Political participation (when it takes the form of voting) is positively correlated with life satisfaction. However, this result is limited to the LAPOP data, and does not appear in the Latinobarometro data. Furthermore, we do not find a similarly robust positive relationship between life satisfaction and other forms of political participation, like attending town hall meetings. To the extent that we detect a significant relationship between participation and life satisfaction, our analysis suggests that the direction of causality is the reverse of that hypothesized in the literature. In particular, evidence from survey questions that allow us to determine why individuals chose not to vote in a referendum in Costa Rica suggests that individuals who want to vote are more satisfied with their lives than others, regardless of whether or not they actually cast their ballots. Finally, perhaps the most consistent relationship that we find is one that does not follow from the existing empirical or theoretical literature: we find a robust negative relationship between enforced compulsory voting and average national life satisfaction.