The Patriot Post® · Forcing the Freedom to Vote: Obama's Oxymoron
On March 19th, President Obama remarked to a crowd that America should have mandatory voting. According to him, “The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups … It would be transformative if everybody voted – that would counteract money more than anything …”
There you have it folks. President Obama managed to play the race card and the “money is terrible” card in one speech. Amazing. This is nothing more than the last gasp of an irrelevant President (who 50% of Americans believe is a complete failure) trying to find a way to get some good publicity at a time when the country is realizing the full extent office incompetence. While the word implodes around us day by day, Obama is busy trying to make everyone think he is still relevant. It’s an oxymoron (emphasis on moron) to say that people should be forced to express their freedom to vote. On top of that, how would you define “everyone”? Would you include mass murders and criminals in jail? Would you include illegal immigrants? Making broad statements that “everyone” should vote only leads to more trouble. “Everyone” has the opportunity to vote in America as it is. Any perceived injustices in the system are only being used to try to gain more votes (ironic isn’t it?). Experts have long agreed that when government gets its work done, voters are engaged. If Obama and his entourage actually wanted to make some fixes, they could have done it a long time ago.
Mandatory voting is quite simply a destruction of everything this country is built upon. You cannot have a country built on “free and fair” elections, but then turn around and say everyone must vote – or else. One of the most important freedoms we have in this country is freedom of choice; freedom to be a Democrat or Republican, freedom to choose to own a firearm or not, freedom to vote or note to vote. To violate this freedom of choice is to violate the very principles that make this country great. While it is true that low voting levels are a problem, mandatory voting is not the way to fix it. Take a look around you, do you honestly want some of the people you know to be forced to vote? Lots of people don’t vote because they know absolutely nothing about the issues, or the candidates. Can we honestly expect people who know nothing, and couldn’t care less, to make good, informed, decisions after being told that they need to vote? Leaving the fate of our country in the hands of high-school dropouts who are more worried about their twitter followers than the fate of America should scare you. On top of that, some people simply don’t vote as a way of expressing discontent with the current system. Should we really deny these people that right just to be able to say that everyone voted? Sometimes neither candidate for office is a good choice, so people won’t vote for someone they don’t support. Making them choose between two bad options is a violation of their freedoms.
Aside from the constitutionality (or lack thereof) of mandatory voting, how exactly does the government plan to keep track of over 300 million Americans to see if they voted? The IRS can’t even record Americans’ taxes (unless of course you’re a conservative). Maybe in a country like Australia, where the spiders outnumber the people, mandatory voting could work, but never in America. The only way that the government could ever implement such a policy is through a massive expansion of governmental powers. Unacceptable. The government is already too big as it is. When the EPA is telling Americans to stop grilling in their backyard, you know the government is too swollen for its own good. Keep in mind that this is the same government that can’t balance a budget correctly, and the same government that is constantly having its security breached by the Chinese and other hacker groups. Do we really want to entrust the government with our voting records and whatever other personal information would be associated with that? I don’t think so.
There are other ways to fix the flaws in our system. It is true that many people can’t vote because they have jobs, or kids to take care or, or a plethora of other acceptable reasons. Perhaps moving voting day to the weekend (both Saturday and Sunday) would solve this problem. Expanding the hours that the polls are open might give people an opportunity to vote that they might not otherwise have. There are simpler fixes to the system rather than simply trying to redo it all. Unfortunately, our liberal friends never seem to be able to grasp that concept. They seem to want to simply redo everything, and make it all mandatory. Mandatory healthcare. Mandatory EPA regulations. Mandatory voting. What next? Of course! Mandatory liberalism!
While the likeliness of mandatory voting is slim (it would take another Amendment which wouldn’t happen very easily), we still should be wary. It’s at times like these, when the world is full of distractions coming at us from every angle, that someone might just try to slip this by.
Ronald Reagan once said that: “The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished.”
We must continue that legacy and make sure that the very freedom that defines remains intact.