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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 tathra on Monday March 23 2015, @05:44PM

    by tathra (3367) on Monday March 23 2015, @05:44PM (#161592)

    I don't think capitalism and (true) democracy are really that compatible.

    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.

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