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Comment by xeromal | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with mandated voting?

As an Australian, I would argue nothing. I think it protects us from the extremes in political opinions that we see in the US and I hate for us to lose it.

People who has no business voting voting. Imagine how many people would vote - not from the informed voter perspective. They'll most likely vote for the candidate they remember in a positive light. Imagine how much more sway would a big ad campaign have. I would be ok if a blank ballot would be the least effort option with no strings attached, but with a "wasting your vote" being a stigma and a part of the culture I see no need in any mandate. I just really don't want people who can't be bothered to go to a polling station on a holiday specifically made for voting to caste their vote to vote at all. Some times gatekeeping certain things is ok. There must be a balance.

Apart from literal children (and felons in the US, I suppose), there is no such thing as a citizen who "has no business voting".

That's the pesky thing about democracy, you see. If you want "informed voters" then you actually have to work to have an informed populace, not gripe about people's right to participate in the society they're a part of.

There’s no such thing as an informed populous. There never has been, and never will be. There was never a “golden age” of democracy, where everyone dutifully read their newspaper every morning that was filled with articles written by unbiased and objective journalists. It’s always been a shit show. Having some reasonable and well understood requirements for who does get to vote within a jurisdiction is a means to ensure that those who do are doing so with care. Perhaps that’s naive. But it’s no more naive than thinking “democracy”, broadly defined, would improve if we had 100% voter participation.

I know it seems utterly incomprehensible to Americans right now, but it actually is entirely possible to have a populace that is at large capable of participating in government with quite a bit more critical thinking than the bipartisan shitshow you currently have going on. Not having shitty education (especially when it comes to social issues) or a culture that's proud of its political ignorance/apathy would probably help.

Not everybody has to be your idea of an intellectual to be a part of a democracy. And not only is that okay, it's precisely the point of it being a "democracy".

> If you want "informed voters" then you actually have to work to have an informed populace

Yes, and the solution to this is not mandating that they vote. If they are uninformed forcing them to vote doesn't cause them to be informed. It makes the system more vulnerable to populism.

Mandating resolves gerrymandering, voting on workdays and a host of other problems.

How? And can't you do that without mandating voting?

There is no griping about the right to participate on my part. I don't think it's fair for you to substitute a mandated voting for a right to vote like this to misrepresent my point entirely. A right is something you have to exercise yourself, any right is an option. When you force everyone to go to the polls it's different, because people who would've never chosen to exercise their voting rights otherwise end up checking boxes, and I don't want that. It's just like you have a right to be a candidate, but you also have to go and gather signatures to actually put yourself on a ballot - where I live we already have 3-4 pages of ballot in every local election. You can't let everyone just sign their name into the ballot without any filters. Same should be true for voters - people who wouldn't bother going to polling stations don't have any business voting by their own admission. You can force people to go to the polls, but you can't force them to care or to put even one thought into that said vote. Now if you want to talk about polling being accessible and more convenient to those willing to cast their votes - I'm all for it. More station? Sure. Disability assistance? Sure! Where I live we do polling at schools, because these are what kids go every day to, and they are located in places everybody knows about and they distributed very sanely and fairly.

Because it is weird to force people to do things that they don't want to if it doesn't harm another person. In this instance, forcing a vote can actually harm others if someone votes randomly.

The idea behind freedom is not absolute freedom. It is a balance of the contract with society vs individual freedom. You want to maximize individual freedom, but for everyone (not a singular person). Clearly things like the "freedom" to murder someone doesn't outweigh that person's individual freedom to live and thus we make laws (and ways to enforce them). Mandating voting decreases individual freedom and has a potential for reduced societal freedom (while little to no real potential for increase. Much prone to populist candidates). So why mandate? Don't solve problems that aren't problems. If someone doesn't want to vote, how does that harm you?

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