What? No posts here on Obama’s Compulsory Voting comments yesterday?
Hmmmm…..
Still giving him a pass, eh?
OK. No surprise.
However…
They were all over the top of the Google News front page around noon today. (Thurs., 3/19/15) They were hard to miss for a while but a few hours later they have mysteriously disappeared. Google got the memo, apparently. However, they are still available. Google “compulsory voting obama” for all you need to know. Hurry though…that memo may only be the first of many.
Meanwhile…read on for more.
Like this:
The White House Press is trying to clarify comments made by President Obama in Cleveland yesterday, when he suggested that voting be “mandatory” in the United States.
“Kinda provocative huh?” quipped [Press secretary] Earnest when asked about Obama’s comments.
“The president was not putting forward a specific policy proposal,” Earnest said, clarifying that the nature of the president’s comment was part of a broader discussion about campaign finance reform and getting more Americans to vote.
Yeah.
Right.
What a concept!!! An ongoing fix-approval scheme. Prop up the two…or even three or more…so-called “candidates” (all of whom are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the Permanent Government of the United States of Omertica, of course), and then trumpet to the world that “All of the American people (except for the ones who are in jail or have ever been convicted of a [thought] crime) have spoken!!!”
Nice.
Brilliant, actually.
Here’s how Australia enforces it:
According to the Australian Electoral Commission website, under federal electoral law, it is compulsory for all eligible Australian citizens to enroll and vote in federal elections, by-elections and referendums.
“After each election, the AEC will send a letter to all apparent non-voters requesting that they either provide a valid and sufficient reason for failing to vote or pay a $20 penalty,” according to the website. “If, within the time period specified on the notice, you fail to reply, cannot provide a valid and sufficient reason or decline to pay the $20 penalty, then the matter may be referred to a court. If the matter is dealt with in court and you are found guilty, you may be fined up to $170 plus court costs and a criminal conviction may be recorded against you.”
Nice twice.
Aintcha tired of the whole Big Government farce yet?
I am.
Been tired of it since the JFK coup and subsequent assassinations. I would have voted for JFK but I was too young. I thought all along that LBJ was in some way complicit in the act. Still do. Too many coincidences for my taste, starting with Dallas. LBJ Central. Bet on it.
I would have voted for RFK as well. But no. Mistah RFK. He dead too.
After that? There has never been a major presidential candidate for whom I would have voted. Not one. Sue me.
On second thought, nevermind. Don’t sue me. Save your outrage. The PermaGov is ramping up to do just that on your behalf.
Watch.
And…WTFU.
PLEASE!!!
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.Martin Niemöller
AG
Cries of outrage about my so-called “cynicism”?
Please.
After 50 years of observing, it ain’t cynicism.
It’s reluctant realism.
Bet on it.
AG
No tips, no recs, just thanks for posting this, and one question: Where in his remarks in Cleveland did the president push for mandatory voting?
The closest I could find is this question and answer near the end of his talk:
“Q Hi, Mr. President. You speak about the dysfunction in Washington, partly because people are trying to be reelected every so often. What about Citizens United, and overturning that, and getting some limits on campaign spending so that we bring some reality back to this situation?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, there’s no doubt that among advanced democracies, we are unique in the length of our campaigns, the almost unlimited amounts of money that are now spent. And I think it’s bad for our democracy. (Applause.)
And I speak as somebody who has raised a lot of money. I’m very good at it. I’m proud of the fact that part of the reason I was really good at it is because we were the first sort of out of the gate to — not the first, but we really refined using the Internet for small donations, and to be able to pool a lot of ordinary folk’s resources to amplify our message. But I also got checks from wealthy people, too. So it’s not that I’m not good at it. I just don’t think it’s a good way for our democracy to work.
I think, first of all, it makes life miserable on members of Congress, particularly those in competitive districts. There is no doubt that it has an impact on how legislation moves forward, or doesn’t move forward in Congress. It’s not straightforward, I’m writing the check and here’s my position. But there’s a reason why special interests and lobbyists have undue influence in Washington, and a lot of it has to do with the fundraising that they do. And the degree to which it’s spent on TV and the nature of just the blitzkrieg — you guys here in Ohio, you just feel it, right? It’s just — every election season, you just got to turn off the TV. It’s depressing. And it’s all negative because we know — the science has shown that people are more prone to believe the negative than the positive. And it just degrades our democracy, generally.
