Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
washingtonpost.com
Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#2It if must be done, it must be done with a radical reform of ballot access, low electoral ceilings and easy-to-register third parties. However, it's not a panacea. Greece, Argentina, Brazil managed to have quite corrupt, dirty politics even with mandatory voting.
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#3It if must be done, it must be done with a radical reform of ballot access, low electoral ceilings and easy-to-register third parties. However, it's not a panacea. Greece, Argentina, Brazil managed to have quite corrupt, dirty politics even with mandatory voting.
Are there any successful countries with mandatory voting?
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#4It if must be done, it must be done with a radical reform of ballot access, low electoral ceilings and easy-to-register third parties. However, it's not a panacea. Greece, Argentina, Brazil managed to have quite corrupt, dirty politics even with mandatory voting.
Are there any successful countries with mandatory voting?
The better question may be: "Are there successful countries due to mandatory voting?"
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#5It if must be done, it must be done with a radical reform of ballot access, low electoral ceilings and easy-to-register third parties. However, it's not a panacea. Greece, Argentina, Brazil managed to have quite corrupt, dirty politics even with mandatory voting.
Are there any successful countries with mandatory voting?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting#Current_use_b...
Australia is the country most like the US on the list. I don't know enough about the Central American countries on the list to judge their internal politics. The unenforced list includes Belgium and France.
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#6Mandatory voting would give a lot of power to the gerrymanderers. As we know, modeling the behavior of large groups of people is easy. When you can predict who will vote and you have access to drawing voter district boundaries, you have the ability to preselect who will be elected.
Not voting is a choice and allows voter apathy to play a role in deciding elections. If an area is a majority Democrat but most of the voters don't care enough to vote then a motivated minority party can put boots on the ground and get their candidate into office. With mandatory voting that would never happen as the majority incumbent would always win thanks to receiving all those votes cast out of obligation rather than intent. That aggravates the most difficult part of democracy which is giving people with unpopular yet valid opinions a voice in the conversation.
Now, if we had proportional representation...
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#7Mandatory vote is a good start, and will encourage more people to think about their government. In addition, get rid of electoral college. Add verifiable secure online voting and promote a system wide education of the people on the benefits of political envolvement.
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#8[deleted]
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#9Mandatory vote is a good start, and will encourage more people to think about their government. In addition, get rid of electoral college. Add verifiable secure online voting and promote a system wide education of the people on the benefits of political envolvement.
Many non voters will think about government, and realize none of the candidates represent them in the slightest.
Re: Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote
#10Well in Brazil we do have mandatory voting and our political situation is one of the worst in the world.. Everybody here is trying the opposite - to make voting not mandatory.
The population does not feel represented by the politicians, yet we have to choose one of them every election. Buying votes /manipulating electors in this scenario looks really easy..