The time has come to make you vote

Yahoo News ^ | May 1, 2014 | Matt Bai

[QT3.14]

[SNIP]...Let's first consider the situation in which we find ourselves. Once again this year, the two parties that dominate our politics will conduct parallel campaigns aimed at two distinct subsets of Americans, rather than engaging in any actual debate. One side will scream about liberal overreach and the other will scream about conservative greed and bigotry, and whoever arouses the most passion in their most reliable voters (generally the party out of power at the moment) will probably win.

[Buckeye McFrog]

A number of countries do this. Mainly ones with very small populations who have legitimate concerns about organized groups of nutballs exploiting low turnout to hijack the government.

In some of the larger countries that do this, you must show proof that you voted in order to access government benefits. THAT is where Bai is headed with this.

[Ohioan]

The disenfanchisement of felons is subject to the jurisdiction of the individual states, so why not paupers?

Actually all control of the franchise is supposed to be with the States. (Article I, Sec. 2) The restrictions as to racial criteria, sexual criteria, poll taxes, and those under 21, were all handled by specific Constitutional Amendments.

William Flax

[MUDDOG]

I see you've given a lot of thought to this.

The right to vote has been extended while personal rights have been more and more restricted. Not a good trade-off.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

Mandatory voting would not work unless there would be a selection for ‘None of the above’.

I wonder if they mean mandatory voting as in in the USSR or Cuba.....with a machine gun pointed at you to make sure that you ‘vote’ for the current totalitarian.

[pluvmantelo]

Mr. Bai realizes that a large number of reliable dem voters don’t participate in non presidential elections. Thus the desire to make voting mandatory. His attempt to dress up the scheme as a nonpartisan concern over a broken system is amusing. All in all I find the article encouraging. The dems must see looming electoral disaster if they’re grasping at fairydust ‘solutions’ like this one.

[andyk]

In some of the larger countries that do this, you must show proof that you voted in order to access government benefits. THAT is where Bai is headed with this.

That's even MORE insidious! I seriously doubt most of those folks are voting to constrain the size or growth of government.