and the Paulistas ask their moms if they can come out of their basements & bunkers
Just waiting for the meme about "freedom from voting" and the
silent majority voting with their sedentary asses. Heads will explode over trying to make every citizen accountable and responsible for.....oh noes....democracy. After all, if the GOP is so all-fired concerned about voter IDs and fraud, then making voting compulsory will make the process even more secure.
At present "22 countries were recorded as having laws for compulsory voting and 11 of these 22 countries as enforcing these laws in practice". PBO goes Bulworth....again!
WASHINGTON – They say the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes. President Barack Obama wants to add one more: voting.
Obama floated the idea of mandatory voting in the U.S. while speaking to a civic group in Cleveland on Wednesday. Asked about the influence of money in U.S. elections, Obama digressed into the topic of voting rights and said the U.S. should be making it easier for people to vote.
Just ask Australia, where citizens have no choice but to vote, the president said.
"If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country," Obama said, calling it "potentially transformative." Not only that, Obama said, but universal voting would "counteract money more than anything."
Disproportionately, Americans who skip the polls on Election Day are younger, lower-income and more likely to be immigrants or minorities, Obama said. "There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls," he said in a veiled reference to voter identification laws in a number of states...
At least two dozen countries have some form of compulsory voting, including Belgium, Brazil and Argentina. In many systems, absconders must provide a valid excuse or face a fine, although a few countries have laws on the books that allow for potential imprisonment.
Belgian Frites!
Here's a sample of the reactionary meme:
If you’re old enough to remember the Soviet Union, you’re also old enough to remember that, when the American news reported that voter turnout was 50 or 60% for a given election, the Soviets would boast that they had 100% turnout for all elections. Even I, a child, realized that there was a connection between that high voter turnout and the fact that the Communist party candidates routinely received . . . wait for it . . . 100% of the votes cast by 100% of the population.
In those countries that haven’t yet become Leftist dictatorships, mandatory voting is still Leftist party-line voting, because coercion is the only way to drag to the polls people who are so inert they can function only if the government provides continuing, low-level maintenance for them. Is it any surprise, therefore, that a Leftist wants to use the power of the state to force American voters to the polls?
Peter Orszag, former head of the Obama Office of Management and Budget, is desperate. With even Roll Call recognizing that President Obama is fighting an uphill battle for re-election, Orszag is floating a trial balloon: mandatory voting. His call for forced voting comes in an op/ed for Bloomberg News:
The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults.
It’s our own fault — because voter participation rates are running below 60 percent, a candidate would have to win 85 percent or more of the vote to be elected by a majority.