Desperation: Obama Surrogate Calls to Make Voting Mandatory

breitbart.com ^ | 6/21/12 | Ben Shapiro

[ColdOne]

Peter Orszag, former head of the Obama Office of Management and Budget, is desperate. With even Roll Call recognizing that President Obama is fighting an uphill battle for re-election, Orszag is floating a trial balloon: mandatory voting. His call for forced voting comes in an op/ed for Bloomberg News:

The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults.

It’s our own fault -- because voter participation rates are running below 60 percent, a candidate would have to win 85 percent or more of the vote to be elected by a majority.

Compulsory voting, as exists in Australia and more than two dozen other countries, would fix that problem. As William Galston of the Brookings Institution argues, “Jury duty is mandatory; why not voting?”

During the 2008 election cycle, voter participation was approximately 64 percent; in 2004, it was about the same. Orszag wants that number up. Why?

Beyond simply raising participation, compulsory voting could alter the role of money in elections. Turn-out-the-vote efforts, often bankrolled by big-money groups, would become largely irrelevant. Negative advertising could be less effective, because a central aim of such ads is to discourage participation in the opponent’s camp.

[a fool in paradise]

National Guard deuce-and-a-halfs parked on each block, as armed troopers go house-to-house, breaking down doors and herding every person of voting age, still in sleep attire, into the trucks...

The DNC already does this in minority neighborhoods. It is a process known as "knock and drag". Sometimes they employ ex-cons who cannot vote themselves. These thugs come to your door three times on election day and if you refuse to go to the poll at least once, you'd better have a good excuse that will hold up all day.

And then there are the cigarettes and "walkin' around money" that they give people to go to the polls.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

My opinion is that if all Americans voted, the Dems would never win the White House again.

[TurboZamboni]

Obama budget defeated 99-0 in Senate

Coupled with the House’s rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama’s budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2885070/posts

[ChildOfThe60s]

Not voting is a vote. And it is just as much a *right* as is voting.

No matter what the issue, the left's logic always is founded upon coercion of others to do their bidding.

[shove_it]

This is a hallmark of communism - everything is either mandatory or prohibited.