Obama Fantasizes About Being Back in the USSR

iRANJust when it seemed things couldn’t get more absurd in the Obama White House, the President floated the idea last week of making voting mandatory in the United States. It would be “transformative,” he claimed.

To paraphrase a line from The Princess Bride: “he keeps using that word but I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.”

For one thing the term generally used is compulsory voting but that doesn’t quite have the slightly softer sound on the ears mandatory does.

Of course when Obama says “transformative” he means a way for his party to get a firmer grip on political power, sort of like making sure the dead aren’t unjustly deprived of their vote just because they are no longer breathing.

During a town hall in Cleveland last Wednesday, when he first mentioned the idea, Obama noted that other countries have mandatory voting. Do their dead vote too?

Just because other countries do it is no reason for us to accept the practice.

Proponents noted that at least 20 countries have mandatory voting, though only 10 enforce it. They point to how well it works in countries like Australia or Belgium, where missing a vote can mean a jail sentence, though it is rarely enforced. They failed to note how other, less savory, countries are also on the list, such as North Korea (with only one candidate on the ballot), Egypt, Libya, Mexico, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This is the august company the president wants us to keep? It wouldn’t be the first time he has left many scratching their heads over his troubling allegiances.

“It would be transformative if everybody voted,” Obama said. “That would counteract money more than anything…the people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups. There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls.”

Besides the Democrat fantasy that there is an active movement to stop some people from voting because of their ethnicity, Obama deludes himself into thinking that 100% voter turnout would turn things in his favor (why else would he support it?). Israel had 72% voter turnout in this last election and Obama’s apparent nemesis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, won in an overwhelming landslide, yet the president seems to have no respect for the democratic process in that situation.

In any case, who would win or lose in such a system doesn’t matter. Even if the votes went entirely against the Democrats, it is a bad idea. How can a free country mandate participation in elections? It can’t. Voting is a civil right but no one is obliged to exercise one’s civil rights at all times. Would we require people to stand on a soapbox and speak, or write monthly letters to the editor, or perhaps require everyone to own a firearm? While the latter is a tempting idea, the basis of freedom and a free society is that everyone is allowed to choose for himself. That includes not voting if that is your choice.

Fox News interviewed Frank Askins, a professor at Rutgers School of Law, about the constitutionality of forcing people to vote. He was quite blunt about the matter. “People have a right to opt out of elections. It’s not happening.”

If you make voting compulsory it is only one more step to make voting for certain candidates compulsory. Thinking back to the Cold War, the Soviet Union always used to brag about its massive voter turnout, but there was never any question that the people had no choice. Compulsory voting was a symbol of a totalitarian system, not of people exercising their rights or freedom.

No wonder the president is so fond of the idea. (See “Obama Fantasizes About Being Back in the USSR”, originally posted HERE)

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