The people of North Korea care very deeply about their civic duty to vote…if they know what’s good for them. The dictator-ruled country had an election this weekend and 99.97% of the people voted; but choice had little to do with it.Not only did people have no choice in whether or not to vote, they didn’t even get a choice on the ballot. CNN reports:
Citizens forced to vote in North Korea’s version of democracyIt’s called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. But any real notions of democracy end with the name.North Koreans headed to the polls at the weekend to cast their ballots in elections for local representatives on provincial, city, and county People’s Assemblies.Citizens were not asked to make a choice — the results had already been decided by Kim Jong Un’s central government.Voters were handed ballot papers but didn’t mark them. They would have instead deposited them in a ballot box, signifying their support for the pre-approved candidates.
Here’s a video report:
Do you remember who floated the idea of mandatory voting in America back in March?
Ilya Somin reported at the Washington Post:
President Obama endorses mandatory votingIn a recent speech, President Obama endorsed the idea of making voting mandatory. It isn’t clear whether he intends to actively push the idea. But he does suggest that it would be an improvement over the status quo:
President Obama on Wednesday suggested that if U.S. voters want to counter the outsized influence of money in politics, it might be a good idea to adopt mandatory voting.“Other countries have mandatory voting,” Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style event in Cleveland, Ohio, citing places like Australia. “It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything.”
You may also recall that certain precincts in Philadelphia and Ohio reported zero votes for Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. Here’s a reminder from The Blaze:
Odd? Romney Got ZERO Votes In 59 Precincts in Philly, and 9 Precincts in OhioMitt Romney’s demographic troubles have, by this point, been well-rehearsed by practically every pundit across the political spectrum. However, even in his most troubled demographic (black voters, where Romney was trounced 94-6), the GOP nominee could probably comfort himself that at least – contrary to some polls – he didn’t get 0 percent.But what if there are parts of the country where Romney not only got zero percent of the vote (a possibility in the case of vote totals so small that rounding renders them null), but actually got literally zero votes? For the nominee of a major party, that would be truly extraordinary – so extraordinary, in fact, that it would strain credulity.
Required voting with predetermined results sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it?
Featured image via YouTube.
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