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posted by janrinok on Sunday March 22 2015, @11:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-but-it's-raining! dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday March 23 2015, @04:47PM

    by Kromagv0 (1825) on Monday March 23 2015, @04:47PM (#161561) Homepage

    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.

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