

Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote - cshenoy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/19/wonkbook-obama-suggests-requiring-everyone-to-vote/

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whoopdedo
Mandatory voting would give a lot of power to the gerrymanderers. As we know,
modeling the behavior of large groups of people is easy. When you can predict
who will vote and you have access to drawing voter district boundaries, you
have the ability to preselect who will be elected.

Not voting is a choice and allows voter apathy to play a role in deciding
elections. If an area is a majority Democrat but most of the voters don't care
enough to vote then a motivated minority party can put boots on the ground and
get their candidate into office. With mandatory voting that would never happen
as the majority incumbent would always win thanks to receiving all those votes
cast out of obligation rather than intent. That aggravates the most difficult
part of democracy which is giving people with unpopular yet valid opinions a
voice in the conversation.

Now, if we had proportional representation...

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Fando
Mandatory vote is a good start, and will encourage more people to think about
their government. In addition, get rid of electoral college. Add verifiable
secure online voting and promote a system wide education of the people on the
benefits of political envolvement.

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collyw
Many non voters will think about government, and realize none of the
candidates represent them in the slightest.

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Fando
Yes, and it will be a tiny stepping stone toward changing this backwards
system altogether.

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malandrew
I'm curious what impact mandatory voting has on the number of viable political
parties. In Brazil, we have mandatory voting and a few more viable political
parties (at least at the state and local level). I haven't a clue if there is
any relationship, but I would imagine that requiring people to vote would
involve having the 63% that isn't voting currently looking at candidates from
the two parties and saying to themselves "I hate both, who else is available?"

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aprdm
Well in Brazil we do have mandatory voting and our political situation is one
of the worst in the world.. Everybody here is trying the opposite - to make
voting not mandatory.

The population does not feel represented by the politicians, yet we have to
choose one of them every election. Buying votes /manipulating electors in this
scenario looks really easy..

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edc117
Do you understand why making voting not mandatory would not solve your
problem? The subset of people that do vote will still vote poorly.

The people in power almost always badly represent the common interest; I hope
this changes in my lifetime.

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iwwr
It if must be done, it must be done with a radical reform of ballot access,
low electoral ceilings and easy-to-register third parties. However, it's not a
panacea. Greece, Argentina, Brazil managed to have quite corrupt, dirty
politics even with mandatory voting.

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cLeEOGPw
Are there any successful countries with mandatory voting?

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bmm6o
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting#Current_use_b...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting#Current_use_by_countries)

Australia is the country most like the US on the list. I don't know enough
about the Central American countries on the list to judge their internal
politics. The unenforced list includes Belgium and France.

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ant_lion
I think switching to instant runoff voting would have more impact. That way,
folks can vote their conscience first, practicality second.

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dustinls
But I could argue that the act of voting is itself an immoral, even violent
act.

