Apparently mandatory voting has very bad connotations to it, only countries with dictators entertain such ideas.
But would it really be that bad for the US?
Will the current candidate selection process survive if we have such a law?
Will it help third parties?
Not so sure I see how this is a bad idea.
There are a multitude of reasons that non-voters don’t vote, and they certainly aren’t a monolithic block. Nationwide polls of all adults don’t differ substantially from polls of registered, or even likely voters. Certainly not by enough to think that we’ll have viable third parties.
Bringing non-voters into the process will subject them to the same structural pressures to coalesce around two parties as we have currently.
Like Australia? (compulsory voting)
I prefer having a right to vote.
I suspect that it would help third parties as people who are annoyed at being required to vote deliberately cast protest votes or just make entries at random.
I don’t think it would help third parties. The potential voters we’re looking at are obviously marginal voters if they’re not already voting by choice. So they’d presumably be the ones least interested in the political process and most likely to just pick a name they’re familiar with - a Democrat or a Republican. Third party supporters, on the other hand, tend to be people who are really into politics.
Surely one of the Big Two running for President would make a loud campaign promise about, y’know, abolishing mandatory voting?
I’d vote for that.
I consider voting to be a right and a duty.
Much like the right to sit on a jury.
No, there is no “right” to sit on a jury. There is an obligation to sit on a jury. A “right” to do something implies the “right” not to do it.
Assuming such a system allows write-ins, I think Stephen Colbert would get a significant boost in the polls.
If you have to do something, it’s not a right. Rights involve choice.
Likewise, I should think that movements to repeal marijuana prohibition would get a rather large boost.
Given the Australian experience, I don’t believe that compulsory voting helps third parties. There is a greater third-party presence in Australia, but that is helped by the use of the alternative vote in most lower houses, and of proportional representation in the Senate and in some state parliaments.
And I should explain what compulsory voting means in Australia.
It is compulsory to be on the electoral roll if you eligible – basically an Australian citizen over 18 years old and living in Australia – and the relevant government agencies take active steps to get people on the rolls. However, I’ve never heard of people being fined for that: if you are found to be eligible and not on the roll, you are given the form to fill out to fix that condition.
Once you are on the roll, at each election you are required to go to a polling place (or cast a postal vote), get a ballot paper, and put it in the ballot box. You are not actually required to mark the ballot paper, and you can’t be, since it’s a secret ballot. If you don’t do that, you get a please-explain letter, and I suspect that if you give a half-reasonable excuse, that’s as far as it goes. However, few people do get to pay a small fine.
So, in practice, you generally get 90% plus voting in Australian elections at all levels (federal, state and local), though it tends to be a bit less in local elections. (The three levels of elections are always held on different days.) In addition, there is usually an informal vote of about 5%, and most of the informal vote is clearly deliberate and not the result of a mistake in filling out the ballot paper: either the paper is blank, or the voter has written something like, “They’re all crooks.” (I’ve spent a lot of time as a scrutineer looking at informal ballot papers.)
So my guess is that most of those who are eligible but don’t vote in the US would vote for one of the two major parties, and most of the rest would cast an informal ballot if the system allowed that. (I don’t know if voting machines allow you to deliberately vote informal.) Third parties would get very little extra support.
I agree. If one considers the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which is a bad joke, but for the sake of argument), there are plenty of rights which are very simple to revoke. For instance, the right to life, liberty and the security of person. One simply has to commit suicide, sell oneself, or imperil onself to revoke those rights. Etc.