Food for Thought:
Quietly a growing movement for mandatory voting is taking place. Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, makes an argument in today's New York Times, to develop such a requirement based on the Australian example.
In Australia, voters are required to vote, and receive a small fine when they do not. Ornstein points out, however, that approximately 3 percent of voters in the land down under spoil their ballots, and that is perfectly legal.
Ornstein's principle argument for mandatory voter turnout is that current U. S. politics has become so devisive in part because only those voters on the extremes in each party, the base, vote in elections.
The freedom not to vote has long been as sacred a freedom as the right to vote. Maybe it is time to rethink this freedom.
Quietly a growing movement for mandatory voting is taking place. Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, makes an argument in today's New York Times, to develop such a requirement based on the Australian example.
In Australia, voters are required to vote, and receive a small fine when they do not. Ornstein points out, however, that approximately 3 percent of voters in the land down under spoil their ballots, and that is perfectly legal.
Ornstein's principle argument for mandatory voter turnout is that current U. S. politics has become so devisive in part because only those voters on the extremes in each party, the base, vote in elections.
The freedom not to vote has long been as sacred a freedom as the right to vote. Maybe it is time to rethink this freedom.
posted by Jim | 10:08 AM
2 Comments:
if this has taught me anything, it's that somehow was should be encouraging less americans to vote. for anything.
To "Frank Jefferson": Maybe the problem was that too few Americans voted in the TV poll you refer to. Or that too many voted too often.
The interesting thing about "greatest" is that anyone can interpret it to mean anything he or she wants it to mean.
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