Mandatory voting? How would you propose enforcing it? How does Australia enforce it?
I'm not necessarily against mandatory voting, but it would be very hard to convince the American public that mandatory voting is a good idea when a huge part of the population would see that as an attack on their freedom to not vote.
This doesn't even begin to discuss the situations where voting only occurs on a Tuesday (aside from mail-ins) and some people can't take that time off work. There would have to be some clause to force employers to let employees go vote, at a loss of money somewhere. Such a clause would lead to more resistance.
Again, I'm not personally against it, but it's not so simple as "make it mandatory."
> Mandatory voting? How would you propose enforcing it?
With a financial penalty if you don't submit a ballot. The simplest method would probably be a per-election tax credit.
> I'm not necessarily against mandatory voting, but it would be very hard to convince the American public that mandatory voting is a good idea when a huge part of the population would see that as an attack on their freedom to not vote.
Most mandatory voting regimes require submitting a ballot, but they tend to accept explicit abstention (usually, just by submitting a blank ballot.)
> This doesn't even begin to discuss the situations where voting only occurs on a Tuesday (aside from mail-ins) and some people can't take that time off work. There would have to be some clause to force employers to let employees go vote, at a loss of money somewhere.
Almost every state already does that, and the exceptions (IIRC) have long early voting periods and/or all mail-in elections which avoid the Tuesday-only problem. So that's not really a problem.
How would you deal with malicious voters, who now surely would be so pissed they would vote for a bad candidate, or put in ballots wrapped in dog shit?
Jury duty, which is so routinely avoided/worked around that it is a joke?
Tax returns, which are only done at the threat of prison? And mostly in the US because other countries have figured out a way to do it directly as long as you have a job?
I have voted in every election that I was elegible to, but this time I have lost every faith in the system and just want to some way to say to say enough is enough, you have lied to be too many times.
But no, you want me to continue the charade that democracy, without the possibility to hold the politicians responsible for their lies is worth anything at all.
I want them all to burn in hell. Where in your system do I vote in farvour of that?
> Where in your system do I vote in farvour of that?
Submit an empty ballot, or write "burn in hell" on it. It won't make a difference to how your vote is counted, but sitting at home and not voting will make just as little of a difference.
I don't see how not voting is "keeping politicians accountable". Vote third party (in Australia we have many third parties and independents, though unfortunately because we use instant-runoff preferential voting we still have two very large primary parties).
How is that even a problem if the financial penalty for not voting is implemented by way of a per-election tax credit for voting?
> How would you deal with malicious voters, who now surely would be so pissed they would vote for a bad candidate
A large minority of voters do that in the best case now. I'm not really convinced that anger at being offered a financial incentive to turn in a ballot is going to motivate people to be more effective wat voting for bad candidates than those who are ideologically motivated that way now.
Mandatory voting exists in many countries, including Australia (since 1918). As an Australian, I've never heard of anyone submitting a ballot wrapped in dog shit. Culturally, voting is seen as just something that you go and do every couple of years, and so most people aren't really as pissed off as you assume people might be.
Unregistered voters exist obviously, but current statistics estimate that only a very small percentage of the population is actually unregistered (and unregistered voters aren't fined as far as I know).
> If you want people to vote make it mandatory like Australia.
Empirically, a more proportional election system not only improves satisfaction with government, but also participation in voting.
People not voting should be a signal that there is something wrong with the voting system’s fitness for purpose. Mandatory voting may treat the symptom, but ignores the underlying problem.
Mandatory voting solves the problem that "party X won because they convinced more people to leave their house and vote". It also immediately solves all of the voting discrimination problems you see in the US, as well as making it practically necessary for voting to occur on days that people actually have time to vote (as well as provide more tools to make early voting easier).
So while I agree that apathy and lack of satisfaction are some of the reasons why people are not voting (and are serious problems that need to be addressed), there are other problems that mandatory voting can help resolve. And ultimately the friction to convincing people of your argument is much smaller -- because now it is just a political problem of convincing the public, rather than a practical problem of getting some folks to take time off work to vote.
