It's a pretty well known fact that voter turnout in the United States sucks. In the past 40 years of Federal Elections, only 45% of eligible voters have turned out to the polls. FORTY FIVE FUCKING PERCENT! Are you kidding me? THIS is the Great Democracy?
So, what do we do about it? Well, you can't MAKE people vote. Or can you? How about this...
If you work for the Government, directly or indirectly, or receive any form of Government assistance, you have to vote or give up the the benefits.
You work for the IRS and don't vote? Well, don't bother coming to work the next day. You receive Federal Student Aid and don't vote? Well, guess what.... this is your last semester. Since the Government controls so much of the lives of the Armed Forces, it shouldn't be hard forcing them to vote. Don't want to give them an out. You're having a rough patch, and need some financial aid... get your ass to a polling place.
If you don't care enough about this country to take a couple minutes to exercise the right that was, and continues to be, fought so hard for, then you do not deserve to benefit directly. Time to get by with whatever you can get from the private sector.
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Interesting idea, but freedoms and the privilege of voting probably includes the right not to vote...stupid as that may be. Maybe it's possible to require everyone to record a "vote" even if that vote is an abstention. Once they have to go to the polls anyway, most people probably wouldn't abstain.
I wonder if anyone has ever written an alternate history of the US as it might be if every eligible person had voted in every election. It would be just a guess, of course, but it could be interesting. Maybe it wouldn't even be what most educated people would expect.
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