Vote or else?

Somebody's still bitter about the drubbing his party received in the 2014 mid-terms.

Mandatory voting - would indeed be "transformative," if by transformative you mean more "redistributionist." - No thanks.
 
Whats next? What to vote for? I read this article this morning, it was interesting

Push Hard, Press Forward
 
If they include "none of the above" as choice it is a great idea.
 
Voting is mandatory in a few other Western countries, including Australia. You are fined, quite heavily, if you do not vote.
 
Full Metal Bulldog said:
Voting is mandatory in a few other Western countries, including Australia. You are fined, quite heavily, if you do not vote.
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Let me get on my soap box and say how it doesn't surprise me how disconnected from the reality our President might be or what a genius he is.

Would "I can get off from work" be a valid excuse? Low income workers that are paid hourly will have hard time getting off of work to vote or after working a long day not inclined to wait to voter at night. So why not fine folks that can afford to paid the fine least? Pass a law to have paid time off for voting? How many hours, two to four hours? If so another burden to small business owners - what are they supposed to do while their workers are off voting?

Some folks might disagree, but if you analyze it carefully, many of our President ideas seesm to be regressive to hurt the middle classs and lower class more than it helps them.
 
Full Metal Bulldog said:
Voting is mandatory in a few other Western countries, including Australia. You are fined, quite heavily, if you do not vote.
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Well- actually the fine is $20 for not voting in Australia so I don't believe that meets the definition of "heavily fined". http://www.aec.gov.au/faqs/voting_australia.htm
Compulsory voting is a pretty rare thing- Australia, plus Luxembourg & Cyprus in Europe (two major powerhouses there) plus several of the larger countries in of South America practice it - Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador ,Uruguay and Peru, (which should be an indicator that it is no guarantee of good government- ) and then North Korea ( you will vote , and vote correctly or go to the gulag!) .

Compulsory Voting is nonsense- I'm all in favor of the government requiring a certain amount of paid hours to allow employees to vote in Federal elections- but requiring those who are too lazy, uninformed or disinterested to vote anyway? Pfft. If they don't care- why should we make them? This is just another ploy by a politician to divert the political conversation from matters of substance. As the Romans said: "panem et circenses"
 
bruno said:
Well- actually the fine is $20 for not voting in Australia so I don't believe that meets the definition of "heavily fined". http://www.aec.gov.au/faqs/voting_australia.htm
Compulsory voting is a pretty rare thing- Australia, plus Luxembourg & Cyprus in Europe (two major powerhouses there) plus several of the larger countries in of South America practice it - Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador ,Uruguay and Peru, (which should be an indicator that it is no guarantee of good government- ) and then North Korea ( you will vote , and vote correctly or go to the gulag!) .

Compulsory Voting is nonsense- I'm all in favor of the government requiring a certain amount of paid hours to allow employees to vote in Federal elections- but requiring those who are too lazy, uninformed or disinterested to vote anyway? Pfft. If they don't care- why should we make them? This is just another ploy by a politician to divert the political conversation from matters of substance. As the Romans said: "panem et circenses"
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$20 per voter * ~100 Million eligible voters who didn't cast a vote in the last presidential election = $2 Billion... A little deficit reduction isn't a bad thing... We could even get it past the SCOTUS with the same trick as the ACA... Its just a tax penalty... You really don't have to vote...
 
goaliedad said:
$20 per voter * ~100 Million eligible voters who didn't cast a vote in the last presidential election = $2 Billion... A little deficit reduction isn't a bad thing... We could even get it past the SCOTUS with the same trick as the ACA... Its just a tax penalty... You really don't have to vote...
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Yeah but it'll cost $4 Billion to implement and enforce :cool:
 
This is a perfect example of the kind of strawman, non-story that is the stock and trade of Fox News and a number of MSNBC's news heads.

There is no way on God's green earth that the President, or anyone else for that matter is proposing making voting mandatory.
 
I do like "None Of The Above" as a valid response to avoid the fine.
 
Grab 20 kids. Take them into a gym, with chairs and desks. Give them a test they haven't studied for about a subject they don't really know. Some will pass, some will fail. Unfortunately, with voting.... when your vote is a "fail" someone is still hired.

I'm conservative. I vote Republican. But honestly, whether you're voting Republican, Democrat or a third party, I just want you to have "studied" and "voted" in an educated way. Yes, that means you may still vote "wrong" but at least you've thought it through. It's "self-selecting."

Mandatory voting (and it won't happen, we already know that) opens the flood-gates to failures in voting because it's not an educated vote.... you might as well institute a national lottery for public officials.
 
flieger83 said:
Hmm...
I'm thinking our Constitution affirms our right to vote; but it also affirms our right to freedom of expression, and a person might say "my act of not voting is my way of expressing my disagreement with..."

Steve
USAFA ALO
USAFA '83
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Agreed. I know someone who decided not to vote in the last Presidential election because he felt both candidates were compromising on a moral issue he found to be very important.

LineInTheSand said:
Grab 20 kids. Take them into a gym, with chairs and desks. Give them a test they haven't studied for about a subject they don't really know. Some will pass, some will fail. Unfortunately, with voting.... when your vote is a "fail" someone is still hired.

I'm conservative. I vote Republican. But honestly, whether you're voting Republican, Democrat or a third party, I just want you to have "studied" and "voted" in an educated way. Yes, that means you may still vote "wrong" but at least you've thought it through. It's "self-selecting."

Mandatory voting (and it won't happen, we already know that) opens the flood-gates to failures in voting because it's not an educated vote.... you might as well institute a national lottery for public officials.
Click to expand...

I agree here, too. The people who have troubled themselves to make an educated decision are the ones who are going to turn up and vote. At least we know the fate of our country's leadership is in the hands of some people who actually care about what they are voting about.
 
In my opinion, requiring individuals to vote would do absolutely nothing to resolve the current problem of voter disinterest. LITS nailed it--you might as well institute a lottery. Mandatory voting would only serve to randomize the results of an election. And yes, I agree that it violates free speech.

Citizenship and the right to vote are privileges. Not all Americans choose to take advantage of them. What would we say if Congress or the President discussed mandatory welfare? (Oh wait...we already have the Affordable Care Act!) Or what if Congress compelled individuals to carry weapons? It's pretty obvious that that would be a violation of the 1st Amendment. If we make "exceptions" to our Bill of Rights, what we have is no longer the U.S. Constitution.

Also, taking a more pragmatic approach, if a law is passed requiring all people to vote, said law might get repealed rather quickly by the same voters whom it coerced to vote. I dare say that a law like that might cause its writer to get voted out of office at the next available opportunity.
 
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