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 Stein
Stranger
Registered: 07/02/03
Posts: 35,129
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 Mandatory Voting? 
#3278928 - 10/26/04 10:18 AM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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I just heard on the radio about the run for mandatory voting.
Lots of pros and cons to this idea...if you have some ideas on how to implement mandatory voting lets hear em otherwise just vote in the poll.
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Anonymous
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Stein]
#3278951 - 10/26/04 10:22 AM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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absolutely not.
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Stein
Stranger
Registered: 07/02/03
Posts: 35,129
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: ]
#3278957 - 10/26/04 10:23 AM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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Why?
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Anonymous
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Stein]
#3278964 - 10/26/04 10:24 AM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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i can't think of a single 'pro'.
the people who don't vote are generally the least informed. the last thing we should do is force them to the polls. plus there are people who do not vote as a matter of principle and they should not be forced to participate if they choose not.
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Stein
Stranger
Registered: 07/02/03
Posts: 35,129
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: ]
#3278985 - 10/26/04 10:28 AM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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I feel the EXACT same way. The most uninformed should not be forced to make an unededucated guess.
Some people that called the radio show were all for it and a bunch were against it.
Crazy shit, I'd like to hear what the rest think.
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trick
Registered: 10/22/04
Posts: 1,059
Loc: unknown
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Stein]
#3278997 - 10/26/04 10:30 AM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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voting should not be obligatory at all. not on basis of education in my book, i just don't like the idea of democratic voting. which is a small factor played into my role of an anarchist
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MOTH
Wild Woman
Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 23,431
Loc: In the jungle
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Stein]
#3279015 - 10/26/04 10:39 AM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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I think people should have the freedom to choose whether or not they want to participate in voting.
I mean...the US being the Land of the Free and all...
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JonnyOnTheSpot
Sober Surfer
Registered: 01/27/02
Posts: 11,528
Loc: North Carolina
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Stein]
#3279901 - 10/26/04 02:31 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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what a horrible idea. who thought of this one?
It would turn the whole stupid buisness of voting into even more of rediculous circus where millions of idiots would be voting based on negative comercials they have seen and whoe they "think is a nicer guy"
It's already basically like this now for the majority of people. Could you imagine how the two party duopoly would exploit this in order to dumb down the election process. Are votes would really be worthless then.
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Gijith
Daisy Chain Eater
Registered: 12/04/03
Posts: 2,400
Loc: New York
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Stein]
#3279919 - 10/26/04 02:33 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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What are the pros?
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what's with neocons and the word 'ilk'?
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 endokrin
Stranger
Registered: 02/13/04
Posts: 142
Loc: SouthEast
Last seen: 16 years, 3 months
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Gijith]
#3280013 - 10/26/04 02:57 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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In case any of you are fans of the bands Tool and/or A Perfect Circle, you should hear what Maynard has to say about mandatory voting.
Maynard Radio Interview
The interview starts right at 6:00 into this 30:00 minute radio clip. Go to 10:45 to hear the part about complusory voting.
And if ya don't wanna take the time to listen, Maynard says: "Hell Yeah, Absolutely..."
Of course, you never can be sure when Maydawg is full of it.
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"If King Kong sells drugs, we'll put him in jail"
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afoaf
CEO DBK?
Registered: 11/08/02
Posts: 32,665
Loc: Ripple's Heart
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Stein]
#3304877 - 11/01/04 01:39 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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http://www.slate.com/id/2108832/
You Must Vote. It's the Law.
Australia requires citizens to vote. Should the U.S.?
By Eric Weiner
Posted Friday, Oct. 29, 2004, at 4:19 AM PT
This election season has produced a mother lode of innovative get-out-the-vote campaigns. No longer content to merely Rock the Vote, we now hip-hop the vote and pray the vote. Votergasm.org encourages young people to reward voting with sex. A "patriot-level commitment," for instance, means you agree to have sex with another voter on Election Day?and withhold sex from nonvoters for one week. The group claims to have enlisted some 30,000 amorous patriots already.
In Australia, a country no less fond of sex, such campaigns are unnecessary. Voter turnout is already 95 percent of registered voters. The reason is simple: It's the law. Those who fail to vote risk a fine and, in rare cases, imprisonment. Advocates of mandatory voting argue it's a sensible way to ensure that elections reflect the will of all of the people. Only 67 percent of American registered voters, by contrast, bothered to show up on Election Day in 2000.
