Originally posted by Surtur
I know very well what it is. You pointing out other countries do it is irrelevant. We aren't in Mexico(thank god) or Uruguay. May I inquire as to why you think the fact other countries do this has any bearing on whether it is right or wrong?
Or Australia.
And it has bearing because if it doesn't cause bad effects where it's used elsewhere and hasn't been used as a path to dictatorship or so on, why should it here?
If you say there's problems with something, and I can point to where it exists and show that those problems don't exist, then you're factually wrong.
So I don't know why you twist what I said. I'm not jumping on him because I don't like him, I don't like FORCING people to vote. If I don't want to vote? That is my choice and the government needs to learn to deal with it as opposed to trying to force people. Because I'll write in a damn empty ballot for a chimpanzee before I vote on even ONE issue where I was forced to vote.
That's pretty dumb, but in mandatory voting that's actually allowed, you're free to do so. Go for it, I guess?
The reason for mandatory voting includes eliminating the problem of the disenfranchised, those who're pressured into not voting, which is a real problem, and is far more of a threat to democracy.
A lot of people think their voice doesn't matter or are made to jump through hoops through voting (judges throwing out tens of thousands of voter registrations, poor areas with multi-hour lines on voting days). Mandatory voting is a way to ensure that that doesn't happen and that the election really is the will of the people.
It's much easier to get a dictatorship when you only need to get a small minority of the people to vote for it, than when the entire country's will is involved.
Your response seems to be purely one of stubbornness, but I don't know why you think less people voting in a democracy is a good thing.
I will vote for Barney the dinosaur for president before I ever participate in a forced vote, and to me any person FORCED to vote should do the same exact thing. You can suggest people vote, you can even put on commercials talking about how important it is. But you never, ever force people into doing it.
Why not?
Because it eliminates real problems? Just because you don't like the idea of 'forced'?
You're forced to drive speedlimits. You're forced to sign up for the selective service if you're a US male.
Being part of a country involves doing stuff, and there's few things more important than voting.
And it certainly isn't a path to dictatorship, and indeed, it overall makes dictatorship harder, no matter what paranoid fantasies were mentioned earlier.
"Obama suggests something that'd make it harder for the US to have a King. Paranoid people who don't like him accuse him of the opposite," is a sum-up for the thread here. It's a knee-jerk reaction that ignores what the voting would actually do.