President Obama spoke in favor of mandatory voting. Why would anyone want to require the populace to vote?
Politicians love uninformed voters. They are easy to manipulate and they generally turn attention away from the details. It becomes a popularity contest. A good part of politics is trying to win popularity votes. If you are a politician with a lot of faults (which covers almost all of them), you certainly want these kinds of voters.
Uninformed voters do not bring anything to the table. They should emphatically not be voting.¹ We should be encouraging the uninformed to stay home and not vote. Congress has an 11% approval rate while the reelection rate is 80-90%. It takes a lot of self delusion to not see the irony. The sheer mass of uninformed voters overwhelms the very small segment of the population that is actually qualified to make these decisions. I bet you think you are one of them. You might even think that it’s the other party at fault.
But that’s not the only reason the he wants everyone to vote. It is to remove uncertainty. By removing the uncertainty of who shows up to vote, polling is much more accurate and takes much of the guesswork out of predicting voting outcomes. It is vastly easier to manipulate the population when you know the breaks ahead of time. As a bonus, if you break it down by voting district, it makes gerrymandering so much easier.
If you are feeling disenfranchised now, just wait for mandatory voting. If you ever thought the President cared about what you the voter had to say, this comment should clear that up forever.
¹ Yes, these voters are allowed to vote under the constitution. That’s beside the point. Whether someone is allowed to vote is different from whether they are qualified to do so.
UPDATE: David French writes about the violent and hateful members of society. These people not only vote, but actively try to silence their opponents through intimidation, threats, and general hate. These are just an example of the kind of people who are not qualified to vote.
Please find an essay and website which describe why democracy has inevitably failed. The essay was written in the late 70’s so the references to the then communist states are no longer relevant:
http://www.beezone.com/da_publications/coopdoub.html
By the way here in Australia voting is compulsory and elections are very well organized with the possibility of corruption being virtually zero.
While I certainly don’t find the essay to be completely on the mark, it isn’t hard to see the reason why democracy is failing:
The religious basis of America is why democracy was such an early success. The voting population has been propagandized and so completely rejected the spiritual that they are incapable of choosing properly. They are like a drifting sailing ship with a navigator who can’t read the stars.
There is a structural weakness with democracy: it depends heavily on the people who make it up. As the people become increasingly unfit, the results are increasingly poor. Even worse, in order to gain power, those running for office must manipulate the population to gain votes. This leads to the acceptance of lying and the inability to tell fact from fiction and, if left unchecked, to totalitarianism (as pointed out in the essay).