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Post by llluminati on Mar 22, 2010 19:13:48 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
Now, I'm certain that most people who are here live in a first world democratic society in which voting is a part of the government process. As such, I have a question for the forum:
Should voting be mandotory, why or why not?
I implore you to answer, but first let me express my views.
I live in Calgary, Alberta in Canada. I am 14 years old and although I am not legally allowed to vote, I'm very keen on this issue. Quite recently, our province held a provincial election. The results don't matter as much as the turnout, which was only ~40%, the lowest turnout in province history. Having such a low turnout (with only 2/5 of people voting) is quite disappointing, if not a major crisis. Mandatory voting seems like both a logical and reasonable solution to ever dwindling voter turnout.
Lets first agree on some common ground, if we were to make voting mandatory, we would use a system similar to Australia's, in which all eligible voters would be required by law to show up at voting stations and cast a ballot. One would be given the choice to spoil their ballot or vote for a particular representative or party. Those that fail to do so would be subject to a monetary fine.
Now, mandatory voting would increase voter turnout, this is obvious, however, it would have especially far reaching effects to minorities that aren't as politically active (visible minorities, elderly, etc.) This would force any potential government to evenly represent all age, gender and ethnic groups rather than neglect certain minorities that currently constitute a negligible amount of voters. Furthermore, it grants greater legitimacy to political leaders and would remove much of the protest surrounding the decisions of our leaders.
Secondly, voting also decreases ignorance and apathy by encouraging awareness. The logic behind this is also simple. If voting was mandatory, many people would be forced to become more knowledgeable or care about voting. This is obviously a good thing since it raises the awareness of the general public. For people that simply do not care or do not know, they are still able to spoil their ballots. There is simply no harm in mandating voting while there are clear benefits.
Lastly, mandating voting also increases political stability. By forcing people to vote, even if it means spoiling their ballots, we ensure that people could not have been coerced, intimidated or prevented from voting. Also, it would prevent extremist political leaders (*cough* Hitler *cough*) to be elected by a small fanatical minority while others are too apathetic or ignorant to prevent this.
Critics to mandatory voting bring up two main points, firstly that mandating voting would be violating our fundamental rights, and that some are too uninformed to vote and by voting, they would be damaging our results.
My response to the first point would be an example of something else that the government mandates. Public schooling is mandatory until at least sixteen years of age. I'm currently in Grade 9 and I can't say that there's nowhere else I'd rather be, despite this, I still attend school. The reason for this is that our government wants intelligent, successful adults who are able to function well in society. By that same logic, shouldn't we mandate voting? It's obviously going to greatly improve awareness in current non-voters at little cost.
Secondly, people argue that some are too uninformed to vote and by mandating that they vote we jeopardize our results. To this, I have to say to stop condescending others. Let’s look at the example of driving; it’s obvious that some people are more skilled at driving than others, does that mean that we should only let the Nascar and Formula 1 drivers drive? The government clearly believes that voting, like driving is a right and as such, it has the responsibility to uphold it.
In conclusion, as with the law, neither ignorance nor apathy is an excuse. Failure to fulfil your most basic responsibility as a citizen should result in clear consequences. So for the sake of a better, more equal government, for a well informed populace and for increased political stability, we should mandate voting.
Thanks for reading, feel free to respond, either by agreeing or disagreeing.
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darkless
Meteor
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Posts: 70
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Post by darkless on Mar 22, 2010 19:37:38 GMT -5
Voting should not be mandatory, some people just don't like politics and they will like it even less if you ram it down their throat's, all it will lead to is a majority of confused people who couldn't care less ticking the nearest box so they can leave faster, lets not forget some people are jsut to damned busy to vote.
Either way it would be a near impossible law to enforce, what are they going to do? Imprison or fine 60% of the population? that will make them real popular wont it, they will vote against whoever brought in the law out of sheer spite.
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Post by Karson on Mar 22, 2010 19:54:20 GMT -5
I do not agree. I think voting should not be mandatory. Like Darkless mentioned, some people do not like politics. They can't be bothered to learn about the people who they will be voting for. If voting was mandatory I guarantee a chunk of people would just pick people with the coolest name and not base it on who has the best political policies.
I remember when a friend of mine turned 18 and was able to vote he just chose the coolest name because he didn't know who anyone was.
There is no way this could be enforced in a place where there is a 40% voting turnout. There is no way they could fine 60% of the population. People would not stand for it.
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Post by Johncoyne on Mar 22, 2010 20:01:18 GMT -5
Voting wouldn't be voting if it was mandatory. It wouldn't make sense. Mandatory voting would take the purpose out of voting. If there was an undecided option, then it would make a bit more sense. Other than that, It wouldn't work. Tons of people would just take the fine.
