Mandatory Voting: Why Not?

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Addressing the Cleveland City Club on Wednesday, President Obama put up a trial balloon for a controversial concept: mandatory voting. According to Fox News, Obama said, “If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country,” and called the idea ‘potentially transformative.’”

Only eleven countries worldwide enforce requirements that their citizens vote. Most of them are in South America — a bastion of good governance, of course. Interestingly, Venezuela dropped mandatory voting in 1993. The State of Georgia adopted it in 1777, but dropped it a few years later.

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