot - a percentage widely heralded as being epic and not seen since the midterm elections of the mid-1960s.

Compare these percentages to Australia where in their 2019 federal election, 96.8% of eligible Australians registered to vote and 91.9% of those voted. Of course, in Australia, according to the Western Australian Electoral Commission's website, "Voting at State general elections, by-elections and referenda is compulsory." That's right. You get fined for not voting in Australia. For a first offense the fine is $20 Australian ($13.89 U.S.). It rises to $50 Australian ($34.73 U.S.) for subsequent violations.

It's hardly likely that the United States will join Australia and a handful of other countries that have compulsory voting. In the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in 2020, there will be an effort to get voters registered and out to vote by Tuesday, November 3, at the latest.

I regularly encourage students and friends to register to vote and then to vote, often offering a stamp to anyone who needs to mail in an absentee ballot because they are away from home. I've written before about my #oldguywithstamps Tweets and my belief that while we are not obligated to vote in the United States, it's the right thing to do.

Nevertheless, when I see the "If you don't vote, don't complain" bumper stickers, the message may be well-intended as a nudge to get eligible voters to actually show up to vote, but ultimately it sits wrong.

No matter how strongly I may believe that voting is the right thing to do, you have the right to choose not to vote. Exercising that right does not silence you as a citizen with the same Constitutional rights as those of us who do vote in each local, state, and federal election.

Sure, if you want any hope of effecting change, you give up a fundamental means of doing so when you choose not to vote. But you never lose your right to complain or to express an opinion about an issue or a policy. That's your right.

There are fancy social science equations for calculating the value of your vote if you want to change the outcome of an election. But it doesn't take an equation to make clear that if you don't vote you lose a chance to have a voice in the outcome, no matter how much you complain afterward.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin

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(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.