Apparently critics are ripping him apart on this suggestion, especially considering it’s his solution for dealing with big money in politics.
Way to just ignore the obvious solution of FUCKING ELIMINATING MONEY FROM POLITICS.
A somewhat bigger issue is that taking a day off to go to work puts a strain on lower income earners. I also don’t think that employers really respect the whole “you legally need to let me vote” thing.
i’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing
Bad. Freedom of speech is freedom to not vote. Yeah, it sucks that only 30 percent of America voted, but forcing them to choose their dictator is just fucking wrong.
This is perfect, imo. This is how many other western countries deal with voting and it works out great. I think the U.K. does it, too, but I am not 100% sure.
Mandatory voting means you’ll get a more active voting base. Before any of you come back with “but stupid people will just vote anyone” shut the fuck up and listen, compulsory voting has been used to bridge the gap between the poor and the wealthy. This is SRK so 99% of you are poor so you should be happy about this.
Yeah, you might have to take a day off of work but you weren’t doing shit there anyway except sitting on your ass doing nothing and getting paid minimum wage. In some countries, it counts as a federal holiday and those workers are paid anyway. Since it takes you about 20 minutes to vote, you can still clock in. You can just go in different shifts, like when you relieve the fry cooker and it’s your time to work.
I lol at people saying take the money out of politics. That would take legislation that I don’t think would be finished in under three two-term presidents, each dealing with an oscillating Congress. After all, if you’re going to campaign but take the money out, you’re either going to have to set up a federal fund each candidate can dip in to in order to promote himself or you’re going to have to convince private companies to give you valuable space on air or in print for free. None of those would be easy.
And Obama isn’t wrong. If EVERYONE in this country voted, it would completely fuck up American politics. It is your duty as a citizen to help put a government in, so put in one that reflects you and your best interests.
How do you do that though? He’ll never be able to stop behind closed doors deals so the only way to negate them is to lessen their impact as much as possible.
The way I see it, it’s a great idea with a very large potential to fuck up depending on how it’s handled.
Nooooope
I said I think. I couldn’t remember if it did or did not. But UK sucks anyway because they voted Cameron in. Australia rules.
I wonder what US’s punishment would be for not voting. Other countries have fines, and apparently you can go to prison in Belgium for not paying the fine.
This seems like a bad idea and a little unconstitutional to me. I don’t want more uninformed idiots who have no clue what’s going on to be forced to go eeny-meeny-miny-moe on the fucking ballot.
That 30% of American’s voting statistic should tell him and other politicians that we’re loosing faith in our government and those appointed to run it. We don’t believe any politician actually gives a fuck about us or doing what’s best for the country, so we’re like “what’s the point” Every race comes down to which is the lesser of two evils at this point. He wants more American’s to start voting? Well politicians need to show us that they’re worth going out to vote for. They need to make us believe through their actions that when I vote for you, I’m voting for the best man/woman for the job, instead of feeling like I’m voting for the person who doesn’t suck as much as the other canidate.
You must not have read the article I posted just a few more scrolls up about how compulsory voting actually leads to better votes.
You not voting means they only have to convince a smaller group that they are doing a bang-up job to stay in power. Whenever they do something their constituents don’t approve of they just need to apologize to a small few to get it over with. Worse still, if that smaller group agrees with what they’re doing they have absolutely zero incentive to do anything else since, you know, you don’t vote.
In the UK they do pressure you to register to vote, if you don’t then its hard to get credit, can’t get something simple like a phone contract. But no, voting isn’t mandatory.
What if none of them reflects my best interests?
Nope, didn’t read it and I won’t. The bigger issue is forcing people who don’t want to vote because they don’t like the candidates to pick the lesser evil. Nothing you say or link to will change the fact that mandatory voting is unconstitutional and a bad idea, in my opinion.
Sorry, we can agree to disagree if that’s the case, but I don’t want my government forcing me or anyone else to have to choose between two candidates when I wouldn’t want either of them as leader of my country. Better votes, you say? LMAO. You want more votes? Put someone up there who makes people want to vote for them.
Chad you can still tick no vote in mandatory voting…
Raz0rs link is worth it just to read some of the comments. Actually forcing people to vote over there is good for many reasons, like allowing some of you folk to see daylight.
Honestly, I don’t understand what you mean by that.
You dont want to vote, cool, you go to the polling station or whatever, pick up your pencil, go down the list of shitty douches you dont want in power… keep going get to the last box, it says no vote. Tick it and walk out the polling station to the Top Gun OST. Simples.
However since such a law would get lazy folk out of the house they might actually choose to vote somebody or do a tiny bit of research in who these fools are which incidently might improve the US as a democratic country since they slobs would need to put in actual legwork to stay in power so no more black vote surprises like Obama happen and scare all the old white folk.