Are you a Democrat or a Royalist?
Oh Jeebus, now it’s his plan?
Ah, Obama gets it right after all:
It could be the Boyo Jim-Obama plan, if you prefer. He may want top billing. You’ll probably have to arm wrestle Michelle for it?
So where do we find the details of this Obama plan? Bet he’s hiding it on Hillary’s server.
Doesn’t it all hinge on the meaning of the word “manner”? To me, "manner’ means “how voting is done”, not “whether a citizen votes”. So, the states are charged to set a “manner” of voting and Congress reserves the authority to change that “manner”. So, if a state says: “Pass this test, and you are allowed to vote”, Congress can say “Nuh-UH!”. From what hook in the constitution could Congress claim the authority to force citizens to vote? That has nothing to do with the “manner” that states set up for the voting process.
Can anyone argue that Congress can compel the states to compel each adult citizen to go to a certain place on a certain day and vote? Would we have to actually push the buttons, or would it be OK to simply enter the booth and then exit without doing anything?
Further, do you really think that “not voting” ISN’T a form of speech? That it CAN’T be a form or protesting, like flag burning? Sure, most people who don’t vote are not actually protesting, but certainly some are. Do we have to register as “legal vote protestors” in order to skip the mandatory voting law?
BTW, the income tax issue is a bad analogy since it’s now IN the Constitution.
Yes:
ETA: ninja’d by Really Not All That Bright!
I imagine a tax credit (e.g. “free $20 for voting”) would be well within the constitution. But I think it’s clear now that the President was talking about a Constitutional Amendment.
Apparently (see post #147) the Missouri Supreme Court used the same logic.
John, you seem to be assuming that this would be done at the federal level. I’m not sure why that would be the case; civic duties are nearly wholly regulated and exercised at the state level.
None. That’s why I said “there is nothing in our Constitution that authorizes it”. I will note that this narrow interpretation of “manner” is not the one generally drawn by the courts construing other constitutional clauses like the FF&C clause.
Congress can’t compel the states to compel their citizens to do much of anything. It can compel them to do some things directly. Again, though, I’m not really talking about the feds doing this.
Dodging the draft or refusing to pay taxes is also a form of protest. The right to speak freely does not override the government’s right to compel you to do these things - assuming it initially has the power.
Who said anything about income taxes? Lots of taxes are collected via tax return.
But that wouldn’t make voting mandatory. You’d have to tax non-voting, which is not the same thing.
There are no details because there are no plans. He talked about it as one possibility while answering a question after a speech. And suddenly, it’s become another of his eeevil plans.
But you know that.
Thanks to Bricker and Not Really All That Bright.
I don’t see any way in which mandatory voting is a solution to the “problem” of money in politics. Parties and candidates would have to try to appeal to people who aren’t listening to the media they use now. That would seem to imply more advertising, not less.
And I hope our Constitutional-Scholar-in-Chief is being ironic about it being “fun” to adopt an amendment to the Constitution. The process is deliberately set up to be a difficult one, requiring super majorities. Not fun, nor should it be.
And I would hope very much that Obama farms out the duty of wording the amendment to someone else. Given his record of “I will not use signing statements to subvert the will of Congress” and recess appointments and “no it’s not a tax, I promise/OK, yes it is a tax” and 'the Supreme Court would never overturn a popular economic law" and “I don’t have the authority to use executive orders on immigration”, his understanding of the role of the Constitution is not as reliable as it might be.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s a solution to the “problem” that the politicians that are elected are (often) the ones who are best funded, regardless of whether or not they are actually the preferred choice of the majority of the populace. If turnout were 100%, then every winner would definitely be the preferred choice of the majority of the populace. They might also be the best funded, or they might not, but they would definitely have a popular mandate.
How would “the people you’d rather not have voting” differ from the average FOX viewer in ability to objectively and intelligently consider the issues?
I’ll say what I pretty much always say in mandatory voting discussions; I support it if there is an option along the lines of “I don’t care, but I am expressing my opinion that I don’t care, as opposed to just not getting around to voting.” This is similar to the “none of the above” somebody mentioned in the early part of the thread, except that “none of the above” isn’t counted as a separate candidate (although I don’t see a problem with having both “I vote for anybody other than these candidates” and “I just don’t care” on the same ballot).
As far as I am concerned, the right to vote should include the right not to vote.
I wonder how many elections would have candidates running solely as a “vote for me if you don’t care who wins and want to make your dissent of mandatory voting heard” option.
That’s a common argument and you’re not the only one making it. It’s also based on a completely false assumption and misses a far bigger problem.
It assumes that those who voluntarily vote are the most informed demographic. No, those who vote are the most motivated demographic, which is not at all the same thing. You can be motivated based on being fiercely partisan, based on believing a shitwagon full of misinformation (typical Fox viewers are both of those things), or based on having strong vested interests. A good example of the latter is that the wealthy are statistically more politically active than their less wealthy counterparts, and you can bet that their interests are not the same as that of the rest of the population.
Those concerned about low-information voters should concern themselves with the state of public discourse in this country, and its domination by the wealthy special interests who pretty much own the channels of information, the mechanisms of PR spin, the fake astroturf front groups, and most of the media. How can democracy function when voters are being told what to think, facts are being spun like cotton, and voters repeatedly repudiate their own best interests? Hyperbole, you say? Check out Deadly Spin, by Wendell Potter, or Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway. There are many other well-documented case histories.
It would solve this problem:
The last time voter turnout was this low, the U.S. was fighting WWII
The last time voter turnout for a national election was as low as it was on Nov.4, Hitler was still in power, and Mitch McConnell was only nine months old. Only 36.4% of eligible voters voted in this year’s midterm elections, down from 40.9% who voted in 2010, according to preliminary analysis by Michael McDonald at the University of Florida.
More specifically, it would solve the problem of grossly disproportional representation by motivated special interests and their gullible followers when voter turnout by apathetic voters is incredibly low, as it is routinely, and especially so during elections that get relatively less media hype, like Congressional midterms. Basically when turnout is this low, every voter who bothers to show up is exercising an incredible almost 3-for-1 multiplier in his influence over the outcome.
ETA:
Yes, exactly this!
Steven Leavitt in Freakonomics discusses this. It is more the other way around - winning politicians attract more money than losing ones, not politicians who attract money win.
ETA - cite.
Regards,
Shodan
Presumably this is based on voting returns from previous elections? Kind of like horse handicapping?
Not IIRC. More from who is ahead in the polls.
Read the book - it’s quite interesting.
Regards,
Shodan