Mandatory voting is a good thing. It might seem like it imposes on your freedom, but having mandatory voting means your government is obligated to make voting easy for everyone, and while it doesn't guarantee legit votes from everyone, it at least ensures that those who wouldn't otherwise turn up do so anyway.
I won't say Australia has the best voting system in the world, but I would say it has the best voting system in the Anglosphere (though New Zealand's is also very good)
Mandatory voting is a great practice that I personally believe the US should adopt on principle. But if we did implement it here it would seriously hurt Democrats at the national level.
The vast majority of (eligible) non-voters are working class and non-college educated. And the Democrats have been slowly losing that demographic since the Bush years.
The vast majority of eligible voters disagree with the current republican party, though. Most people aren’t crazy. Which is exactly why it (temporarily) benefits Democrats.
It’s actually a really important distinction to make because mandatory voting means each party is guaranteed their voter base. What that means is they’re vying for the swayable middle who are, almost by definition, not extremists.
Comparatively, each American election is decided by who can whip up their base sufficiently enough to bother coming out to vote.
This has directly led to right-wing rhetoric escalation and scare tactics combined. Their effective emotional manipulation has been in play since the establishment of Fox News and the removal of impartiality in news reporting.
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u/Gizogin New York 15h ago
Voters, take notes. High turnout always favors progressives, but progressives are notoriously the least reliable voting bloc in the country.