It would be so very transformative, you know. Hope and change:
“If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country,” Obama said, calling it “potentially transformative.” Not only that, Obama said, but universal voting would “counteract money more than anything.”…
Obama said he thought it would be “fun” for the U.S. to consider amending the Constitution to change the role that money plays in the electoral system. But don’t hold your breath.
“Realistically, given the requirements of that process, that would be a long-term proposition,” he said.
I’m surprised he’s even mentioning something as old-fashioned as an amendment. Surely he can think of something more creative, so we can join the following countries with mandatory voting laws that they actually enforce: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cyprus, Ecuador, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Nauru, Peru, Singapore, Uruguay, and Schaffhausen canton in Switzerland.
I’ve noticed four things about mandatory voting laws. The first is that only half the places that have them bother to enforce them. The second is that with the exception of Australia, the ones that do aren’t places you’d especially wish to emulate (although that canton in Switzerland might be nice). The third is that it seems to be a real vogue in Latin America, especially if you count the countries that have such laws but don’t enforce them. And the fourth is that they often contain exceptions for illiterate voters and the elderly, and I doubt Obama would want to allow that.
Needless to say, I am against compulsory voting laws. I’m libertarian enough to believe that people should have the liberty to vote or not vote, as they choose.
Also, I don’t think that this was a real proposal on Obama’s part. He knows it’s not that popular yet (although the left loves it). Not for now.
For the future, though, it’s almost certainly something that Obama wants to happen. It’s not a new proposal for the left, which has been supporting this for years; you can easily find articles of that type that were written before this. Obama is just trying to normalize it for the American public by putting it out there in an ever-so-casual way.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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“That which is not mandatory will be forbidden.”
The Collective’s wet dream. They HATE people, and they HATE freedom.
Out another way, “Voter fraud ain’t as easy as it’s cracked up to be.”
Don’t illegals get two votes each to compensate for their disadvantaged status?
If voting is mandatory illegals will comply because they are all law abiding.
The magic of obama alchemy translates one Illegal person to two legal votes.
And let me guess… there would be a new federal agency in charge of enforcing this mandatory voting scheme. And this new agency would be staffed by government employee union members, and therefore they would be rabid progressives. And they would use their discretionary bureaucratic powers to selectively enforce/not enforce with various groups of voters. And the end result would be that every democratic voter would vote and many conservatives would not be forced to vote. And every single attainable ballot from those not really interested in voting would somehow magically get captured and turned into a Dim vote. That is how this prog game would be played.
Not necessary. DNC will assume you voted for the democrat candidate unless you show up and affirmatively change it.
Don’t forget your photo id and be prepared to wait.
The chaos obola has created through his immigration mandate and spitting-in-your-face to Judge Hanen will create an easy peasy atmosphere for massive voter fraud. The stage is set.
These illegals don’t actually have to all vote to set the stage for this; just some of them. If someone were to examine and compare the areas these illegals have been bussed, car-pooled and flown to on commercial and military transports to anomalies in the next election, I think this theory will bear out.
I’m sure the Dems will find a way to get mandatory voting law before the Supreme Court. And, I am also sure that certain Supremes will find a way to use the Commerce Clause to make it happen.
In the mean time Vote For Pedro. He has no moneyed lobbyists supporting him.
or Roberts will just call the penalty for not voting a tax, that is unless you want to challenge it under the Anti Injunction Act, then it’s not a tax (sound familiar?) and voila, we have fundamental transformation!
not voting often sends as strong a message as voting does.
let me guess, he thinks we would be able to keep our elected officials also.
sort of related, I would like to see 22 amendment dropped. yeah gonna get flack for that but I think people should be able to elect a person as many times as they want. don’t think there should be laws saying I cannot vote for someone only because they already served.
yeah it may get us more obamas but thats the fault of the voters not the law.
right now it protects us from more obama, but the flip side is it could prevent us from having a good candidate server more.
you should not amend the cotus to protect a voter from themselves.
so flame away, just be polite and I will take it fine 🙂
be rude and I will unleash hell….
Dude! You can vote for Obama from now on. Even after you’re dead in the right places…or locales, actually…;-)
LOL while some consider me brain dead I can assure you I actually am still alive. the 24-7 pain levels that (per multiple neurologists) are the same as bone cancer sufferers sort of prove that sadly LOL
I just am not a fan of law imposed term limits, I am a HUGE fan of voter imposed term limits.
fire them all often and as a rule by voting them out is my mantra.
but I differ from many conservatives in this situation, many seem to like the law imposed term limits.
many are ok with discussing the differing views with me, but some get damned obnoxious about it.
We’re on the opposite ends of that spectrum. I’d like to term-limit every office. Some of them I’d like to see limited to ZERO terms. Heh!
I think Maxi Maxine Waters is an irrefutable argument, and I could name dozens of others.
And, the fact is…though I was being snarky…people will always be able to vote for someone who is term-limited. Maybe there could be a provision to allow them to serve if they were written in and won?
one thing that always bugged me was the supporters of the 22 in congress seemed to want to make sure it never affected them.
I bet if it did they would not have supported it.
a flawed (imo) reaction to the flawed fdr administration.
have always felt if a majority of the voters were stupid enough to want someone like him or obama then its a voter issue not a candidate issue and with todays ability to get info out to people its not needed.
now people refusing to listen..again voter issue not a legal issue.
using the law to protect people from themselves seems (again to me) anti-freedom. no better than a large size soda ban albeit on a larger scale.
I understand your point completely. I’m going to be one who disagrees.
