this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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I dont understand why Americans are horny for mandatory voting. Voting is mandatory in Greece, it makes no difference. It is theoretically illegal to not vote but are you going to imprison people for not voting? So it isnt enforced, at all.
No one is voting because it is mandatory. Greece has 60% participation.
I believe Australia has mandatory voting and achieves a ~95% participation of registered voters basically every election, though they do enforce it with either a day in court or a fine.
I do wonder if you fined people, or wasted a day of theirs with court, whether it would have an impact in Greece after a couple of elections?
We swing between 93-95% participation
We alao make voting as easy as possible with voting opening 2-4 weeks in advance of election day, election day is always a weekend and as long as you vote before or on election day it's counted.
Also democracy sausages
I think such a high turn out makes our politicians a bit more honest with less empty promises since they can't dissuade anyone from voting.
Right. And for people who try to argue that they shouldn't be forced to choose between people they like like, or whatever, it's important to understand that it is only mandatory to get your name ticked off the list. You don't actually have to submit a valid vote. You can choose to just turn in a blank ballot paper, or write "fuck you" or whatever you like. There are no laws against that.
So the 'mandatory voting' just makes it mandatory to put in the small amount of effort required to show up; but doesn't force you to express an opinion. (Of course, I'd say that you should submit a valid vote. But you don't have to.)
You can not enforce new social norms like that. People, including voting ones, will revolt. They will call it undemocratic and a cash grab. You are just asking for trouble.
I agree many wouldn't bother, but I still believe it should be every citizen's duty to vote. It's literally the bare minimum political involvement people can have.
I wouldnt want idiots having to vote then voting because some friend said some madeup thing or it was the last thing they seen on ticktok. If people don't care and refuse to do the most minimum of looking into politics why should they decide my future
Does your legal system work on imprisonment or nothing at all? Sounds very extreme.
Here it’s a small fine, but it’s also a day off and takes like 20 mins to go do plus you can get a delicious sausage. So it’s a no brainer that people go vote.
Greece is a pretty failed state from what I’ve seen, wouldn’t read too much into what they don’t do.
As for why compulsory voting, it helps moderate extremism and represents most of society as a whole.
thoughts on Selb and Lachat, 2009?:
People will call it a cashgrab, that will mostly affect poor people(since the rich people both vote and also dont care about small fines).
Greek elections are always on Sunday and people can be given a day off if their voting location is far away(especially back in the day, when moving your voting location was hard).
I have been shitting on Greece for my entire life, but it aint cool when non greeks do it. Yes, Greece is fucked but i wouldnt really call it a failed state. It is a shithole but only greeks get to call it a shithole. It also relatively shitholey, in comparison to western european countries.
It just happens to be the worst "western" country. And yes, it is in the East, but the West/East thing was a Cold War thing and Greece was with the "West". Nowadays, many "eastern european" countries have reached and surpassed Greece.
In any case, take a look at the wikipedia map, which countries have compulsory voting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting
If you exclude Australia, all other countries are shitholes. And i am sure australians will be the first to tell you that Australia is also a shithole and politically fucked.
It doesnt. If anything, it might do exactly the opposite. When a greek neonazi party was popular, a lot of "apolitic" greeks supported it not because they supported neonazism but because "fuck the system, at least they will go in and smash some heads". When clueless people are forced to vote, they might be clueless about what they are voting.
America's issue is the first past the post, winner takes all system. If the US had a more representative system, that allowed third parties and coalitions(like almost all other democratic countries have), things would have been better.
Make it tied to your UBI check. Now it’s incentivized so enforcement not needed.
Yea I think I'll add this to the v4. Incentivize rather than punish. Just give people an extra $100 a month in their UBI for voting.
Why only $100 and not the whole UBI allowance?
Then it’s a punishment of $100 if you don’t vote. UBI as a reward for participating in our democracy would be a great step. A punishment would be a fine or jailtime.
because you could do literally anything else, and it would be more useful. Mandatory voting is the equivalent to asking everyone in the room what they think about every interaction that ever happens. It's fully redundant.