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Post by llluminati on Mar 22, 2010 20:08:19 GMT -5
Of course you wouldn't be expected to vote for a particular person if you were honestly uninformed. You would still have the option of spoiling your ballot.
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Post by noobsensei on Mar 22, 2010 21:52:25 GMT -5
No. Voting should absolutely not be mandatory. There are far too many stupid people who vote NOW. The last thing we need is even more of them. If anything, I'd prefer to discourage ill-informed people from voting. Secondly, voting also decreases ignorance and apathy by encouraging awareness. The logic behind this is also simple. If voting was mandatory, many people would be forced to become more knowledgeable or care about voting. This is obviously a good thing since it raises the awareness of the general public. For people that simply do not care or do not know, they are still able to spoil their ballots. There is simply no harm in mandating voting while there are clear benefits. That doesn't actually work in practice. Forcing people to vote doesn't force them to learn about the issues; it just forces them to show up at the polls and mark one of the boxes on their ballot. It isn't fair to anyone to force them to vote: It's not fair to those people who don't know/care about politics, because it wastes their time by forcing them to weigh in on an issue they know nothing about. It's not fair to those who DO know/care about politics, because an ignorant person's vote cancels theirs out. And it's not fair to our system of government to have people who know nothing about the issues rendering judgment on our government's policies. Also, it would prevent extremist political leaders (*cough* Hitler *cough*) to be elected by a small fanatical minority while others are too apathetic or ignorant to prevent this. Why? Hitler was wildly popular when he came to power; I see little reason to assume he wouldn't have been elected if Germany had mandatory voting at the time. Secondly, people argue that some are too uninformed to vote and by mandating that they vote we jeopardize our results. To this, I have to say to stop condescending others. Let’s look at the example of driving; it’s obvious that some people are more skilled at driving than others, does that mean that we should only let the Nascar and Formula 1 drivers drive? The government clearly believes that voting, like driving is a right and as such, it has the responsibility to uphold it. The problem with that analogy is that you're talking about FORCING people to vote, and comparing that to ALLOWING people to drive. A better analogy would be if we were forcing people to drive cars...including people who know that they aren't good drivers and prefer not to drive. In conclusion, as with the law, neither ignorance nor apathy is an excuse. Failure to fulfil your most basic responsibility as a citizen should result in clear consequences. So for the sake of a better, more equal government, for a well informed populace and for increased political stability, we should mandate voting. More people voting will not make the government better; it will make it worse, because those new voters will disproportionately have no idea what the issues are. It will not create a more equal government for the same reason, unless your idea of equality is treating uninformed opinions and well-informed opinions equally. And it won't create a well-informed populace. There is simply no way that the government can force people to get involved if they don't want to be involved. That has never worked. Some people just don't know anything about politics, and have no interest in learning. That's fine; we all have topics that interest us and topics that bore us. I think we should respect their decision and time, and not force them to register an opinion on something they know nothing about. I think we should respect the well-informed voters by not helping uninformed voters cancel them out. And I think we should respect our system of government; the last thing we need is even MORE politicians appealing to the lowest common denominator, instead of to policies that actually make sense.
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Post by Natalie on Mar 22, 2010 23:21:51 GMT -5
I'm not really one for politics, so I'm definitely opposed to mandatory voting. Like others have said, it takes away from what it's really about and that's having a choice.
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Post by hopstar on Mar 23, 2010 4:00:13 GMT -5
I live in Australia, here we do have mandatory voting and i find it a good idea. really all you have to do is show up and get your name marked off, go into a booth and then if you like leave the page blank
Mandatory voting works very well and helps to get alot better picture of what the general public think, and makes people think more about what is actually going on in there area
P.s I dont care much for gouvorment our polotics i find all of them to be the same lying, dribbly idiots who get nothing done.....
BUT voting is very important
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Post by Natalie on Mar 23, 2010 10:24:34 GMT -5
I live in Australia, here we do have mandatory voting and i find it a good idea. really all you have to do is show up and get your name marked off, go into a booth and then if you like leave the page blank Mandatory voting works very well and helps to get alot better picture of what the general public think, and makes people think more about what is actually going on in there area P.s I dont care much for gouvorment our polotics i find all of them to be the same lying, dribbly idiots who get nothing done..... BUT voting is very important That's interesting, I had no idea Australia had mandatory voting. I still don't like it much because I think people will complain about politics and politicians even more than they do now.