The genius of the Founding Fathers is that they didn’t want to waste their little experiment by giving too much “power” to either side of the political scale. The recognized that “the [precious] people,” in a fit of stupidity and cupidity could wreak just as much havoc and damage to themselves and the country as a brutal monarch in every bit as short an amount of time. It is not difficult to imagine the American ship of state, no matter what our opinion of the current state of its journey, careering recklessly from shoal water to the inky deep and back were “the [precious] people” allowed to fully take the helm.
Bills to repeal the 22nd have been introduced at the beginning of every Congress since some point in the Reagan era. I, for one, am darn glad that none of them got any traction.
…..and he won’t be alone!
I see my auto downvoter hit me. wonder if this person would like term limits on amount of times they can downvote someone. somehow I doubt that LOL
Welcome to my world…
been keeping eye on it and I think we’re pretty even on it now. I almost always have downvotes now just like you.
hey in good company I guess 🙂
There already are sort-of “term limits” on downtwinkles. They only last a few weeks. Check out some older posts (i.e. this one from earlier this month) and you’ll see that the uptwinkles/downtwinkles buttons are really just here in the present, to give us some instant yet ephemeral sense of yay!/boo! justice. They don’t go on anyone’s permanent record.
I’ve probably just trashed someone’s entire raison d’être by revealing that. Sorry!
22nd, 16th, 17th, the list goes on.
And someone please remind me what it would take to return property qualifications to “constitutionality”.
dang it, qualification to vote
How about a candidate named “present” on each ballot to vote for? Didn’t a certain politician rise to “greatness” by doing that before his coronation?
“Obama floats idea of mandatory voting”
Let’s be precise here.
Obama floats the idea of a mandatory vote for his party.
Obama floats!
He’s a witch!
There are many kinds of voting. You can vote with your public statements. You can vote on a jury. You can vote with a ballot box. And I believe there is another way of voting that is the norm in many countries. If we are going to be a Third World country, it goes beyond economics.
“Irish democracy”.
Trial balloon. POP.
It seems like an excessive burden when there are still indigent, homeless, and even unidentified Americans, and a federal government nearly $20 trillion in debt. However, for the Abortionist in Chief, head of the pro-choice Party, to selectively recognize civil rights, while promoting premeditated murder… I mean “planning”… of over one million unwanted human lives… I mean “clumps of cells”… is entirely in character.
The real purpose of mandatory voting is to enable vote fraud. If the real voter turnout is 40% it’s hard to argue that an 80% turnout isn’t the result of ballot stuffing. If voting is mandatory you can stuff the ballots with Democrat votes to cover the 60% who didn’t vote and claim the absurd result was due to the mandatory voting law.
What would be the penalty for not voting? Probably not jail time, right? It’d have to be financial, either a tax or a fine (they’re the same, don’t ya know). And if I’m not mistaken there was some legal precedent that said poll taxes are not allowed. And yes, a negative tax is still a tax.
Yes, but the question of whether a negative poll tax was Constitutional would, after a number of election cycles, reach the Supreme Court. Looking at the membership and prospective membership of that Court; what do you think the decision would be? Not what it should be according to the Constitution, but what do you think it would be?
So, producing a photo ID is a hardship for people, but requiring them to take time off work/arrange transportation to the polls/whatever else people have to do to physically show up and vote ISN’T a hardship? Oh, I forgot, lefty logic can contradict itself.
Mandatory voting is only acceptable if “None of the above” is one of the options. Forcing people to vote for candidates they dislike is clear tyranny.
Australia has a preferential voting system that’s mandatory, there’s a $100 fine for not voting (in Western Australia, anyway.) It works well if you want to vote for a party; but it’s hard to vote for individuals, as you then have to number each candidate in preferential order, and if you screw it up then your vote is “informal” and doesn’t count. (You have no way of knowing if your vote has been classified informal.)
Can be very frustrating when you find out that the candidate that you voted for loses, and then you discover that because of the preferential voting, your vote actually ended up going to someone you really wouldn’t want to have voted for!
Most people in Australia just “pull the lever” for one party or another; even the Prime Minister is just head of his party, and the party can toss that person out of office, even just after he/she has been elected. It’s confusing!
I meant to add that I don’t like the Australian system, and I certainly don’t like that it’s mandatory. One big problem is that often small minority parties (the Greens e.g.) end up with tiebreaking power, so in the parliamentary system they are very powerful, though they have hardly any members.
I prefer freedom to vote or not vote, and I’d like to see the return of some kind of simple civics test to ensure that voters actually have some clue what they are doing- I know, but I’ll dream on!
“…Obama is just trying to normalize it for the American public by putting it out there in an ever-so-casual way.”
If this is an accurate conclusion about the President’s comment then it is deeply troubling. This is the same kind of thing that the United Nations does when it wants to get the feebs in the cheap seats to get used to an idea that, if put out there for immediate consideration, would make their heads go *splort* and/or inspire them to reach for their pitchforks and torches and then march on the castle. They occasionally get some factotum to stick his/her/its/their head(s) [gawrsh, I hate p.c.] out of the foxhole to speak ever so briefly about universal (i.e., Earth-wide) income taxation. Then they pull their heads in fast enough to avoid taking incoming fire.
They’ve done this several times over the past twenty-some odd years. If you’re aware enough to catch it when it happens and quick enough to stifle your gag reflex and visit the U.N. website, you can find proof there.
How many more times will either of these nitwad proposals need to be “put out there” before the drones just swallow hard, say “BOHICA,” and take it like good little dumbots?
I have an idea, let’s bring back the voter IQ test!
That statement is one of many fascist trial balloons — to see if that idiot Boehner ignores it.
I’ve said this before on other sites, The day that a “Mandatory voting” scheme is implemented in this country, is the day I revolt.