Australia, along with Belgium, is the only "mature democracy" that requires its citizens to vote and actually enforces the law. Australia is also a nation we Americans can relate to. We share similar historical narratives (outcasts fleeing Mother England), a frontier spirit, and a laid-back nature that drives Europeans nuts. So Australia makes an interesting test case for an intriguing question: Could mandatory voting work in the United States?
Australians have been required to vote in federal elections since 1924. Concerned that voter turnout had dipped below 60 percent, parliament enacted mandatory voting after only 90 minutes of debate, and it's gone largely unchallenged ever since. Polls regularly show 70 percent to 80 percent of Australians support mandatory voting. Lisa Hill, a research fellow at the University of Adelaide, explains it this way: "We're quite happy with some forms of coercion that others may not be happy with."
Actually, the voting part of "mandatory voting" is a misnomer. All Australian citizens over the age of 18 must register and show up at a polling station, but they need not actually vote. They can deface their ballot or write in Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (Australia's version of Lassie)?or do nothing at all.
What happens if you don't show up on Election Day? You'll receive a fairly polite form letter (see example here). At this point, you can settle the matter by paying a $15 fine or offering any number of excuses, including illness (no note from your doctor required), travel, religious objections, or just plain forgetfulness. For most people, the matter ends here. In most elections, about a half-million registered voters don't come to the polls. Ninety-five percent of them offer a valid excuse, and the matter ends there. Five percent pay a fine.
A few hundred cases each election actually end up in court. Those who refuse to pay the fine or offer a plausible excuse face escalating threats, similar to the ones you receive from American Express when your balance is past due. The fine jumps to $37 and, in extreme cases, a brief prison sentence is imposed. But the Australian government clearly doesn't want to imprison a lot of its citizens for not voting. I've been able to find only a few cases of Aussies going to jail over this in the past few decades?all conscientious objectors courting arrest. A significant percentage of Australians?about 15 percent of them?don't bother to register at all. The government doesn't go after these people, reserving fines and prosecutions only for those who register and don't show up on Election Day. (Australia's 80-plus percent registration rate is very high compared to other democracies.)
Every election, a few gadflies call attention to the contradiction between free elections and what is effectively forced voting. Frank Devine, a journalist, wrote an editorial in the Weekend Australian the day before this month's elections, proclaiming that "with some misgivings, I have decided not to vote tomorrow." Devine pointed out that parking fines in Australia can be 10 times higher than the fine for not voting. "The disparity of punishment for these two scofflaw transgressions illustrates the flippancy with which our politicians have come to regard an act of repressive authoritarianism," he wrote. If the Australian government were serious about mandatory voting, Devine argued, it would impose much stiffer penalties.
Most Australians obey the law, however, convinced that mandatory voting makes their nation a more robust democracy. That's a difficult case to make. Yes, voter turnout is remarkably high, but it was in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, too. There is no evidence that Australians are better-informed citizens than Americans. If anything, mandatory voting has reinforced straight party-line voting, since reluctant voters find it easier to align themselves with one party or another and get the whole business done with as quickly as possible.
Mandatory voting isn't politically neutral. It's bound to affect which parties do well at the polls and which do not. In general, political scientists believe the practice gives a slight edge (2 percent or 3 percent) to liberal parties, since presumably the poor and disenfranchised, once forced to the polls, tend to vote liberal (although Australia did just re-elect conservative* Prime Minister John Howard).
Australia also has a much higher rate of spoiled ballots than nearly any other democracy. There were 500,000 such ballots (out of 10 million cast) in this month's election. These include protest votes and those cast by recent immigrants who were confused by the notoriously complicated ballots. It does not include "donkey votes," so named because apathetic voters play pin the tail on the donkey at the polling station, randomly making their selections.
So, might mandatory voting work in the United States? It's a tempting quick fix to our low levels of voter turnout. Also, imagine our political parties freed from the burden of having to energize their base. Candidates could focus on converting voters, rather than trying to get them to the polls. As for concerns that mandatory voting represents government coercion, one might argue that our government coerces its citizens to perform many duties: pay taxes, attend school, serve on juries and, in times of war, fight and die for the nation.