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Post by zAkAtAk on Mar 23, 2010 12:16:04 GMT -5
Voting should not be mandatory. If I don't like any of the candidates, or I do not wish to have a say in how my country is ran (even if I have a .00000001% say), why do you need to make me? It doesn't make me happy, it won't make you happy because I'll just vote for anyone, because most likely if I didn't want to vote in the first place I probably don't have a grasp on any of the issues that are being voted on.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2010 14:01:23 GMT -5
Furthermore, it grants greater legitimacy to political leaders and would remove much of the protest surrounding the decisions of our leaders. No it wouldn't, until a democracy is direct and not representative (this is, until the population makes decisions by itself instead of choosing a person to do it for them) there would be protests. This is because politicians can lie, bend their words, make mistakes in their government, etc. Secondly, voting also decreases ignorance and apathy by encouraging awareness. (...) For people that simply do not care or do not know, they are still able to spoil their ballots. There is simply no harm in mandating voting while there are clear benefits. There is a huge problem with that. Spoiled votes are a very good way to represent the percentage of the population which actively opposes all of the politicians or the government structure itself. By forcing people to vote this variable would be forever unknown. Lastly, mandating voting also increases political stability. By forcing people to vote, even if it means spoiling their ballots, we ensure that people could not have been coerced, intimidated or prevented from voting. No, it would still be possible to coerce or intimidate people to vote in someone else or to spoil their votes. Political stability wouldn't increase. Critics to mandatory voting bring up two main points, firstly that mandating voting would be violating our fundamental rights, and that some are too uninformed to vote and by voting, they would be damaging our results. My response to the first point would be an example of something else that the government mandates. Public schooling is mandatory until at least sixteen years of age. I'm currently in Grade 9 and I can't say that there's nowhere else I'd rather be, despite this, I still attend school. The reason for this is that our government wants intelligent, successful adults who are able to function well in society. By that same logic, shouldn't we mandate voting? It's obviously going to greatly improve awareness in current non-voters at little cost. There is a big difference: Schooling (when well made) actually teaches you something which should in principle be useful for your life or for yourself. Voting only teaches you to check a small box in a piece of paper. Not all people are able to learn from voting directly. Secondly, people argue that some are too uninformed to vote and by mandating that they vote we jeopardize our results. To this, I have to say to stop condescending others. Let’s look at the example of driving; it’s obvious that some people are more skilled at driving than others, does that mean that we should only let the Nascar and Formula 1 drivers drive? The government clearly believes that voting, like driving is a right and as such, it has the responsibility to uphold it. First, the government doesn't believe driving is a right. You need to pass an exam to do it, you will have your license removed if you do certain minor mistakes (and obviously if you do big mistakes). If it was a right, half the population was dead (ok, maybe not half, but a lot more would ). The government only lets the skilled enough drivers to drive. So, it is a right to have transport, but a privilege to drive. Furthermore, it is not condescending others: in Portugal we have non-mandatory voting (voting is a right, not a privilege duty ( edit: ups, my mistake)). And if without mandatory voting people can do such a screwup as they do, voting on politicians based on who is nicer (although they don't admit it) or based in prejudices which often are wrong, with mandatory voting it would be far much worse. And I am not talking about who spoils their votes, I am talking about who decides to vote on someone based on bad ideas or bad knowledge of facts only because they were forced to vote (if they weren't forced to vote, they wouldn't have gone because they don't bother to do it, although they defend an idea, and that idea is often bad). Basically, people already screw up when they are not forced to. If they were forced to, things would be worse. In conclusion, as with the law, neither ignorance nor apathy is an excuse. Failure to fulfil your most basic responsibility as a citizen should result in clear consequences. So for the sake of a better, more equal government, for a well informed populace and for increased political stability, we should mandate voting. I too do wish a better government, but it isn't with forcing people to vote we get there. It is with education. I'll tell an interesting thing: In my philosophy classes, we came to the conclusion that in an utopia, people would make their government system an anarchy. Why? Because people would be knowledgeable enough to know which things they should and shouldn't do, and no system of rules would be necessary to make society possible. So we need to promote a good education (not just schooling, but an actual decent education that forces people to think with their head and not with their feet) so as to make society better. I hope I made my point clear and if you disagree, please say why.
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Dom
Meteorite
Posts: 16
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Post by Dom on Mar 24, 2010 21:47:56 GMT -5
The only quarrel I have with mandatory voting is simply that, someone who does not know anything about politics, or any respective parties may be forced into a situation where they must pick someone either at random, or without any real reason.. Of course every citizen has that right already, but I find generally people who admit they don't know anything, or care enough will not vote.
This is why I feel if we had mandatory voting (which I support to some extent), there to be an option on the ballet to say you support no applicants (in which voids your vote), or maybe submit a 50 word paragraph on why feel you shouldn't vote.
Now if this were to be done, we need online voting available. I'm sure with online voting, we might not even need to enact a mandatory voting bill. It would serve the peoples' laziness.
**edit** I just realised, why should we force people to vote when there are better options... that should be a right for each individual to choose, however.. instead we should make voting more favorable, such as making it online, a 3rd party website dedicated to each politician with an unbiased view. And instead f having one simple civics class in grade 10, we should have an active concept of citizenship and democratic rights from early ages.
btw i'm from canada as well (toronto)
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