Voting should be mandatory...

[crooked22]

Perhaps thats stretching it quite a bit, but with less than half of all Americans voting, and this election being decided by "morality" and faith-based values that are going to be pushed down our throats at every posibility (prepare yourself), would it be sensible to establish a protocol to deal with people who refuse to get up and vote? Instead of being a right, a duty. It could be worked out that if you did not wish to vote anyways you could just submit an empty ballot.

Or is this too *authoritarian*?
Maybe ultra-conservatives will bark at the possibility of a youth voting drive thrashing the "fine american" values these 60+ year old men of faith are working so hard at establishing.

No matter the outcome at least, in this circumstance you know that the majority actually rules.

 

[Dissipate]

Engaging in fraud and promoting violence should be mandatory? You are nuts. The people who don't vote are the rational ones. Not only are they abstaining from violence and fraud, but they are using their time in a MUCH more productive manner.

Text

The odds that your vote will determine the outcome of a presidential election is akin to the odds that you will hit the Powerball jackpot 64 times in a row.

 

[Toasthead]

The LAST thing we want is people voting for the sake of voting. People need to educate themselves before they vote. The only thing worse than not voting is voting and NOT knowing what youre voting for.

 

[SirStev0]

the fuk it should...


i have the right to vote and the choice... if i dont want to its my god damn right as an american ...

 

[Dissipate]

Originally posted by: Toasthead
The LAST thing we want is people voting for the sake of voting. People need to educate themselves before they vote. The only thing worse than not voting is voting and NOT knowing what youre voting for.

Why in the bloody hell would someone spend any amount of time educating themselves on how to vote, when the chances that their vote will determine the outcome is astronomically small? Furthermore, their vote counts just as much as the crack head's right down the street. All the crackhead has to do to nullify the intelligent individual's vote is go to a voting booth and perform some arbitrarily simple operation (pulling a lever, bubbling in a sheet...). After this has occured, the intelligent voter's time has just been completely wasted. In this sense, democracy is a truly horrible and evil manifestation of the egalitarian ideal.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

The problem with that philosophy is that most Americans are... well... politically illiterate

 

[OFFascist]

No.

Those that didnt vote were defacto voting for none of the candidates.

I dont see why they should be forced to go wait in line at a polling place just to get a ballot and hand it back blank if they dont want to vote.

You cannot force someone to vote.

 

[OFFascist]

Originally posted by: Toasthead
The LAST thing we want is people voting for the sake of voting. People need to educate themselves before they vote. The only thing worse than not voting is voting and NOT knowing what youre voting for.

Exactly.

I'm a proponent that if you feel that you are absolutely undecided and dont have an opinionn either way then just dont vote in that particular race.

One of my aunts was telling me how she didnt know who to choose between Kerry and Bush. I told her that if she honstly couldnt choose between either one and if she didnt want to vote third party that she should just leave that race blank and not vote for either one.

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: Toasthead
The LAST thing we want is people voting for the sake of voting. People need to educate themselves before they vote. The only thing worse than not voting is voting and NOT knowing what youre voting for.

That assumes that people don't vote because they don't know much about the issues, when the source of non-voting may be that many people find that neither major party represents their views or find the major parties equally repugnant on the issues that matter to the non-voters, or a number of other reasons.

I think mandatory voting in the US is a good idea. It works well for Australia.

 

[kranky]

Mandatory voting? Ridiculous. Who would want uninformed, uninterested people voting anyway?

Listen to Dissipate.

 

[GoPackGo]

Originally posted by: crooked22
Perhaps thats stretching it quite a bit, but with less than half of all Americans voting, and this election being decided by "morality" and faith-based values that are going to be pushed down our throats at every posibility (prepare yourself), would it be sensible to establish a protocol to deal with people who refuse to get up and vote? Instead of being a right, a duty. It could be worked out that if you did not wish to vote anyways you could just submit an empty ballot.

Or is this too *authoritarian*?
Maybe ultra-conservatives will bark at the possibility of a youth voting drive thrashing the "fine american" values these 60+ year old men of faith are working so hard at establishing.

No matter the outcome at least, in this circumstance you know that the majority actually rules.

Remember the vote turnout rates Saddam had...

I dont think we want that.

We will know our freedom is truly gone if we are forced to vote.

 

[glugglug]

Originally posted by: Toasthead
The LAST thing we want is people voting for the sake of voting. People need to educate themselves before they vote. The only thing worse than not voting is voting and NOT knowing what youre voting for.

 

[sandorski]

Not entirely a bad idea, might even make more people active in the process. Australia has Mandatory Voting and it seems to work fine for them. I don't think something like this can just be done overnight though, especially in the US. One thing is for sure, the Voting system would require a complete overhaul. 1 major change would be to expand the number of voting Places/Booths available, people having to wait Hours to vote is in itself a impediment to get people to vote.