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Compulsory voting or not


schouston1991

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Compulsory voting?

You must exercise your freedoms or be terminated! Vote or be vaporized!

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I think we all have the freedom to abstain from voting as well as the freedom to vote in the first place.

well actually in Aus we have compulsory voting. so no, we dont really have the freedom to abstain from voting.... something of a paradox

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  • 3 weeks later...
Just curious, how is it enforced? Because I'm pretty sure they don't use coercion, but I can't figure out any other possible way.

you get fined if you don't vote in aus.

compulsory voting is ok idealistically. in reality, half the people (big generalisation there, but hey) who vote don't have a clue about who they are voting for.

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My Brazilian friend told me that if you don't vote there, the government makes life very difficult for you with taxes and fines.

Personally, I think people should concern themselves with politics. It's their country, after all. But compulsory voting sounds too much like Zimbabwe... the police went to people's houses and dragged them to polling stations to vote for Robert Mugabe. So if you have no idea what's going on and end up voting a dictator into power just because you thought he had a cool hairstyle or what not...it seems pointless.

But I think more youth campaigns to encourage young people to vote need to happen. Like Rock The Vote in the US. Otherwise in a few years time only 20% of the country will be voting or whatever.

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Well, i think compulsory voting is not a good idea. In a country like India, where literacy rate is very low and forget about international matters, they do not even know what is happening in their own country. Most the politicians here are corrupted. Whom to vote for? Compulsory voting will force the citizens to vote for those corrupted politicians. Lets be independent.

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  • 1 month later...

I am indecided on the issue, coming from Australia it is compulsory for me. The thing that annoys me about it is stories I have heard like one of my friends grandmother was told by her husband to vote for whoever was in power at the time. One of my friends had no idea who was who and just voted for the person that her parents voted for even though that is not the party that shares her beliefs. But then I feel that it more of democracy if everyone votes because it take in to count everyones views even forced. Sure there are a donkey voters but I think that it also gets people involved that otherwise wouldn't, which means more of the majority of the population gets a say.

For me it isn't difficult because I read the newspaper and my family talk about politics a lot, and not to mention that the polling booth is about a 3 minute walk from where I live.

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Compulsory voting is a step in the wrong direction. If someone does not care enough to actually go and vote, then forgive me for saying that I honestly don't believe their opinion is worth anything. Why do we care so much about forcing an opinion out of more people, when we are assured by their actions that their opinions are worth so little that they would skip voting? If we take 100 people and ask them a question, I would trust the answer given by those who actively went to answer it over the answer given by a bunch of people who were threatened in to picking a side. Sure the majority rules, but if the majority doesn't care, then this is no reason for the smaller portion of the population to go out of their way to mess up the results of elections.

Voting is a right, and like all rights, it comes with responsibilities. It seems that in modern democracies we have forgotten those responsibilities. You are not responsible for voting, you are responsible for educating yourself to the point where you are capable of placing a rational vote, otherwise, you would be undermining the basic principles on which a democracy is based. I would go so far as to say that one should not be able to vote unless they can prove their competence, though I know how poorly this suggestion would go over.

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^ While I don't personally agree with compulsory voting, I think you're going about the issue the wrong way.

A lot of people don't vote not because they don't care, but because they don't think their vote matters. Compulsory voting is a way of telling people "hey, we do care about your opinion and we'll prove it". I hardly think it would make any difference in how informed the decisions are.

Edited by Mr. Shiver
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The democratic principle essentially states that the majority is right on any given decision, I'm not going to debate the validity of that here, though I would be inclined to do so. In any case, if the population consists of a large portion of people who are "right" and a large portion of people who are "not right" then hopefully a vote will cause the "right" side to win. However, those who would normally not vote have shown their inability to make a decision that would follow appropriate logical steps, and therefore do not need to be accounted for, since we will get a more accurate measure of what is "right" by taking the majority of those who actually have an opinion on the subject. These are people who actually don't care who wins the presidential race enough to get up and go to a polling booth. I really can't see a logical reason for taking their "opinions" in to account when making decisions, since it is obvious that they either don't have opinions or don't want them to be considered.

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For the most part I agree with you, but I really don't think there's any cause for concern when it comes to logical decision making, especially considering that no matter what there will always be people making irrational decisions--that's the price of having a democracy. While I do agree that if compulsory voting were mandatory the number of these voters will increase, I also think that the number of informed and rational voters will increase at a rate that will balance off the increase in irrational voters. So I'm not opposed to compulsory voting on practical grounds, just ideological grounds (i.e. people should have a right to not vote as well).

Edited by Mr. Shiver
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  • 2 months later...

Compulsory voting sounds impossible to me... people who are interested in politics and people that have an idea about politics should obviously BE ALLOWED to vote, but to make it copulsory for everybody would be difficult because many people (the majority in Norway and probably other countries) do not vote because they don't bother, or don't know what to vote for. If they get forced to vote they might end up voting for parties just because everone else is doing it and that is not good for the demorcracy, even though it is democratic.

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No i beleive that the majority should vote in the end it is going to effect your life, but it shouldnt be compulsory!! But again like i said i beleive everyone should but neve by force and as for those who dont know they better have the basics of both parties..

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What I personally hate is when people bitch about the government... and then I ask them if they voted, and they say no.

Don't ****ing bitch about who's in power unless you exercised your right to vote.

Also, I think people should be more educated on politics. That might make the voting rate go up in places. I know where I live, a lot of young adults go out and vote more so than those 30+ and I think that might be because in our high school systems we are heavily taught about modern day politics. A lot of people my age are knowledgeable about what goes on in the government both locally and nationally.

If more places put this type of education system in place, more people might care about voting.

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^ While I don't personally agree with compulsory voting, I think you're going about the issue the wrong way.

A lot of people don't vote not because they don't care, but because they don't think their vote matters. Compulsory voting is a way of telling people "hey, we do care about your opinion and we'll prove it". I hardly think it would make any difference in how informed the decisions are.

You left out the part where anything taking more than 30 minutes may not be worth it for some people (though this time frame depends on how interested they are in voting and "making a difference")

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And why isn't it worth it? Because they don't think their vote matters.

But do you mean in terms of driving/line-ups or thinking about it?

If it's the former, then that can be dealt with easily: more polling stations, more sophisticated advance-voting system, etc.

If it's the latter, I still stand by my earlier statement: that the number of informed and rational voters will increase at a rate that will balance off the increase in irrational voters.

Like I said, I'm not in favour of compulsory voting, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work in Canada.

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People who are against a certain issues tend to respond more strongly or actively. In order to get a good representation of the entire population you must give all people a representation. This is also why that in Statistics you're not allowed to covenience sample. Therefore, everyone must be required to vote.

Compulsory voting will bring in lots of biased results... Like in my school it was required to vote for school president, so everyone just ticked off the first guy on the list.

Then it is the school president candidates to make good impressions upon their school. I've had this worked against me but nevertheless consequences would gradually become worse. Less people would vote each year or bother to vote and sooner or later it will be which candidate can bring the largest group of friends to the voting booths.

Edited by dragoneye776
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So much money in the US is wasted to try to get people to vote or just strategically bring out the group you need (time wasted as well). I think it would be best if we had compulsory voting, then the political campaigns would consist of trying to resolve issues and present ideas in suc ha way that the people actually are trying to decide on a candidate.

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