[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Anonymouse

Hmm. Voting becoming mandatory. Presumably it would be a criminal offence not to vote.

Yeah. Aren't the prisons overflowing already?

I've said this before: in a true democracy, the right to vote should and must include the right not to vote. Having said that (again), if we got NOTA as an option I suspect turnout would be greatly increased. Certainly I would vote NOTA.

We the electorate are not apathetic. We just no longer see the point of voting for ineffectuals (to be more accurate, I don't - I can't speak for others, obviously). I don't vote for a candidate/party; as per Lazarus Long (see Time Enough For Love), I vote against. Unfortunately, if you vote against all of them that reduces to voting for none of them...not something Heinlein envisaged, I suspect.

'Suppose They Gave An Election And Nobody Came?' Ooh, I'd love to see what politicians and statisticians would make of that. Eat your heart out, Montgomery Brewster!

You don't have to make it a criminal offence, when they send you your voting card there could be a serrated bit you rip of and get stamped, with it you get a bit of a rebate on your council tax, without it you pay a bit more, we could call it the democracy rebate, they could also introduce freedom cakes and democracy hot dogs like Australia. You don't have to make voting mandatory in a democracy but you can incentive it because for me without it you get extremists and populists with their simple answers to complicated questions and the antidote to that is mass turnout.