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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: 2) by cafebabe on Monday March 23 2015, @01:16PM
If we must have voting rather than representative democracy run like jury service, I like the opportunity to vote directly on issues rather individuals who might have a passing resemblance to my position while electioneering. However, I am concerned that the economics of party politics will allow one party to obtain the most populist position. This would lead to a one-party state and no obligation for anyone to fulfil an electoral mandate.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by RobotMonster on Monday March 23 2015, @01:56PM
I like the idea of a random-lottery jury-service type thing. Elections based on issues, with randomly selected people who must adhere to the per-issue election results. It seems like it could do a lot to rid us of the "career politician" problem, but I do worry that it would end up being little more than a figure-head type arrangement with the real power (and corruption) being wielded entirely by the civil servants. (Having said that, it'd likely still be an improvement over the current models).
I don't think capitalism and (true) democracy are really that compatible.
I'm reminded of an idea I had once to solve the problem of election results not being truly representative. Regardless of whether you use first-pass-the-post or preferential systems, the counted results can vary quite a bit from overall voter intentions. (I would put a reference here but I'm too lazy). My thought was to make it random -- all votes are put into a hat (figuratively), and only one ballot is drawn from it. The content of that ballot would be the election result. If you run the system for an infinite amount of time, overall voter intentions would be accurately tracked. Every vote counts! Your vote could be the winning ticket.
A one-party state would be a travesty. A two party system is bad enough! In the same way that I think that there needs to be an upper ceiling on how large multinational corporations should be able to grow (see the TV series Continuum where the multinationals of the future stepped in and took over when the governments of the world ran out of money), perhaps there should be a limit to how many people could be in a party? If we're voting for 'people' instead of 'issues', I'd much rather each elected representative got to act on their own conscience, instead of having to blindly follow the party line (i.e. no parties, only issues).
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday March 23 2015, @04:47PM
I would almost prefer that a 3rd chamber be added to the legislative branch. This 3rd chamber is chosen at random yearly from the population, have it be like 0.001% of the population chosen at random from the voting population similar to jury duty. These people remain at home and every 2 weeks they are sent a ballot to vote yes or no on all legislation passed by both the house and senate that they have to have postmarked within 2 weeks. I'd even offer compensation to these people of $1000-$2000 a year since it will take away from their free time. For a bill to go on to the president 50%+1 of this new chamber would need to vote in the affirmative.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by tathra on Monday March 23 2015, @05:44PM
they're not. when a system exists that allows money to be centralized, it becomes possible to use those insanely large sums of money to buy anything, even regulatory agencies and lawmakers. the solution is to not let money be concentrated into the hands of a few individuals in the first place. pretty much all wealth is only gained due to luck, either by being born into money or by getting extremely lucky by having the right idea at the right time (which still requires having enough initial capital to be able profit off the idea), but hopefully 'forceful wealth redistribution' (taking money by force and redistributing it) isn't required, hopefully actual socialism, where the people who work for a company are all co-owners (cooperatives i think they're called?), could distribute capital more fairly in a reasonable amount of time and keep it from concentrating in insane amounts into individuals' hands. the only problem is getting enough cooperatives started for the idea to take off and replace our current exploitation-driven market.