Posted on 06/21/2012 4:23:13 PM PDT by ColdOne
Peter Orszag, former head of the Obama Office of Management and Budget, is desperate. With even Roll Call recognizing that President Obama is fighting an uphill battle for re-election, Orszag is floating a trial balloon: mandatory voting. His call for forced voting comes in an op/ed for Bloomberg News:
The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults.
It’s our own fault -- because voter participation rates are running below 60 percent, a candidate would have to win 85 percent or more of the vote to be elected by a majority.
Compulsory voting, as exists in Australia and more than two dozen other countries, would fix that problem. As William Galston of the Brookings Institution argues, “Jury duty is mandatory; why not voting?”
During the 2008 election cycle, voter participation was approximately 64 percent; in 2004, it was about the same. Orszag wants that number up. Why?
Beyond simply raising participation, compulsory voting could alter the role of money in elections. Turn-out-the-vote efforts, often bankrolled by big-money groups, would become largely irrelevant. Negative advertising could be less effective, because a central aim of such ads is to discourage participation in the opponent’s camp.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
never happen. You’d need positive picture ID at the polls to be sure you got everyone.
Uh hmm. Because it is a right not to vote. Or write somebody in.
Oh, that guy again. Let me start with the ad hominums. So, Orszag how many women you got pregnant this time?
These Communist bastards can go straight back to hell where they belong.
Why dont we just create a Federal program for surrogates to vote for the welfare staters, et al?
Appointed of course, by the President’s Just Us Dept.
I bet they would love a proxy ballot from me though so they could vote for me.
the dead voting caucus might object.
Comrade obama is very worried about losing the dead vote this election.
We ar enot a democray, we are a republic.
Well, I like my bill better... Only preppie who pay taxes and are citizens can vote. If I pay the bill, I should decide how the money is spent. Works for me.
oh the irony...
president “present” forces people to vote ...
(under threat of violence is the implication)
what an ass. GTFO of MY country, 0failure. at least I can prove I was born here... and have my OWN ssno
yes. predictable move from the statists. mandatory voting was enforced in ancient and is again enforced in modern grece, today.
and the historians among us know how democracy ended in ancient grece, and how history is again repeating itself again.
our founders and framers were so incredibly wise.
Mental picture —
Frosty pre-dawn on election day,
National Guard deuce-and-a-halfs parked on each block, as armed troopers go house-to-house, breaking down doors and herding every person of voting age, still in sleep attire, into the trucks...
While ‘patriotic’ music blares from loudspeakers....
“The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy”
Certain citizens thereof have, especially for the last century or so. But we are not a democracy, or didn’t used to be. We wouldn’t benefit from being more democratic, quite the contrary.
Yes, We CAN!!!!
Yes, We CAN!!!!
Hail 0bama!!! Hail Victory!!! Hail Victory!!! Hail Victory!!!
i remember lectures from my dad, NYPD for 23 years, on the greatness of America when i was a little kid...he talked about America giving one the freedom to vote for whomever they wanted- then to add a little drama he’d, say in reference to the then Soviet Union, “in other countries people are forced to vote for specific people (politicians) at gunpoint and if you don’t vote they throw you in jail”....
later on in life i laughed remembering these stories- guess my dearly departed dad wasn’t far off....
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