Thursday, March 19, 2015

Obama Broaches the Idea of 'Mandatory Voting'

While discussing money in politics on Wednesday, President Obama broached a topic normally confined to academic circles: A law requiring people to vote, reports David Jackson at USA Today.

"In Australia, and some other countries, there's mandatory voting," Obama said while taking questions at the City Club of Cleveland. "It would be transformative if everybody voted. That would counteract money more than anything."

Oh yeah, this really improves the functioning of government. Argentina, the Congo and Greece are among the 22 countries that coerce people into voting.

And just why does Obama think that coercing people to vote won't result in power players attempting to spend money influencing how they will vote?

As Lew Rockwell would say, this is about pushing and grinding the people around and nothing more.

 -RW

2 comments:

  1. Australia, Luxemburg and Singapore are also on that list. The countries on the list are a meaningless factoid. I doubt it would make much difference in US"S"A where the prez already acts as judge, jury and executioner for those he believes are "terrorists."

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  2. This item was titled on LRC " Coerced Voting in Fixed US elections". If one believes, as I do, that elections are fixed, nothing need be spent to influence voters' choice. The power players can concentrate their influence purchasing on bribes for legislators and career bureaucrats.

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