President Obama appeared to endorse mandatory voting as a way to get money out of politics. In countries that have mandatory voting laws, if you don’t cast a ballot, you have to have to pay fines or other penalties. American polls show that most people who don’t vote support Democrats, which, of course, doesn’t do Democrats much good. I’ve read that in Australia, which punishes non-voters, the effect is a kind of stasis, since so many of those who cast a ballot really don’t care, cancelling out the votes of partisan true believers. What’s the problem with compulsory voting? I believe it was Sartre who said that the essence of freedom is the ability to say “no,” and saying “no” to all of the candidates would seem to be essential to democracy. But what do you think?
From Obama Says Mandatory Voting Would ‘Completely Change’ U.S. Political Map – Bloomberg Politics:
At a town hall meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, Wednesday, President Obama discussed the idea of mandatory voting, and said “that may end up being a better strategy in the short term” in helping to diminish the influence that money has on politics in the post-Citizens United era.
“It would be transformative if everybody voted,” Obama said during the event. “That would counteract [campaign] money more than anything. If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.”
Compulsory voting is the official law of the land in 22 countries, though only 11 actively enforce penalties to citizens who do not. A woeful percentage of Americans who are eligible to vote, actually do so—just 36.4 percent did during the 2014 midterms, the lowest number since World War II.
“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, who had never publicly commented on the subject, said. “And they’re the folks who are scratching and climbing to get into the middle class and they’re working hard. There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls. We should want to get them into the polls.”
Of course, mandatory voting might well be a self-serving argument for Democrats. In August of 2012, for instance, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll found that, by a two to one margin, unregistered voters would have cast a ballot for Obama over Romney, if they were eligible to do so.
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