TraeYoungsOldestSon t1_ivnmqbc wrote
Reply to comment by No_Extension4005 in Reports of alleged voter intimidation and interference in NC ahead of Election Day by Zen1
Mandatory voting? Why? Like yeah, people should vote but how do you even enforce making them do it? And extra weight to votes in urban areas???? What? That sounds like straight up nonsense. Stooping to conservative's level by cheating to win is not the answer. Anyone who upvoted you should be embarrassed, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
No_Extension4005 t1_ivntets wrote
Benefits of mandatory voting:
- Improves candidate choices and protects against demagogues: Because now everyone who is politically moderate has to vote, it becomes a lot harder for extremist candidates to get into office and stay in power. So, it doesn't pay to energize your base at the expense of everything and everyone else. Meaning, politics become less polarized. Combine it with ranked voting and smaller parties can gain influence in politics, moving away from a two-party system.
- Remove voting restrictions: When voting is a civic responsibility, governments NEED to make it easier for people to vote. So, measures need to be taken to improve accessibility to polling locations and ensure that external interferences such as weather, transport, and restrictive employers can be worked around easily.
- Stimulate political interest: When voting is a duty, a greater portion of the public will take an interest in politics; leading to a better informed and politically aware population in general.
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I should add that I think the electoral college should be scrapped, but the other thing I was trying to express may have come out wrong.
Basically, in the 18th century the Connecticut Compromise was made at a time wherein the United States was significantly more agrarian and had a smaller population. The compromise was that number of senate seats would be weighed equally among states regardless of the size of a state's population. You get two per state. So now you have cases where a state like say, Wyoming with a population of 577,737 people is as represented in the Senate as roughly 38.95 million people living in California. Despite California having about 98.51 times the population. And things like this mean there is currently a rural bias wherein your vote for the senate has a lot more influence than someone from an urban region.
Another thing is that it used to be that the US congress would grow with the population, but then the house size got capped in the early 20th century after a census dispute. Now the population is nearly 75% larger than it was at the time a cap was placed on the number of seats in the House of Representatives, leading to situations where candidates represent very different numbers of people. So, someone can get into the house on 500,000 votes, but it might take another representative a million to get in, depending on where they are.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/25/politics/voter-inequality-us-democracy-what-matters/index.html
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