Obama suggests mandatory voting would be good for the U.S.

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Countries with mandatory voting

[/column][column size=one_half position=last ]In a surprisingly candid moment President Obama suggested that it may be time for Americans to embrace a new program that will help reduce the power and influence of big money in politics — mandatory voting. Obama suggested the move in a meeting in Cleveland on Wednesday.

“We shouldn’t be making it harder to vote, we should be making it easier to vote,” Obama said. “The notion that this day and age we would be deliberately trying to restrict the franchise makes no sense and at the state and local levels you can push back against that and make sure we’re expanding the franchise not restricting it.”

Political scientists have debated mandatory voting in the U.S. as voter turnout has been at record lows.

Only 36.4 percent of Americans voted in the 2014 elections, however opensecrets.org estimates total campaing spending for the 2014 elections at over $3.7 billion.

That amount is the highest ever spent in a non-presidential election cycle. Over $6 billion was spent in the 2012 campaigns, also a record.

“It would be transformative if everybody voted, that would counteract money more than anything,” Obama said. “If everybody voted then it would completely change the political map in this country, because the people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups and they’re often the folks that are scratching and climbing to get into the middle class and they are working hard.”

During the speech Obama alluded to politicians actively seeking lower turnout, as a method of winning elections.

“There is a reason why some folks are trying to keep them from the polls, we should want to get them into the polls,” he said.

Obama concluded that mandatory elections, “may be a better strategy in the short term,” to drive money out of the campaign process.

If the U.S. would enact this practice it would join many other democracies around the world.

Twelve countries currently enforce mandatory voting, 19 have mandatory voting laws that are not currently enforced and seven more have enacted mandatory voting in the past.

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