Now, here’s the problem. Citizens United was a Supreme Court ruling based on the First Amendment, so it can’t be overturned by statute. It could be overturned by a new Court, or it could be overturned by constitutional amendment. And those are extraordinarily challenging processes. So I think we have to think about what are other creative ways to reduce the influence of money, given that in the short term we not going to be able to overturn Citizens United.
And I think there are other ways for us to think creatively, and we’ve got to have a better debate about how we make this democracy and encourage participation — how we make our democracy better and encourage more participation.
For example, the process of political gerrymandering I think is damaging the Congress. I don’t think the insiders should draw the lines and decide who their voters are. (Applause.) And Democrats and Republicans do this, and it’s great for incumbents. But it means, over time, that people aren’t competing for the center because they know that if they win a Democratic primary or a Republican primary, they’ve won. So they just — it pushes parties away from compromise in the center.
I think that — now, I don’t think I’ve ever said this publicly, but I’m going to go ahead and say it now. We shouldn’t be making it harder to vote. We should be making it easier to vote. (Applause.)
And what I haven’t said — I’ve said that publicly before. (Laughter.) So my Justice Department is going to be vigorous in terms of trying to enforce voting rights. I gave a speech down in Selma at the 50th anniversary that was incredibly moving for me and my daughters, and 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, that’s — you can push back against that, and make sure that we’re expanding the franchise, not restricting it.
In Australia, and some other countries, there’s mandatory voting. It would be transformative if everybody voted. That would counteract money more than anything. 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 who are — they’re scratching and climbing to get into the middle class. And they’re working hard, and there’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls. We should want to get them into the polls. So that may end up being a better strategy in the short term.
Long term, I think it would be fun to have a constitutional amendment process about how our financial system works. (Applause.) But, realistically, given the requirements of that process that would be a long-term proposition.”
You ask:
Here…if of course any governmental media complex outlet is to be believed on any level whatsoever.
“Push?” I dunno about that word. When a president speaks, that is a “push” as far as I am concerned. A float at the very least. Run it up the ol’ flagpole and see what kind of
erection…errr, ahhh…sorry, I meant “reaction…it gets.You apparently think otherwise. As you wish. I no longer believe that there is anything even faintly resembling a two-party system in the U.S. Both parties are owned by essentially the same monied interests, and just as it is perfectly common to see a Burger King and McDonald’s set up in apparent competition across the same intersection, as above, so below here. They got “The Whopper;” we got “The Big Mac.” Choose yer poison. Both are totally ersatz.
WTFU.
Later…
AG
Yeah, I guess on this one I’m closer to Ed Kilgore’s view over at the Washington Monthly’s “Political Animal” blog today:
“Obama is pretty clearly talking about more people–eventually all people–voting as a way to counteract money in politics, and just mentions mandatory voting as an aside. If you don’t believe me, consider that earlier in the answer and in the next breath he talks about how difficult it would be to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Since mandatory voting would most definitely require a constitutional amendment, it makes zero sense that he’s substitute one politically impossible measure for another, even if you parse his actual words very differently than I do.
But unfortunately, an AP reporter covering the event in Cleveland where this exchange occurred conflated his reference to Australia with his commenets about the “transformative” effect of more people voting, and we were off to the races. You’d think it might have occurred to said reporter–and to others repeating this nonsense about Obama “proposing” mandatory voting–that if he was going to make a serious argument for completely changing our voting system, he’d probably do it somewhere other than at the end of a Q&A following a poorly covered speech in Cleveland. But I guess a lot of other anti-Obama myths get started with a lot less raw material.”
Why would Obama really want to “counteract money in politics?” Money had a large role in electing him. Big money. This is just more empty bullshit rhetoric from the peace president who wasn’t, and you…all of you leftinesses, pretty near…are still swallowing his line whole even after 7 years of direct evidence to the contrary.
Unbelievable, actually.
Totally unbelievable except for the direct evidence of what i see daily online.
WTFU.
You been had.
Admit it and move on.
Please.
AG
We agree money had a large role in electing President Obama. And that “big money” had a large role. (“Small money” had a large role to, at least in helping him win the 2008 primary contest, but that’s another story—best told, so far as I know, by Al Giordano).
All I’m saying is that this little kerfuffle is not an example of President Obama endorsing—let alone announcing a campaign for—a “mandatory voting” law in the United States.
It’s the president giving a rambling answer to a question near the end of a long public performance. In which he makes the debatable argument (Australia seems to have no trouble electing conservative governments) that universal voter participation in elections would change the outcomes.
Oh Didn’t He Ramble!!!
Just sayin’…
A president’s “ramble” is a civilian’s statement of intent or at the very least conjecture.
