Compulsory Voting System

Democracy is the building block of the United States government. But in the recent past elections, the percentage of registered voters who show up, have fallen to lows that rivaled the elections in WWII. If the voters don’t turn out, the foundation of the democracy falls to pieces. One way to fix this problem is to install a system where it is mandatory for the citizens of the nation to participate in voting, or compulsory voting. Several countries in the world currently have this system in place including Belgium, Luxemburg, and Australia. Due to the compulsory vote, these countries have incredibly strict laws regulating the voting and punishments on those not showing up to vote. Although, on the other side of this, these countries are all ranked high in the world for having some of the most democratic …show more content…
In smaller countries, such as Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic the cost is not very high. In a bigger country like the United States, it would cost the government much more to enforce. Additionally, it may not be possible to make sure that the voters actually vote with meaning. There is nothing stopping a citizen from just randomly voting or voting for every candidate just to say that he participated in the election. In countries with compulsory voting, such as Australia, there is an average of around 5-7% of invalid votes. Where in the United States, the average is much lower. This is due to the fact that the citizens, who are voting, want to vote so they are not going to waste their vote by making their vote invalid. Another down side to simply forcing the citizens to vote, is there are incredible amounts of politically uneducated citizens. If they are forced into voting then they might impact the elections by voting for candidate that might not represent the general population. This would have the same effect of the voters just filling in randomly or casting an invalid