Voting is a citizen’s most fundamental activity that expresses his patriotism and desire for nation building. Citizens are required to choose the government of their own through elections. The voting department of the U.S encourages everyone to vote for a leader because it’s their country and their home. However, 30% of the population in the U.S chooses not to vote because they think their votes will not account to anything progressive in the country. This is definitely not right because all votes are counted and valued. However, these are not clear reasons to one someone should not vote. Therefore, this paper will discuss and argue basing on the fact that voting should be made mandatory especially in the United States of America.
Mandatory voting helps reduce polarization between the citizens and their political leaders. This can be implemented by formation of policies. Whenever citizens develop the mentality of not voting, the more the politicians tend to pay less attention towards their needs. Some people have gone further to motivate citizens on the importance of voting. Despite the efforts on this, majority of the civilians seem to be discontented. Others who know the system of governance as being neither good nor bad feel as if they are not represented well. Hence they don’t vote (Associated Press, 2006).
One of the policies that can prompt citizens to commence voting is by requesting individuals who don’t vote to pay some fine. This is a polite way of commanding citizens to vote during elections. To verify this, William Galston commented on Australia, the number of individuals who vote is basically around ninety five percent. This is because a new policy was implemented. Those people who did not vote were fined a total of twenty US dollars or sometimes fifty US dollars. The total fine increases as one refuses to show up at the poles. All of this being countries, US can also implement this practice and start experiencing this achievable desires.
It’s important for members of a country to vote. Voting enables one to decide on the system of governance he/she desires to be ruled with. This day should be made free from any other activity. Everyone’s vote really matters a lot. For instance in the 2006 state election of Oklahoma, Republican Todd Thomsen thrashed Democrat Darrel Nemecek by only two votes. This was concluded after a recount of the votes for the Oklahoma House of Representatives during the twenty fifth district elections. This republican Todd Thomsen really made a historical difference in the chronological accounts which could have been altered (Associated Press, 2006).
In perfection to that, forcing citizens to vote has an educative result. Once someone has participated and seen a positive result from the governing party, he is compelled and makes more of an effort to make an informed vote. This also cuts off the low voter turnout which is usually associated with frequent patterns’ of inequality. Research indicates that highly educated citizens are more likely to participate in the elections than other groups within the population. Therefore all the citizens get education on voting and this strengthens the social stratification of the electoral process. Due to this, the trend towards lower electoral participation is carried away by the mandatory participators. Some of the scholars have suggested introducing compulsory voting as away of increasing voter turnouts thereby reducing inequalities with regard to participate in electoral activities. Unlike the voluntary voting that really encourages inequality in terms of class due to education level. This engages citizens of lower class to participate in primitive voluntary election (Fergus, n.d).
This has made the majority of them to be less concerned about what’s happening in the government today. This was concluded after carrying out an investigation in 2007 by the Pew Knowledge Project. This group of individuals asked one thousand five hundred and two people a succession of twenty three politically related questions. On assessing the results, out of the one thousand five hundred and two people interrogated, only eight people attained the ideal achievement (Do the right thing, 2008).
For instance Australia a society full of democracy has moved from being mandatory for one to vote into a duty for every citizen. These citizens have therefore become informed at large about the issues of their politics and feel part of the political process. For the Americans to become part of their political process and become informed on the political processes in the country there is need for mandatory elections.
A booklet from Belgium to the United States exposes some of the benefits they have successfully accrued from the mandatory law concerning voting. She also urges voting to be declared mandatory without violation. According to Belgium, those who violate the compulsory voting regime, a fine is levied. Astronomically, high levels of participation during elections legitimize the concerned country’s democratically elected government and perfectly promote an electorate that is knowledgeable. On totting up, a social norm of voting is fostered too. Belgium, Australia, Brazil and Ecuador are some of the countries with industrialized democracies which is attributable to the implementation of mandatory elections (Ornstein, 2006).
It is therefore beyond doubt that there will be enormous turnouts during elections only if voting is made mandatory and the rule of fines implemented in the US. This will then develop as a social norm until those who don’t turn out will be discriminated in the society. It’s affirmed that a lot of benefits can be accrued only if all persons took part in the election process. If individuals can not be contented with all the other means of motivation, why not use Pericles? Since according to the Pericles, persons who don’t take part in political events are branded as useless men. This is however relevant to the declaration of voting mandatory.
Reference List
Associated Press. (2006). USA Today. Web.
Do The Right Thing. (2008). Testing American knowledge on politics, economics, and history, can you pass it?. Web.
Fergus, C. (n.d.). Why don’t people vote. Research Penn State. Web.
Ornstein, N. (2006). Vote or Else. New York Times. Web.