Sam Seder
@TheMajorityReport·2M subscribers·30.1K videos
Caller: Should Voting Be Mandatory?
Posted
October 26, 2018
Views
5,114
Likes
156
Comments
169
Engagement
6.36%
October 26, 2018
5,114
156
169
6.36%
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4:41Now PlayingIn this Majority Report clip, compulsory voting: is it good? Is it constitutional? Would the Supreme Court care?
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"Compulsory voting isn’t as draconian as it sounds. No one is dragged to the polls against his or her will, and no one is thrown in jail for refusing to cast a ballot. Instead, a modest fine (about $20 in Australia) is levied on people who fail to show up and have no good excuse for their absence. There also isn’t any danger of political speech being compelled—a no-no under the First Amendment. People are free to do what they like with their ballots, including turning them in blank.
To find out what effect compulsory voting has on turnout, I used data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance to compare participation rates in countries that do and don’t require voting. Between 1945 and 2015, turnout hovered around 85 percent in compulsory voting countries (like Australia, Belgium, and Brazil). But it fell from 75 percent to 65 percent in countries with voluntary voting. Results like these may be why President Obama recently said, “If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.”"*
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