Desperation: Obama Surrogate Calls to Make Voting Mandatory
Peter Orszag, former head of the Obama Office of Management and Budget, is desperate. With even Roll Call recognizing that President Obama is fighting an uphill battle for re-election, Orszag is floating a trial balloon: mandatory voting. His call for forced voting comes in an op/ed for Bloomberg News:
The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of
democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected
by a majority of American adults.
It’s our own fault -- because voter participation rates are running below 60 percent, a candidate would have to win 85 percent or more of the vote to be elected by a majority.
Compulsory voting, as exists in Australia
and more than two dozen other countries, would fix that problem. As
William Galston of the Brookings Institution argues, “Jury duty is mandatory; why not voting?” read the rest
