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Hot take: if <80% of eligible voters show up, nobody wins and the same politicians stay in office for another year, even if term limits would normally apply.

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That means the politicians currently in power only need 20% to stay in power, instead of 50%.

It should be mandatory voting like in Australia instead. You don't cast a ballot, you get fined, and voting day is a mandatory national holiday. If you really don't want to cast a ballot, you cast a blank or invalid one.

True. I'd support national holiday for it in US. Also the fine I would support, but it might require a constitutional amendment (seems unlikely these days).

Yes, in Australia we have compulsory voting, but no national holiday. Polling day is on a Saturday, so most people can get to their local polling booth pretty easily. And since COVID, pre-poll postal votes have become even more popular and the Australian Electoral Commission has a really secure and streamlined process for these, proved over decades.

How about instead it immediately triggers another new election and the people who ran previously are not eligible to run ever again

Slightly less left field proposal: failure to pass a budget should immediately force fresh elections (both houses plus presidency), as it would in a Parliamentary system. None of this "shutdown" nonsense.

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