Didn’t even need to click through to guess the author’s race an gender.
Do you what you want, fucker. But too many people got savaged by dogs, blasted with fire hoses, and hung from trees to get me into the voting booth for me to ever opt out.
Every time I see these people, I think of the time I accidentally (courtesy of a flight diversion) found myself in Athens, Greece, on the day of their general election in 1987. I was 14 years old.
The junta ruled from 1967 to 1974. The current democracy in Greece was *younger than me*
The Greek general election was not merely an expression of democracy, it was a celebration of it. Voting was mandatory and everyone seemed to think that was the way it should be.
Every hotel and bar TV screen was turned to the count.
Young men and women cruised around Athens...
...waving flags representing their party of choice out the windows, sounding their horns to represent the *ballot number of their candidate*.
We were exhausted and went to bed. At 2am the results came through. We know this because Athens cheered.
I have never heard an entire city cheer before or since. It was an experience.
Because they knew, they *remembered* what losing democracy was like.
I will always vote like the Greeks voted that day.
I entirely believe that voting should be mandatory, but with an incredibly easy opt-out. And it should come with some small token of encouragement--like $10 off your taxes if you voted (or took the time to do the incredibly easy opt-out).
In Australia, voting is mandatory. You have to physically cast a ballot.
There are no rules about what is actually ON that ballot.
You can cast a blank ballot.
You can write in a fictional character.
You can, and this is quite popular, draw a dick pic.
I love that! For Americans, there might need to be a checkbox saying "I refuse to vote" or something, because there's the idea that voting=speech so can opt out for religious or other reasons (e.g., being a douche who writes NYTimes op-eds). Even though you can't get out of jury or taxes that way.
My suggestion is a checkbox of "None of the above."
And my further suggestion is that if any election is won by "None of the above" it has to be rerun with different candidates. This is not likely to affect anything at the national or even state level, but locally...
I think “None of the above” is a good option to include, but it implies that some other option above would be acceptable, and that doesn’t cover the people who want to entirely opt out of voting, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses or members of other religions.
If it's for religious reasons, then they have to register as a conscience-based non-voter, which is 100% their right under the First Amendment. This could be done through the church itself...they know who their people are and most religious organizations keep rolls.
I'm happy to let *them* opt out
And I'd definitely not be averse to allowing "I refuse to vote" on the ballot as well, but I think for at least some of these people even walking into a polling place would be verboten. It's a pretty small number of people in the grand scheme.
Agree it's a small number in the grand scheme, but since I'm in favor of compulsory voting, I think I'm ethically required to also be in favor of easily opting out. The current idea that "voting is speech so can't be compulsory" while "jury duty is compulsory" is a steaming load of SCOTUS.
