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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: 5, Informative) by VLM on Sunday March 22 2015, @12:38PM
Doesn't work that way in my state. You get a paper optical ballot, you fill it out privately, you insert it into the scanner, the scanner either says "beep beep" and eats the ballot, or if the scanner is unhappy with what you're written on the ballot, it emits a bongo drum and barfs the ballot back at you, and a legal minimum of two observers descends upon you to issue a new ballot, explain the process, or WTF you. Most of the time its double voting errors due to poor pencil eraser work, and after a little cleanup the machine will accept the ballot.
So intentionally spoiling a ballot simply pisses off a couple people and accomplishes little other than wasted time, which would be an interesting form of civil disobedience.
If you turn in a blank ballot the machine will eat the ballot although its widely believed that the ballot will be filled in "correctly" for you, later.
We really need "none of the above" so blank ballots can't be "fixed" later.
It should be noted that things are gerrymandered carefully enough that I have no representation. Enough "I vote for whoever my dad voted for" fools live in the district in the carefully aligned boundaries such that no accumulation of thinking voters could possibly have any impact or representation. So I'm not really sure whats to be gained by bothering to vote at all, or bothering to vote for anyone but the gerrymandered party.
The majority of the population being unthinking demographic voters and/or party faithful traditionalists in heavily gerrymandered districts means voting is a waste of time to create political change. If you want change, F like rabbits and have more kids and hope the gerrymandering doesn't "fix" the demographic problem in the next generation. Plus or minus more legal/illegal immigrants and plus or minus altering municipal zoning laws to motivate certain demographics to move in or out of an area.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Sunday March 22 2015, @06:50PM
If you turn in a blank ballot the machine will eat the ballot although its widely believed that the ballot will be filled in "correctly" for you, later.
Widely believed?
Optically read ballots are some of the most audit-able machine read ballots around. They've survived numerous hand counts in places like Alaska which used them forever. A spoiled ballot in one race never spoils a whole ballot. It just means that ballot isn't counted for that race. Further, when descended upon due to beeping, you can decline to re-vote, and your ballot stands as voted, except for the race you double voted.
I've served on election boards in Alaska where these machines were use, and they were easy to use, and because of mandatory recounts, (close races) the proved more audit-able and less error prone than the prior punch system.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday March 23 2015, @03:55PM
Minnesota uses the same ballots and they work great. Also at every poll location that I have voted at (I have lived several places) use black sharpies to fill in the ballots. The last go around I was curious about what happens when someone spoils their ballot so I after filling in some of the elections I went up and said I spoiled my ballot. At that point they wrote void across the old one, crossed all the bubbles out with a big black sharpie, and handed me a new ballot. The people who can't figure out those ballots seem to have no one but themselves to blame. Especially since if you do make a mistake they will void your previous ballot and hand you a new one.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone