“Would you be in favor of making vote compulsory? I think so, yeah. You know, some countries have done that. Australia is the example that most people point to. Belgium, because Belgium. Certainly, yeah. You know, other places like I think Argentina has compulsory voting. 16 and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in Argentina, but it’s not compulsory, but once 18, I believe it’s compulsory there. I was actually part of a working group in America through the Brookings Institution that looked at compulsory voting. We called it universal voting. I think it sounds a little bit nicer, universal civic duty voting. And the idea here is that, yeah, I think that would solve a lot of the problems. I mean, one of the things it would do was going to take away what sometimes is referred to as the voting wars in America, where the parties are fighting over who’s allowed to vote, and we’re passing all these voting rules that lead to voter suppression, especially when it comes to minority individuals. We obviously have a very sorry history of racism in America, and it exists still to this day with respect to a lot of voting policies. Universal voting, I think, would fix a lot of that. Now, I’m not so naive as to think that it’s likely to pass in America nationwide, but I think the countries that have it see a lot of positivity with respect to voter turnout and voter engagement. And in fact, the electorates in those countries often are much better educated on civic issues than in other countries.
” #democracy #voting #learning
