I for one would LOVE to see a ranked ballot system.
I think too many people don’t care about politics because it doesn’t matter. Which is true for most things.
As much as people want to characterize Obama as this and that, MOST of what he has done isn’t any different than what Bush did. Or what Romney would have done.
I truly think we need more outsiders in politics. I mean how about Mike Rowe? He’s like the poster child of the every man American chocked full of common sense. That weighted ballot system they have in Australia I think could help get more 3rd party people elected.
Well it’s a modest proposal and so could be read as satire. If the GOP is so keen on voter disenfranchisement via criminal records, difficulty of registration, photo ID requirements and so on, then the local GOP government can just give up the tax income from those that are disenfranchised. That’s only fair, right?
Hopefully with the option of not ranking candidates if you choose. Having to decide which of the Nationalist Fascist party or the Fascist Nationalist party you would prefer to be elected, and being fined/imprisoned if you don’t rank them on my ballot paper, is not an improvement.
Also, if mandatory voting happens, then blank and spoiled ballot papers should be allowed as a valid form of political action.
Assuming they make voting mandatory in the US, Mickey Mouse (or one of the other equally worthy write-in candidates) could finally win the popular vote.
This is gonna be interesting. Or a total disaster.
Empirically speaking, compulsory voting does nothing to check moneyed interests hijacking the government. Studies show that non-voters’ political preferences, as a group, do not differ in any meaningful way from voters’, as a group. Elections in compulsory voting nations have the same outcome they would otherwise…except that, in proportional-representation systems, right-wing extremist xenophobic parties pick up additional seats.
So be careful what you wish for when you talk about making everyone vote.
He has finally realised that conservative republicans are in knee-jerk opposition to anything he proposes, even if they thought of it in the first place (romneycare, for example). Therefore he can count on their reaction to this to be:
“He wants to make voting compulsory… Well, we’ll show him by not voting!. Ha!”
Australian here. The problem with that is that the minority group all finish up voting the same way because the argument becomes come along and vote for X rather than come along and vote.
That’s easy to solve, though. Make going to the poll mandatory but allow people to officially decline their ballots if they don’t feel there is a candidate worthy of their vote.
Mandatory voting is no check on “moneyed interests hijacking the government”. Like fakefighter said, voting is mandatory in Brazil and look what good it did to us.
A quote from a very recent interview:
"[Republicans are] often motivated, principally, by opposing whatever it is that I propose. That’s not inevitable to our democracy. That’s a phase that the Republican party is going through right now. And it’ll outgrow that phase.”
Mandatoryvoting? No. Incentivizing voting, yes. What if you gave people a modest tax write-off if they could prove they voted by maybe attaching their voter tub.
That’s kind of what we have in Australia - not so much compulsory voting as much as compulsory attendance. You can roll up & turn in a blank voting slip so long as you roll up.
On top of that, all elections in Australia are on Saturday, and if you can’t make that you can either vote at early voting stations (that might be recent) or obtain a postal vote so you can sleep in on election day.
I look at American elections and always have a reaction somewhere between eye-rolling and retching. On top of that, if you don’t vote, it should be mandatory for anyone to be able to punch you in the face if you ever complain about what your politicians do. /rant