I am tired of his “rambles.”
Fed up.
He is just another in a long line of PermaGov frontmen. I trust him not. Look at what he does, not at his “rambles.” We are living in the most rigidly enforced security state the world has ever seen. When I went to look for the New Orleans classic “Oh Didn’t He Ramble” above I felt like I had to eliminate the old-time ones…by Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet especially, a true classic…because of a fear that some NSA asshole would put me on a bullshit list. I do not like living this way. Not a bit of it. You shouldn’t either.
AG
Again, even while rambling President Obama didn’t endorse or advocate “mandatory voter” legislation. By all means, get angry about the national security state and the abridgement of civil liberties. But, in my view at least, life is too short and too hard to be getting angry at people for things they didn’t say.
I am “angry” at what he didn’t do, massappeal. What he did do as well. And I look on all of his actions with suspicion as a result. All of them.
Not when he “rambles,” either.
Bet on it.
AG
Arthur, I think compulsory voting is a helpful idea, and I hope it gets more discussion.
It is helpful first of all because it checks strategies for suppressing the vote of particular segments of the population such as voter id requirements, insufficient provisioning of polling places, and restricted hours of voting.
Secondly, it corrects the demographic skew that affects non-presidential-year elections. Without the resources that go into educating the public about the issues at stake in a presidential election and mobilizing the vote, some segments of the population consistently and systematically fail to participate, and we have the congress and state governments to prove it.
If you are committed to the idea, as it seems that you are, that the outcome of elections doesn’t matter, I doubt you are persuadable on these points. But then, I don’t understand how you can reconcile the notion that elections do not matter with the fact that there are vigorous and increasingly emboldened efforts to suppress the votes of minorities. The people rolling back the Voting Rights Act don’t seem to agree with you.
A fair point, baudelairien. Here is my own take on the matter.
I believe that the corporate-owned major media control enough minds in the U.S. to pretty much guarantee a ‘winner” and a “loser” in the fixed national elections, including the major primary battles. Control the primaries so that both candidates are safe in terms of their fealty to the Permanent Government and you’ve got a lock on the whole process. However, it has been my ongoing experience living and working amongst truly mixed-race groups…I am a working musician of mostly Northern European ancestry who plays primarily jazz and latin music in NYC…that so-called “minority” people are not nearly as likely to follow the lockstep dictates of the mass media as are the white working and middle classes. Eliminating large percentages of potential game-changing groups of voters is a perfectly understandable tactic given the ongoing UniParty fix that has ruled this country since the JFK coup.
Of course elections matter. Otherwise, why try to fix them?
There it is.
Take it or leave it. But please…at least consider it.
And now the news as foisted upon he American public by the major media:
Thank you and good night.
Later…
AG
While I am at it…go here to read a piece by Missy Beattie (Someone w/whom I am most often in complete agreement.) on Counterpunch regarding the Obama compulsory voting thing.
As she wrote:
Yup.
AG
I agree entirely. Why should I bother to research candidates and consider their policies when a tidal wave of totally detached forced voters will be marking ballots randomly or even maliciously out of anger at being compelled to participate?
On the same subject, how can Oregon certify that everyone with a driver’s license is a citizen? Don’t they join California and Illinois in providing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens? Even if they don’t, why should legal aliens be able to vote? Can I take a trip to England and vote in the parliamentary elections?
The Democratic Party has become as wacko as the Republican.
Another thought, Arthur. Perhaps I would accept compulsory voting if the following options were on the ballot:
Well…yeah. Maybe. As long as you could make sure that the voting was still secret. Which you cannot.
I wonder how many thought-crime kinds of black marks it takes for an upstanding citizen who refuses to lie down for this government to be put on various “Watch that motherfucker!!!” lists.
Wa shall see.
All of us.
Soon enough.
Watch.
AG
Google News, by Arthur’s judgment a co-conspirator in “disappearing” Obama’s mega-evil plan to FORCE Americans to vote.
Alternative takes would be:
These alternative takes are factual and reasonable.
Arthur’s right-wing-swamp-regurgitating, extremely paranoid post and comments here seem counterfactual and unreasonable to me.
” if more Americans voted, our political officeholders and the policies they executed would be significantly different.”
Would they? really? Or would the Tea Party be in complete control?
I tkink only a low attendance could change something…
criminal legacy hack
Well, I dunno, Voice, here’s a guy who helped lead a movement which was a great-grandfather to the Tea Party, and he has a pretty good idea here of the results of more people voting: