Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Voting	chekhovToo	05/12/04
Should voting be compulsory or not?
Answered By		Answered On
RDWilson2		05/14/04
Note: The following is MY OPINION and nothing more. REGISTERING to vote should be compulsory just as registering with the Social Security Administration is compulsory. In fact, as far as I am concerned, there should be no need for a Voter's Registration Card because one should be able to demonstrate one's elligibility to vote by presenting a current Social Security card. (This would encourage people to have their correct address, etc., on said card.) APPEARING at the voting location should be compulsory. While this does not, in fact, ensure that the ballot would be actually marked, the necessity to appear, and get checked off as having appeared, would increase the likelihood of actual participation in the process. (Of course, absentee ballots would be necessary and the details of how that would work would have to be worked out.) VOTING, i.e. actually marking the ballot, would have to remain voluntary. Otherwise, it would be necessary to tag each ballot with something that would allow tracking whether or not an individual has voted and, by definition, hat would mean being able to track HOW that individual had voted. That strikes at the core of the secret ballot. Now, having defined those aspects that I feel should be compulsory, I have to turn to how that "compulsory" aspect could be enforced. Why? Consider for a minute how "compulsory" anything is if there are no consequences of NOT doing it . . . doesn't that, by definitiion, make it voluntary? Compliance would have to be enforceable and non-compliance would have to have a negative consequence, a sanction, or whatever you want to call the punishment. Once again, IN MY OPINION, non-compliance should care a fine (say, $100 per instance) that is noticeable to those who are on the lower end of the income spectrum and not necessarily noticeable to those on the upper end. Why? For the same reason that we have a progressive income tax . . . social engineering. Such a fine would encourage those on the lower end to vote without necessarily discouraging the complacency of those on the upper end. ;-)

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