President Obama is contemplating continuing his administration’s “mandatory” theme—going from mandatory health insurance to mandatory voting. CNN,
Asked how to offset the influence of big money in politics, President Barack Obama suggested it’s time to make voting a requirement…
“It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything,” he said, adding it was the first time he had shared the idea publicly…
But mandatory voting could bring its own set of problems. Haydon Manning, associate professor at Flinders University in Australia, said that country’s rules can backfire.
“Turning the vote out might not be a problem, but wooing disengaged citizens now requires banal sloganeering and crass misleading negative advertising,” Manning wrote. “To me, this can diminish the democratic experience for those who take the time to think through the issues.”
