What’s the solution to all of this nation’s problem? More democracy! At least that’s what Obama seems to think:
President Obama on Wednesday suggested that if U.S. voters want to counter the outsized influence of money in politics, it might be a good idea to adopt mandatory voting.
“Other countries have mandatory voting,” Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style event in Cleveland, Ohio, citing places like Australia. “It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything.”
Mandatory voting might have a transformative effect if ballots had an option to disband offices. But that option is never available so mandatory voting laws would just coerce you into choosing a master. And since money in politics shapes the ballots it’s already too late to counteract it by the time the polls open (but Obama isn’t an idiot, he already knows that). By the time you’ve gone to the polls the big money players have helped appoint nominees for the two major parties and electoral regulations severely limit what third-party candidates, if any, appear on the ballot (and they don’t have the money for a major media campaign anyways nor are they usually allowed into debates).
It doesn’t matter how many people vote because voting is just confirming the choices already curated for you by your overlords. Another comment by Obama points out another transformative effect of mandatory voting laws:
The president continued, “The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities… There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls.”
The keywords here are lower income. Expropriating wealth from people who have little is difficult for the state to justify without looking like a complete asshole. Income and sales taxes don’t raise much money from people with little income to tax or buy things with. Civil forfeiture laws are limited in scope so can’t be applied across the entire demographic. But Australia has shown other states the way by fining people who fail to show up at polling places. Suddenly the state can justify expropriating more wealth from lower income people. It also knows that lower income people have a harder time getting to polling places since they often lack transportation, can’t get time off of work, etc. so the probability of getting to fine them under mandatory voting laws is very high.
Mandatory voting laws are just another sham to make people believe they have a say in politics and a convenient trick to steal their money. As an added benefit, as can be noted by North Korea’s bragging about 100% voter turnout, mandatory voting laws also provide the state with propaganda it can use to justify its legitimacy. How could one, for example, argue that Kim Jong-un isn’t a legitimate ruler when 100% of the population voted for him?