The Benefits Of Mandatory Voting

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The American presidential elections function is dramatically different than previous years. According to PBS, only 58 percent of eligible voters came to vote in the 2016 election (Regan 2016). By examining the drop in voter polls, the cost of campaigning, and outdated American voting system, it is clear that the United States should have mandatory voting. Voter polls greatly affect the outcome of the election. Campaigning cost has become very excessive for the candidates running. Exceptional results have been demonstrated in countries that adopted mandatory voting. First, the idea of the drop in voter polls is going to be addressed. To begin, the United States have revealed that it needs mandatory voting because of a lack of voter turnout. …show more content…

In the 2016 election, one billion dollars were spent between all the presidential candidates (Levinthalemail, Beckelemail, & Levineemail 2016). Presidential runners spend extravagant amounts of money on trying to get people vote. Mandatory voting would allow the candidates to focus on their campaign, instead of people voting. Mandatory voting would allow the candidates to only campaign on what they are going to do for the United States, rather than trying to get people to come vote. Presidential elections are not taken seriously anymore. Candidates spend too much money trying to get people to vote for them, instead of persuading them with facts. In the United Kingdom, candidates can only spend up to 30 million dollars before the election. In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton spent 769 million dollars on the campaigning advertisements (Levinthalemail, Beckelemail, & Levineemail 2016), suggesting that the United States has been spending unnecessary amounts of money. Obviously, lowering the cost of campaigning can only be fixed by mandatory voting. Next, the idea of the outdated voting system will be …show more content…

A more modern voting system would allow the election to be more advanced and draw more voters to get involved like other countries. For instance, wealthier Americans tend to cast votes more than others. Presidential contenders do not often speak to the lower class, which shows that the voting system is not working for our country. Candidates create a “class bias” between first class people and the lower class. Candidates favor the people they know will vote for them, which makes the lower class not participate in the election. 28 other countries have mandatory voting in their government. For example, Australia is one country that adopted mandatory voting and the turnout raised to 91 percent, (Galston 2011). Indicating that mandatory voting in the United States would be the best option. Other democracies have seen low voter turnout before they took the switch to mandatory voting. Clearly, the American voting system is not working in the United

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