If nobody voted...

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What would happen if not one single person voted in an election?

I think that if no one voted there would have to be an extreme case of anarchy/a nuclear holocaust going on, so an election would be the least of our worries.

If no one voted, then there would be ideal conditions for a dictatorship.

The preeminent reasons for elections is so no Grand Poohbah just takes over a leadership position by force of arms. We would go back to the days where warlords ruled.

There would not be anarchy and ww3 - either the encumbent would go on until another round of elections was held, or an interim government would take over day to day business.
At some point an election would be held with mandatory voting because simply put, this one act of making a cross somewhere is the legitimation of the entire system.
If, however, people en masse boycotted the election even with mandatory voting laws, then you have a real crisis without precedence, I mean, that's the people declaring that the current version of democracy is now over. Who knows what would follow.

Yes My next question was going to be; will voting ever be made mandatory?

It is—in some countries.

I think OP asks a legitimate question. There have to be "some" rules officially laid out for this situation. Can someone look up what they are?

Voting is not compulsory in the US or UK.

But it is in these places:

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Bu ... /appendixg

I don't think it would happen in my life time but the way things move so fast these days you just never know.

In the UK over 30% of eligible voters chose not to vote. The number had been steadily rising since the 1970's.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/105 ... in-the-uk/

Seems to be a similar percentage in America as well.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/94503139 ... -heres-why

If there are no laws to regulate what would happen in such cases, you might quickly find out who decides about what to do in such exceptional circumstances. Or more likely, the previous elected officials will just go on with business as usual, until there has been an election with enough votes have been cast.

Routinely, in the US, about 35-45% of eligible voters don’t vote in presidential elections. Even less for non-presidential ones.

The UK is better in this instance.

Here are the statistics:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_t ... _elections

I just tried to google what would happen, and found this link https://sites.psu.edu/academy/2016/10/2 ... -about-it/

It says electoral college would still vote.

But then the next question is: how would they select the electoral college?

Because what they say on that link would only work if they have one set of electors that feel morally inclined to vote for whomever the majority of the state voted. But, from my understanding, it is not true. They actually have two sets of electors. If the majority of the state voted democrat they would put democrat electors and if the majority of the state voted republican they would put republican set of electors. So if they didn't vote at all, which of the two sets of electors would they pick?

And by the way this relates to another question. What if the majority of a state voted for a third party. Do they have a set of electors for each of the third parties? Because if they don't, they pretty much prevent third parties from winning even if they get the majority of popular vote, which is unfair.

Donald Trump would declare himself the winner.

If nobody voted, there would be no Electoral College votes. Electoral College votes are based on the popular vote for each state and DC.

If a third-party candidate won the popular vote in that state, obviously the person would get its electoral votes. Read up on the 1948 election, as an example. A third-party candidate, Strom Thurmond, won almost all the Southern electoral votes.

Here, I think they would take it to trhe court, the court decide the elections invalid and then repeat it.
I find it extremely improbable in the national elections but it might happen on some low-level local ones.

ED: I found procedures in case no candidate appears in local elections - but none in case no voters show up.

In a nation of tens of millions that would impossible. That each and every voter would independently simultaneously decide to not vote.

Even if there were a movement to boycott the election (for some reason) you couldnt get every single voter to participate and not vote. But you could imagine such a boycott happening. Folks get fed up and decide that the candidates fielded by both parties are unspeakably bad, and it becomes a 'thing' spreading the nation via both old media and the Net to 'boycott the vote'. And instead of the normal lackluster 60 percent of Americans voting...only say 14 percent vote.

But then those 14 percent would pick the next POTUS.