In the end, though, mandatory voting is extremely unlikely to work in the states. An ABC News poll conducted this past summer found that 72 percent of those surveyed oppose the idea. The results are almost identical to a similar poll conducted by Gallup 40 years ago. Why such resistance? Perhaps because we view voting as a right, not a responsibility, and nothing is likely to alter that bedrock belief.
Also, mandatory voting would probably cause a further dumbing-down of election campaigns, if such a thing is possible. Motivated by a need to attract not only undecided voters but also unwilling voters, candidates would probably resort to an even baser brand of political advertising, since they would now be trying to reach people who are voting only out of a desire to obey the law and avoid a fine.
Mandatory voting would be a nightmare to enforce and would rob us of an important barometer of public interest in politics. If everyone were required to vote, then nobody would be excited to vote. And, of course, there's another downside: We'd also lose all of those entertaining get-out-the-vote campaigns.
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All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.
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unbeliever
Yo Daddy!
Registered: 05/22/04
Posts: 5,158
Loc: Gallifrey
Last seen: 15 years, 1 month
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Stein]
#3304882 - 11/01/04 01:40 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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Even aside from all the freedom issues, etc.. the main issue would become logistics. What a nightmare.
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Happiness is a warm gun...
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newuser1492
Registered: 06/12/03
Posts: 3,104
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: unbeliever]
#3304969 - 11/01/04 02:00 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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Australia is a nightmare. Their drugs laws. Their precursor laws. Their video game sales laws. Their gun laws.
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tomk
King of OTD
Registered: 09/22/04
Posts: 1,559
Loc: PNW
Last seen: 4 years, 3 days
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Puff Daddy says vote or die bitches.
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"I am eternally free"
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Rose
Devil's Advocate
Registered: 09/24/03
Posts: 22,518
Loc: Mod not God 
Last seen: 1 year, 8 months
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: tomk]
#3305662 - 11/01/04 04:10 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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Vote or die Mutha' Fucka'
Mutha' Fucka' Vote or Die!
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Fiddlesticks.
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Learyfan
It's the psychedelic movement!
Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,213
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 10 hours, 39 minutes
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: ]
#3305721 - 11/01/04 04:31 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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Pro: people who don't want to vote but are forced to, place prank votes. They vote for the guys they've never heard of(3rd party).
Kind of a stretch. I know.
endokrin: That clip isn't about maditory voting. It's about asexuality.
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Mp3 of the month: Sons Of Adam - Feathered Fish
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afoaf
CEO DBK?
Registered: 11/08/02
Posts: 32,665
Loc: Ripple's Heart
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: Learyfan]
#3305758 - 11/01/04 04:44 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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d00d t00l lieks teh mandatorie viznote w00t
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All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.
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unbeliever
Yo Daddy!
Registered: 05/22/04
Posts: 5,158
Loc: Gallifrey
Last seen: 15 years, 1 month
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Quote:
cb9fl said:
Australia is a nightmare. Their drugs laws. Their precursor laws. Their video game sales laws. Their gun laws.
Well that's not at all what I was talking about. I'm talking about the logistics of figuring out how to get 300+ million people to vote and then successfully tabulating all that data.
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Happiness is a warm gun...
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afoaf
CEO DBK?
Registered: 11/08/02
Posts: 32,665
Loc: Ripple's Heart
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: unbeliever]
#3306207 - 11/01/04 06:41 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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ummm....try talking to India.
they've been doing it relatively successfully on a magnitude
much larger for some time.
they vote over the span of a week, I believe.
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All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.
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unbeliever
Yo Daddy!
Registered: 05/22/04
Posts: 5,158
Loc: Gallifrey
Last seen: 15 years, 1 month
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Re: Mandatory Voting? [Re: afoaf]
#3306381 - 11/01/04 07:29 PM (19 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
afoaf said:
ummm....try talking to India.
they've been doing it relatively successfully on a magnitude
much larger for some time.
they vote over the span of a week, I believe.
And I'm sure the first time they did it, it went smoothly eh? It could be done but I think americans are a bit too lazy and jaded.
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Happiness is a warm gun...
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