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CNN reports that when asked how to offset the influence of big money in politics, President Barack Obama suggested it's time to make voting a requirement. "Other countries have mandatory voting," said Obama "It would be transformative if everybody voted -- that would counteract money more than anything," he said, adding it was the first time he had shared the idea publicly.
"The people who tend not to vote are young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups. There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls."
At least 26 countries have compulsory voting, according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Failure to vote is punishable by a fine in countries such as Australia and Belgium; if you fail to pay your fine in Belgium, you could go to prison. Less than 37% of eligible voters actually voted in the 2014 midterm elections, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts. That means about 144 million Americans -- more than the population of Russia -- skipped out.
Critics of mandatory voting have questioned the practicality of passing and enforcing such a requirement; others say that freedom also means the freedom not to do something.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2015, @12:16PM
The choice to not vote can itself be a political statement of nonconfidence or contempt for the process. I choose not to vote, but not because I'm lazy or uninterested, I refrain because corruption ensures that it just doesn't matter. Forcing people to vote will not produce better results, it will only increase turn out. People who silently protest or feel disenfranchised will do the bare minimum to avoid penalty, they won't vote with the care and concern that educated voting demands.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Sunday March 22 2015, @12:49PM
While I agree in principle, the reality of that choice is not that the folks we didn't vote for go "OMG! He didn't vote! What are we doing wrong!?", they go "Well, that's another demographic group we don't have to give a shit about".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2015, @02:07PM
The very fact that we're discussing mandatory voting indicates that they do care about the nonvoting demographic. In this case, the conversation was initiated by the highest official.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday March 23 2015, @10:25AM
Why on earth has it taken so long? Comparing UK voter turnout figures [ukpolitical.info] from 1945 to the present day against US voting figures [wikipedia.org] for the same time period, it seems the US has had a huge problem with political engagement since for an awfully long time. Only in 2001 and 2005 have UK figures dipped below the US peak turnout during that period, and we were shocked by how poor those figures were.
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Sunday March 22 2015, @02:01PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday March 22 2015, @03:22PM
Voting is not the only way to participate. Nor should it be.
You want change? Get in politician's faces. You can move city hall. The thing about just telling them what you want is not to go it alone, you have to be in a group, the larger the better. If 5% of a city's citizens march to city hall, they will listen, and they will respond. Another way is to sue them. But there, you have to have something. Even if the judges are sympathetic, they need something to work with, some evidence that the city violated a law, didn't follow procedure, something. Also helps if the issue is something that the majority supports. Most governments are not very scrupulous or competent. There will be things to work with, the trouble is to find out about them.
All the time, politicians are trying to use their power for personal gain. They have to be watched constantly, and reined in whenever they try it. If the people don't do anything, the politicians' relatives and friends will get rich off the city. They provide service just good enough to keep the grumbling to a minimum, and collect overly large pay, some of which is kicked back to the politician who handed them the favor. Be feisty, so that they understand the people will not put up with corruption. For example, our humble city of about 40,000 was once involved in a scheme with a religious organization, think it was the Maharishis, to build the world's tallest building in the city. A city of only 40,000 is going to host the world's tallest building, WTF? What is clear is that the mayor flipped the site for a tidy profit for himself. He recused himself from the vote to rezone the land, but of course it was rezoned for high rise. It wasn't much longer before most of the citizens got wind of this scheme and started asking some hard questions. That mayor was voted out the next election, in favor of someone who would never have made it in otherwise, as she was one of those overzealous social conservatives who immediately embarked upon her own crusade to rid the city of alcohol, which was a good bit of our tax base. Pulled every move she could think of to shut down all the liquor stores in the city. They fought back and sued her and the individual council members who had supported her crusade, and won. One interesting remnant of that fight is that one store was found to be straddling the border. Only half the store can be used to sell liquor, and they have added a blue line to the floor to show that boundary. She was herself voted out the next election, in favor of a diseased drug addict who spent most of her tenure in the hospital-- got a liver transplant as I recall. She also got the boot after one term, in favor of a saner, more levelheaded guy who had no history of corruption or drug use. Finally!
One trouble with many local elections is that they try very hard not to tell the public anything at all. Too often, I've been presented with a choice between 2 candidates for which there has been no coverage at all of their positions, party affiliations, or anything. The only info I had was photos and their ages. Not seeing anything to work with on the photos, like a big old Christian cross dangling from a necklace, or anything else that looked like the mark of a social conservative, I went with age. I voted for the younger candidate, reasoning that that there may be a weak correlation between old age and corruption, and maybe the younger person would be less corrupt. Also, that the younger person would be more in tune with technology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @07:08PM
Not everyone who uses drugs is corrupt or a scumbag. Sure, theres a lot of corrupt scumbags that use drugs, but then there's also lots of people you never hear about who use drugs reasonably and don't use it as an excuse to inflict harm on others. Drug use doesn't make people into scumbags, they're scumbags to begin with; the biggest scumbag junkies will still be scumbags even when they're sober.who had no history of corruption or drug clean.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 22 2015, @04:27PM
You could vote for my cat, as I do, which shows my contempt clearly. By not voting, your protest is lost in the masses of the apathetic.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2015, @07:25PM
And your response seems like a mere idiot who thinks it's more important to joke around than to actually vote.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 22 2015, @10:19PM
Maybe I am an idiot. Neither the DNC nor the GOP represent my views. I will vote for neither. If there is a 3d party candidate running, __any__ third party candidate, I vote for that person. Otherwise, I vote for my cat as a protest vote. I think it is important that my ballot be cast so that it can be counted in the whole, and yet dilute the percentages of the DNC and GOP candidates. If enough people who don't vote as a protest did this, their protest could be heard if the percentage rose to some level. But not voting as a protest merely makes a person indistinguishable from the apathetic. Anyway, in my way of thinking, the most idiotic thing I could do is to actually vote for someone I think sucks.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday March 23 2015, @05:07PM
From now on I will vote for your cat instead of Batman for all uncontested or R v. D elections. What is your cat's name or can I just hemocyanin's cat?
Yes I am serious, in college one of the guys on my floor was a law enforcement major and we decided to run him as in county sheriff election as a write in against the unopposed current sheriff. As the college polling station was typically one of the first to report he had like 58% of the vote at one point but it eventually dropped to about 10%
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2015, @12:57AM
Yes but there is a distinguishable difference between a registered non-vote, and an unregistered vote. Some states have a mandatory "none of the above" box, which allows voters to express their dissatisfaction. If that field wins the election, new candidates are required. So not voting as a protest, fails to allow the protest itself to be registered.
If I was going to litigate corporate manipulation of the political process I would do it under the foreign gifts clause. Public companies represent shareholders, and those shareholders cannot be guaranteed to be fully domestic, thus their interests may in the aggregate reflect a unlawful foreign gift.
Really SCOTUS's doctrine of treating corporations as people is wrong in about a hundred ways, they just never select a case that would cause them to overturn decades of vomit inspiring doctrine. It is worth noting the Sotomayor actually begged this question during oral arguments of Citizens United vs. FEC, but the numbskulls at the FEC refused to take the bait. (audio available online) So at least one justice WOULD like to hear the argument.