Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Voting	chekhovToo	05/12/04
Should voting be compulsory or not?
Answered By		Answered On
stevehaddock		05/13/04
Yes. Paying taxes is compulsory. So is closing your store on Christmas, New Year's and Easter. So is paying overtime if your employees work more than a certain number of hours a week. All of those things are less important than voting which, together with the right to petition for grievances, are the fundamental rights of a free society. John Ralston Saul has hypothesized that one of the problems is that voting takes only five minutes, but it's hard to fit it into the rest of the day. For example, the reason why the turn out for Democrats is low is that they have to find time to vote after work, which leaves them no more than three hours in most places. Guess when the polls are the busiest. Australia actually has mandatory voting, with fines for non compliance. In Australia, you have to mark each ballot in order of preference, and there can be dozens of candidates on the ballot. Actually, in early America, voting was a major event. Everything literally stopped for elections (one of the reasons they are held in November - harvest is done but the roads are still passable). Huge parties were organized to coincide with them. It's easy to make politics easy - you just have to give people the day off.

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