With a law like that, they might do things like require voter ID, shut down DMVs and polling stations, require registration months in advance, forbid voting by mail unless you’re outside the country, etc. Well, they already do all of those things and they don’t even get to collect fines or arrest people yet.
That is effectively punishing people for the ‘crimes’ of being poor, disabled, sick, non-mobile, employed, or living in a district that normally votes against the incumbent party. Mandatory voting is treating a symptom, not the disease, and establishing penalties goes a step further by beating the patient for being sick. Moreover, given that the goal is to select the best leaders/representatives, not just to get the high score for number of voters, it’s focusing on the wrong thing.
That’s a very good point. 250 years ago, the colonies/territories/states were likely much more homogenous in terms of local culture (settlers from this group settled here, those from that group settled there) and most people lived out their lives within their local community with nowhere near the amount of exposure to outside ideas that we have now. So at the time, things like origin, culture, religion were very closely related to where people resided. Nowadays not so much. So how do we progress to a system that is representative of groups of people based upon values regardless of their location?
