4 ms·
mandatory voting doesn't sound very good to me for a few reasons. winning with 30% of eligible votes is functionally equivalent to winning with 51% (ie, you sti
by leetcrew 6y ago
mandatory voting doesn't sound very good to me for a few reasons. winning with 30% of eligible votes is functionally equivalent to winning with 51% (ie, you still get the office), but looks a lot different. forcing people to pick one seems like a way to make the strongest of several weak candidates appear more legitimate. as misguided as it may be, I think individuals ought to have the option to signal their dissatisfaction (or apathy) with all the viable candidates by abstaining entirely.
one final thought: someone who cares so little about voting that they would only do it under compulsion seems like someone I would probably prefer not to vote. this is assuming, of course, that the reason they don't want to vote is not because of procedural obstacles. if you don't know anything about the candidates other than their names, your vote probably does not contribute much to the democratic process.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoI'm fine with "mandatory like the flag code". I'm not fine with "mandatory like the speed limit".
- 0x262d 6y agoMandatory voting doesn't preclude writing in nothing if you prefer. And for people who are uninformed, well, having to go through the motion helps that some. More than anything else, this would force the government to make it possible, easy, and routine for current non-voters to vote, which would dramatically shift election results to the left economically.
- aww_dang 6y agoUltimately partisans of either persuasion portray opposing voters as uninformed. I'd even suggest that a healthy portion of voters on any side have poorly formed reasoning skills. What is the standard for being an informed voter? I can easily imagine the backlash if there were a test for competence wherein voters were required to identify fallacious arguments.
- 0x262d 6y agoI agree, but was trying to say that if someone is afraid that most nonvoters are uninformed (debatable), making voting mandatory would cause many nonvoters to learn more about it.
- aww_dang 6y agoThere should be an option for "none of the above" or "withdraw consent" if voting becomes compulsory.
- klyrs 6y agoEvery ballot I've ever filled out has had blanks for write-ins. Sometimes I've written myself in. Sometimes, I write "no confidence". Sometimes, I simply leave the provided choices blank. It's different for referenda -- no write-in on those. But you can still leave it blank. And nobody will know (unless you're the idiot that writes theirself in), because your ballot is secret. Turning in the ballot can be compulsory without making it compulsory to actually fill it out.
- specialist 6y agoCompulsory voting would improve election integrity. It'd enable accounting style end-to-end auditing. Closing some attacks vectors, like ballot stuffing.