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THIS IS WHY VOTING SHOULD BE MANDATORY. Opponents argue that the uninformed will vote. The alternative however is much worse: disenfranchisement (eg why exactl
by cletus 5y ago
THIS IS WHY VOTING SHOULD BE MANDATORY.
Opponents argue that the uninformed will vote. The alternative however is much worse: disenfranchisement (eg why exactly can't felons vote?), active efforts to purge the wrong kind of voters from the electoral rolls [1] and voter suppression in the form of voter ID laws when no evidence of widespread voter fraud has ever been documented.
Australia has mandatory voting and it's non-controversial. It's technically not even mandatory voting. If you want to drop and empty ballot into the box so as to not to vote you can. You never have to wait in line for hours.
Make no mistake: removing access to absentee ballots, voter ID and efforts like Georgia making it illegal to give water to someone in line to vote have two goals:
1. To feed into the baseless GOP base delusion that the election was somehow stolen. It's virtue signaling for the Trump faithful because no GOP politician wants to be the next Liz Cheney and lose their next primary; and
2. To make it harder for Democrats to vote and to make less of them vote.
That's it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Security_Task_Force
- foobiekr 5y agoEach time there is an election here in California, I get to vote on presidency, senators sometimes, representatives, propositions... and then a whole pile of people I've never heard of, who have minimal bios, and about whom no meaningful research is possible beyond what basically amounts to advertising. The work required to choose which candidate makes sense for these lower tier positions seems basically impossible and I do reference a number of voter guide sites. Realistically, if someone who cares enough to put some effort into it cannot reasonably convince himself that he is making informed decisions for the approximately half of the ballot that these candidates for whatever, is it really unfair to assume people who don't care and are forced to vote will do anything but vote randomly or purely by party affiliation?
- moistly 5y ago> and then a whole pile of people I've never heard of From the outside, it looks crazy. So many service positions that are treated as political positions instead of employee positions. So many positions that should have qualifications as a requirement for employment (e.g. education, certification, training), turned into positions that have no qualification requirements save for one: get elected. People of no competency mucking up jobs that require competency. Coroners who have no education whatsoever! Animal Control guys with no animal training! Sheriffs and whatnot with no legal training! It’s fantastically insane!
- whatshisface 5y agoSheriff's don't need to be lawyers, they need to be trusted by the community to use force.