Should voting be mandatory?

[chrysostom]

This is not about freedom,

for you
it never will be

 

[rexlunae]

Perhaps if people were obliged to vote they would pay more attention to the process. Perhaps if people were obliged to vote the politicians would pay more attention to them. After all, there's nothing a politician likes more than a citizen he can ignore.

Unless you make the process more meaningful, I think you'd just get more noise. People don't care just because you tell them that they have to.

 

[Tyrathca]

When did they make it compulsory?

1924 according to Wikipedia, well before I was born at least. Seems to nor be a big issue for us.

So it's preferable to put them in a booth so they can blindly mark the paper and just get it over with?

Votes should mean something. It's fairly obvious that when you force someone to vote (by telling them they will be penalized if they don't), they are doing so begrudgingly.

First of all technically they're not put in a voting booth, they are standing at a desk and the decision to bother with the booth (and fill in the form correctly) is up to them.


And my impression of the system is that vast vast majority of people while maybe being a tad apathetic about politics in general and may have a little whine about it actually have an opinion they'd like to have heard. That's why our system has stayed the way it has, every now and again the idea of stopping it comes up but it never gets much traction with people.

Yes there are people who literally don't care at all who also have to show up but numbers aren't as bad as you assume I think and they probably make up the majority of the donkey votes/informal votes.

So, participation is so essential that you think bulldozing the freedom to not participate is required? This is strictly a matter of liberty and I guess that is my ideology...thankfully that is the way the framers of this country saw it also.

How is this a bulldozing of freedom? Oh my you need to spend less than an hour every few years getting your name ticked off a list! What is this North Korea? (That was sarcasm)

Seriously you probably spend more time doing your taxes, let alone the percentage of time you spend working to pay those taxes (+/- someone to fill them for you instead). And if you oppose all those things in their entirety then you are an anarchist.

Given that most people in this country take no active part in the way government works to begin with, I am glad they choose not to give their uninformed opinion at the ballot box.

The problem is that it then becomes a contest of who can encourage their pre-existing support base to be the least apathetic. There is no guarantee those people (from all political persuasions) are any better informed than others, in some cases their motivation might spring from how profoundly misinformed they are.
Then you will also have many people (generally centrists/moderates) with well thought out opinions who stay away because they know they'll be drowned out by frenzied idealogues from both sides (a self fulfilling prophecy as if all such people voted they wouldn't be drowned out).

 

[jgarden]

In 2012 the Republicans received a 23 seat majority in the House of Representatives despite the fact that the Democrats received 1.4 million more ballots in the popular vote.

That's a slap in the face to millions of Americans who had their vote negated because those, who should be encouraging citizens to vote, were actively involved in deliberately subverting the system.

States are allowed to rearrange the boundaries of the electoral districts every 10 years so in 2010, instead of aligning them to best reflect the popular vote, they were "gerrymandered" to provide one political party with an advantage.

If the 2 political parties were really committed to encouraging more people to vote, they could start by turning those congressional boundary decisions over to an impartial committee who would apportion them to best reflect the popular vote.

 

[Jedidiah]

Most elections can be called by the time between 1 and 10 percent of precincts report. What does that tell you ? That 90-99% of the voters could have stayed home and they would have gotten the same result.

 

[Daniel1611]

Let's pretend that the game isn't rigged, the business interests don't rule the world, the politicians aren't owned by business, the people in politics aren't corrupt and both parties aren't exactly the same. We still have the Electoral College and the Senate which makes voting worthless unless you live in a swing state.

 

[Jedidiah]

Voting is useful when the public opinion is difficult to discern. We also vote on juries. Very rarely, races are won by much much less than a single percentage point difference. In these exceptional races, having a 37% voter turnout is a blessing because that is PLENTY of data to safely determine and certify the result of the election, with exceptional certainty, for such a fundamentally uncertain situation, when the public opinion divides so narrowly, that having 37% voter turnout is only barely capable of comfortably determining the result.

 

[Angel4Truth]

Perhaps if people were obliged to vote they would pay more attention to the process. Perhaps if people were obliged to vote the politicians would pay more attention to them. After all, there's nothing a politician likes more than a citizen he can ignore.

Have you voted in every election in which you were entitled to vote in?

 

[Eeset]

Where does the Bible say to elect rulers?

 

[Tyrathca]

Have you voted in every election in which you were entitled to vote in?

I have!

