> If more people don't vote it will be harder for them to pretend they have a mandate to raise taxes, give money to the banks, and start wars.
No it won't, they'll just say people who didn't vote were apathetic.
No it won't, they'll just say people who didn't vote were apathetic.
I have to say, this type of attitude makes me suspicious. One of the parties in US elections gains a lot by discouraging people in general not to vote, because it tilts the results in their favour. This might not apply to you, but I always wonder if these kinds of comments aren't just in support of that strategy.
This implies that you believe that the other party (from whichever one you were thinking of) would always win if voting were mandatory. This seems like a result of interacting almost entirely with those of the party you favor, like people in 2004 who asserted that since no one they knew had voted for Bush, he must have won by fraud.
There is plenty of room in the setup of US elections for one party to have an advantage when turnout is low but still have varied results from year to year and region to region even when voting is mandated. But more importantly, even when you can get 60% of the popular vote in a 100% turnout election, lower turnout can still increase this percentage if the low turnout meant proportionally more of the winning party voters turned out, resulting in more than 60% majority.
But you did say "people in general", not "people likely to vote for party X", so your statement only makes sense if you think people in general vote for party X, which is the same as saying that party X would certainly win if everyone voted.
Maybe you misstated what you really meant to say, but I think the inference from what you actually did say was reasonable.
I almost didn't read any further when you began accusing me of making up straw men and being a professional (troll, I assume?). That certainly was a neat trick. :)
The whole bit you wrote about Bush and fraud and hanging only with your own was the straw man. I can see how maybe my initial statement was incomplete, but this stuff is not exactly news in US politics.
Please pardon me if this seems obsessive-compulsive, but there's an interesting pathological form of "debate" where someone keeps throwing arguments out, ignoring any refutations, then declares victory. Of course I'm not accusing you of this -- such an accusation would be very flimsy -- but it's always something to watch out for.
I fail to see what is magical about not bothering to make a move when they win either way.