Compulsory Voting
I have always been of the opinion that in a Democracy it was not wise to force totally ignorant and uneducated people to vote. Of course I am strongly opposed to restricting the voting to process to just males, or whites, or wealthy land owners, etc. Voting is a basic civil right, and all citizens should be allowed to vote if they choose to. I felt that it was wiser if only those people who cared a little bit or those who had the least little bit of understanding of which candidate or position they favored should vote.
But because of some email correspondence I have been having with a very intelligent friend of mine in Belgium, I am starting to reevaluate my thoughts on this issue.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet people are now able to increasingly associate themselves only with others who have the exact same thoughts and beliefs as we do. I don’t enjoy listening to ignorant racists, so in my internet browser I filter out Fox News and their fellow right wing travelers. The same applies to the pro business and Wall Street types of self-centered, greedy, arrogant, crooks. I don’t find it pleasant to listen to their dishonesty and their pseudo capitalist propaganda, so I tend to use modern technology to filter it out.
This move away from really listening to others, and an enthusiastic acceptance of societal multiculturalism is causing greater polarization and radicalization, rather than compromise or reaching across the aisle.
There are several democratic countries which have tried compulsory voting but then have eventually have rescinded it, including the Netherlands, Austria, Venezuela, and Spain. There are other well functioning democracies which have some form of compulsory voting, either enforced or unenforced. Belgium and Australia are among those countries requiring you to participate in the electoral process by performing your civic duty and voting.
There are some who say that when voting is mandatory politicians tend to adopt more centrist and less extreme policies so that they can appeal to the group of undecided swing voters in the middle, rather than just their core base constituencies. In America at the moment one sees the Republican party increasingly shouting really loudly and adopting extreme/radical positions which makes their core supporters happy, but also means that the Republican party is losing more-and-more of the reasonable and somewhat conservative middle of the road voters who try to talk and behave fairly and responsibly. One sees the same sort of narrowing of the focus and target marketing among religious fanatics and the anti-abortion crowd that loud mouthed, closed minded weirdoes like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh target.
Almost 50 years ago, way back in the 1960’s, we knew that narrow mindedness was bad and that being open minded was good. Being open minded was good for you as an individual and also good for society as a whole. But American society seems to be moving away from this idea in the twenty first century. Perhaps some form of mandatory voting in America would help move politicians back towards the center.
Probably far more important to making democracy function properly in the United States of America would be to end the constant bribery and corruption of elected officials.
What I call bribery is what their spin doctors disingenuously call campaign contributions. It is clear that many (perhaps most) elected officials in America often vote either for or against legislation not because it is good for the people or the country at large, but because it is good for those individuals who make the big contributions to their political campaigns. Without any doubt the current system is one founded upon rampant bribery and corruption. Yes, I am certain that this dishonesty and the "greed factor" is far more important to an improperly functioning democracy than whether one is required to vote or not.
Just look at the Supreme Court case of Bush vs. Gore. In the vote for the president of the United States, the clear will of the voters was blithely ignored by the courts. Corruption in the electoral process is alive and well in Iran, but unfortunately it is also thriving in the land of the free and the brave.
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