 

[elohiym]

...Oh my you need to spend less than an hour every few years getting your name ticked off a list! What is this North Korea? (That was sarcasm)

Seriously you probably spend more time doing your taxes, let alone the percentage of time you spend working to pay those taxes (+/- someone to fill them for you instead). And if you oppose all those things in their entirety then you are an anarchist.

Aren't you comparing being mandated to do something essentially worthtless (getting my name checked off a list) to doing something valuable (paying taxes)?

 

[The Beard of Zeus]

Forcing people who don't care enough to vote by themself will just make sure that people who don't care and don't know what's going on will mess up the process

 

[PureX]

Have you voted in every election in which you were entitled to vote in?

Several times! I'm from Chicago! :chuckle: Even dead people still vote in Chicago.

 

[PureX]

Unless you make the process more meaningful, I think you'd just get more noise. People don't care just because you tell them that they have to.

It they had to participate, they would care, more.

If you had to take you car to the car wash once a week, you would think more often about how dirty or clean it is. You would like seeing it, clean. It's only natural.

 

[PureX]

A fool is one who keeps doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

A fool is also someone who does nothing, and then imagines that he has done something.

I would respect not voting if those who do not vote would go to the polls and encourage others not to vote, in protest. But just sitting on your butt and doing nothing, and then claiming that you're doing something positive, is just plain lying to yourselves, and lying to the rest of us.

 

[1PeaceMaker]

A fool is also someone who does nothing, and then imagines that he has done something.

That would be the voters who don't count the vote.

Ya'all think you'll get away with ignoring that fact?

Do you really think "We the People" are running the country? Puleeese.

I would respect not voting if those who do not vote would go to the polls and encourage others not to vote, in protest. But just sitting on your butt and doing nothing, and then claiming that you're doing something positive, is just plain lying to yourselves, and lying to the rest of us.

I've been a very active activist on numerous things, in public.

I will not dignify the voting process because it is not only fundamentally broken, it is run by thieves who stole our government and now want to force us to pretend we run it.

[rant]If they do that I really will run it. If I get dragged away from my 7 children to go out and actually vote or even show up over this, I will be chasing their fraudster behinds all around in my car when they transport the ballot boxes and be picking up their trash, to see what they threw away.[/rant]

Honestly, I'm a priestess of God and queen of my home, and I just hope they leave me alone. It's not my kingdom they want me to run. Maybe I'd find a different way to express my sentiments if push came to shove, but this is idea of forced voting is not freedom!

Check out blackboxvoting.org if you want to see what real voters are doing.

 

[chrysostom]

I will not dignify the voting process because it is not only fundamentally broken, it is run by thieves who stole our government and now want to force us to pretend we run it..

it is not broken
just because you don't get your way
it just means you are a whiner

 

[1PeaceMaker]

it is not broken
just because you don't get your way
it just means you are a whiner

So there is not and never has been dishonesty in counting the votes in America? :think:

My way is to let the rest of the USA run themselves into the ground if they want, as long as they leave me alone. That's freedom the way I like it. I would help but they don't want my help on the whole. Individuals can get my help, but I'm not an overlord or a collectivist.

And do you really think that this country is soooo godly because we got honest men in the honest way? Don't you remember what happened to JFK?

Real presidents in the Whitehouse get shot in the head. (And not because of what "We the People" do, but because corporatists murder them!)

 

[1PeaceMaker]

Did you imagine me to be a "whiny liberal" Chrys?

Wash your imagination out with soap!!

 

[oatmeal]

Obama thinks so. . .

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/19/politics/obama-mandatory-voting/index.html

I've heard this idea kicked around a few times on this board.

How do we offset the influence of big money in politics while fixing the country's abysmal voter turnout rate? President Barack Obama suggests it might be time to make voting a requirement. "In Australia and some other countries, there's mandatory voting," Obama said Wednesday in Cleveland, where he spoke about the importance of middle-class economics. "It would be transformative if everybody voted -- that would counteract money more than anything." The clout of millionaires and billionaires in campaign funding has been enormous, and many claim the uber wealthy have undue leverage in politics. "The people who tend not to vote are young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups," Obama said. "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.

According to the article only 37% of Americans voted in last year's mid-term. 144 million Americans skipped out.

Is this a road we want to travel?

Obama does not understand respect for the rights of individuals

Nor does he uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Rather he tramples on it and our inalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator.

He is an evil man who has no respect for the great love for God and morals that this country was founded on

If he has ever done anything worthwhile, it was contrary to his philosophy.