The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a major piece of legislation but it fell short because it concentrated on rights. The problem with a right is that it is really not that far from privilege. We cannot move beyond rights vs. privilege until we change the conversation. Interested? How about considering something else just below the spagetti monster.
Way back when Thomas Jefferson wrote about all men being created equal, the meaning of "men" was indeed male and white, preferably Anglo Saxon and Protestant. Oh, and you had to prove you had "property". In other words, the vote was a right of the privileged. We have made some progress from those days when a Man with property could vote but men (and women) who were property could not. This bad old idea has not faded very far away. All we have to do is look to Tom Perkins to see that the right to vote as privilege is making a comeback.
We cannot get to a real democracy if we keep looking at voting as a right (really a privilege of the few) instead of treating voting as an obligation, one of the duties of being a citizen. We all have jury duty. If summoned by the court to serve, we show up and serve. So why not make voting a duty as well? They are almost identical civic duties. A jury is a group of citizens who listen to the prosecution/plaintiff and the defendant make their cases and weigh the facts that emerge. They then deliberate and decide the verdict by way of a vote. The voting citizenry listens to the arguments put forward by the candidates/parties in the election, weigh the issues, and then decide by voting. If these civic actions are so obviously similar, why is one a duty and the other a privilege? Some countries actually treat both as a duty. I did not even consider this as an option until we got to spend a month in Australia last year just in time for their political silly season. It was an eye opener. Australia has compulsory voting and a politically independent government agency to implement it. That makes a significant difference.
All elections in Australia are run by the Australian Elections Commission. This is the federal department that manages all things electorial. It is independent of the political process like our FAA or IRS, something the civil servants who run it guard very jealously. There are also State level commissions but they are under the jurisdiction of the federal commission. Australian states are similar to our own in their governance but the running elections is too important to leave to any partisan political interests, especially local and state interests who can create or allow artificial regional differences in the very process of voting. Imagine the possiblility that somewhere, anywhere in the United States of America, there could be a government elections department whose website publishes a web page like Information about working in the AEC, particularly the section on Political Neutrality. That is not to say there are no dirty tricks or rampant corruption in Aussie politics but at least the registration, actual voting, and election certification process is common, accountable, and transparent across the whole country. No wonder so many Americans do not vote these days. Not only the politicians but the process itself stinks. We need a firewall between the corruption among politicians and the process by which elect our representives. As Lewis Black has ranted "Elected officials shouldn’t get to choose who gets to choose elected officials". Most of us desperately want the firewall. The least we can do in return is accept the duty to vote.
Everyone enrolls with the AEC at age 18. Check out Enrol to vote, especially the the eligibility and ID requirements. After that, you just change your address when you move. That is it -- everywhere. Students usually register during their last year of High School. If you fail to register, someone from the AEC will send you a nastygram. If you fail to show up at the polls on voting day (a national holiday for everybody), you will be fined $20AU, more if you end up in court. To put this in perspective, a sixpack of beer Down Under costs $18-20AU. Australia does indeed have grumpy people who don't want to vote for any of the lot and some dramatically pay the fine as a protest but there is a less expensive option. If you don't want to vote for any of the rascals, you can cast an informal ballot. I would prefer a "none of the above" but at least showing up at the polls is better than sitting at home and being piously grumpy. They have other good things such as preferential voting (check out the videos) which would have prevented Bush v. Gore but that is an exercise for the reader. The key impact is that since compulsory voting was introduced in 1924, every election, starting with 1925, has had a >90% turnout. There is always voter's remorse but at least there was a majority of the electorate who thought it was a good idea on election day.
Compulsory voting changes the conversation where the Voting Rights Act can not because privilege is no longer relevant. No one talks about the "privilege" of serving on a jury. That is a good thing. In fact, if voting was compulsory, anyone attempting to prevent a voter from the polls is committing a crime. Imagine that. It might even force politicians to spend more time on formulating policies and less time on working out ways to game the system by getting out or surpressing the vote.
Yes, there are a few in Australia and other compulsory voting democracies who argue against "forcing" people to vote but their case for admiring the American "system" is a bit transparent. Some are blatant enough to argue that dropping compulsory voting would keep the non-conservatives away from the voting booth and improve conservative chances at winning power with a minority of support.
Australians emphasize that when they evolved from a colony to an independent country, they took what they saw as the best of our U.S. constitutional government and the best of what they inherited from the U.K. They have a House of Representatives and a Senate but they took a very different turn when it came to how they run elections. They have their crazies too, no, Sarah Palin is not unique, but their elections are not a laughing stock or a horror show. Their elections are verifiably honest and fair, something that U.N. observers cannot say about too many of our own. How about if we return the complement and take a lesson from the Aussies this time?