Voting is a right. When you make it an obligation, it stops being a right. It figures that Obama wants to take away the right to vote.
“If you like your non-voting status, you can keep your non-voting status!”
Somewhere, a Professor of Logic is turning over in his grave.
Making voting day a national holiday would be a much less obtrusive way to test the waters here, to see what it does to participation. It’d be better than forcing people who don’t want to participate to do so - you’d be giving better opportunity for people who want to be able to do to do so. We could create a new holiday or just switch one of those random ass holidays no one cares about.
And it would be a lot more palatable. Everyone would like a new holiday. Everyone would like it to be more convenient to vote. No one would be forced to get off their ass and do something they don’t want to do.
I don’t like compulsory anything. Oregon is on the right track, automatically register everyone who is eligible (let them opt out if they wish) and do all elections by mail. Very easy.
Back in 1896, Kansas City, Missouri, sought to make voting mandatory by assessing a fine against every male over the age of 21 who failed to vote in the general city-wide election.
(Actually, they did it via poll tax: the law said that every male over 21 is assessed a poll tax of $2.50, but if he votes he gets a certificate confirming he voted and that certificate “extinguishes” the poll tax for that year.)
The Supreme Court of Missouri in Kansas City v. Whipple, 38 S.W. 2d 295 (Mo. 1896) overturned the measure:
(emphasis added)
No one here said it IS constitutional. Your claim is that it’s not.
However, I do appreciate your cite, though as I read it says nothing at all that suggests that mandatory voting would be unconstitutional. Quite the opposite, in fact – it explicitly allows Congress to superceded any state laws except regarding “places”. So, if is constitutional for states to make voting mandatory, is is certainly constitutional for the Federal government to do so.
So maybe we can argue elsewhere about whether invidual states could do so.
It doesn’t say “law”, it says “Times, places, and manner”. I think it is quite a stretch to say that “manner” would include “mandatory”.
ETA: I see maybe where the confusion is. It does say “law”, but that is only in the sense that Congress can make a law to alter the “Times, Places and Manner”, except it can’t alter the “places”. It doesn’t say Congress can make any law it likes. The law would refer to the Times or the Manner, only.
That’s actually 38 S.W. 295, not S.W. 2d.
Should have noticed there was no way Southwest Reporter in 1896 was on its second rotation. 
Or a Constitutional Amendment. I assumed that’s what he was talking about.
Let me know when the US Supreme Court weighs in. And I have to believe there are better means available than to tax everyone and then rescind it for people who vote.
I am not personally endorsing this proposition. I was just responging to the claim that it’s “almost certainly” unconsitutional, and what I’ve seen of the replies is not very convincing to me.
I really like the idea of a voting holiday – so long as they still allow liquor sales.
For those that are wondering about more modern precedent…
… I haven’t unleashed the heavy artillery of research efforts, but a moderate effort reveals no other caselaw on this point in any state or the federal courts.
The Missouri Supreme Court claims, in Whipple:
That’s not completely true. A Harvard Law Review draft cites statutes in Virginia and Georgia in the eighteenth century that existed but were never enforced. North Dakota and Massachusetts, according to this same source, both amended their state constitutions around 1900 (post-Whipple) to allow mandatory voting laws to be enacted, but their respective legislatures never actually used the power to enact such laws. So far as I can ascertain, Whipple is the only example in the country of such a measure actually facing judicial scrutiny.
Did the Missouri Supreme Court say that mandatory voting violated either the Missouri or the US Constitution? “That’s not the common understanding” is not the same thing.
I can certainly see that the President could not establish mandatory voting by executive order, but (pace John Mace) I don’t see how Congress is constrained from changing the manner of voting from “optional” to “mandatory”.
It would be, like many ideas, stupid and counter-productive but not un-Constitutional.
Regards,
Shodan
I believe voting should be done by educated voters. Voters who have made an attempt to educate themselves on the issues. They can read newspapers, political party hand bills, mailings, listen to pundits, news media, family, friends, clergy, circus performers, or baristas. The assumption is that the voters have a personal interest in the issues, and a desire to vote.
Mandatory voting ensures that even the people who can not normally be bother to learn about the issues, or candidates, MUST go to the polls and vote. They are then free to pick all of the names that start with “B”, or end in “ski”, or sound Muslim, or are listed last, or any other damn fool method they may chose. It’s no longer a patriotic duty, but an annoying requirement.
I’m sure Obama is probably unaware of all the facts, but many voters may chose to vote against the party which forced them to waste their time going to the polls.
I doubt that. A liberal voter may resent being forced by the liberal party to go to the polls, but once he’s there in front of the voting machine, he’ll see the liberal candidates vs. conservative candidates…and vote for the liberal ones. At that point, resentment about being forced to vote is probably out of mind.
It seems to me that a useful comparison would be the mandatory census. If we want to make a better democracy it would be useful to get a better handle on what all the no-shows were thinking.
Constitutional scholar Lyle Denniston wrote on the topic of mandatory voting back in 2011:
Constitution Check: Could voting be made mandatory?
He states that there would be issues under the Fourteenth Amendment (abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens, assuming not voting is a privilege); and again as an equal protection claim under the 14th if one state opts for mandatory voting and another does not.
There could even be a 13th Amendment (involuntary servitude) claim that could be raised against compulsory voting.
And though I am not a lawyer, I could envision a 1st Amendment claim that being compelled to vote is requiring me to take action that effectively speaks in favor of a process (the whole voting process) that I may not wish to support. In essence it is an argument that casting a “None of the Above” ballot is not sending the same message as not participating at all.
Denniston goes on to state that mandatory voting could likely be accomplished by Constitutional amendment. Several other amendments address voting issues.
Denniston doesn’t really point to any constitutional provision that supports his argument, though. That’s usually a bad sign. The “involuntary servitude” argument is ridiculous, inasmuch as voting is far less intrusive than jury duty and not even slightly analogous to military service. Nor is there a colorable free speech argument, inasmuch as filing a tax return is mandatory even though a return is arguably an endorsement of the taxing regimen lots of people hate.
The Missouri Constitution only.
Unlike the Missouri Constitution, the federal Constitution does not guarantee the “free exercise of the right of suffrage” (other than on the basis of race, color, previous condition of servitude or sex.)
So there appears to be nothing in our Constitution which prohibits such a move. The flip side is that there is nothing in our Constitution that authorizes it, either.
The term liberal voter suggests that the voter has some understanding of the issues. At least enough of an understanding that they identify themselves as liberal.
Under the Obama plan, the non-voters who don’t give a shit what the government says, or does, as long as the government leaves them alone, will now be forced to the polls to vote. And they will do so with only the nations best interests in their hearts. :rolleyes:
Most people who do vote are the sort I’d rather not have voting.