Gawd give us a break from this community Agitator idiot
a video with article at the site
SNIP:
Obama confirms: I really love mandates
posted at 10:41 am on March 19, 2015 by Ed Morrissey
No kidding. Suggesting mandates — and especially enforcing them — seems to be all that’s on Barack Obama’s mind as President. Yesterday, Obama told an audience during a speech on middle-class economics that the US should really consider making voting mandatory … like health insurance and footing the bill for contraception, et cetera et cetera et cetera:
“Other countries have mandatory voting,” Obama said Wednesday in Cleveland, where he spoke about the importance of middle class economics.
“It would be transformative if everybody voted — that would counteract money more than anything.”
The clout of
millionaires and billionaires in campaign funding has been enormous, and many claim the uber wealthy have undue leverage in politics.
“The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities,” Obama said. “There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls.”
The President cited Australia as one of the countries that has mandatory voting. But there are many more.
At least 26 countries have compulsory voting, according to the
Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Failure to vote is punishable by a fine in countries such as Australia and Belgium; if you fail to pay your fine in Belgium, you could go to prison.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said this publicly,” Obama started out his argument … and there’s a reason for it.
As Popehat noted on Twitter this morning, the act of not voting is political speech, protected by the First Amendment. He’s also nonplussed that someone would have to explain that to a person often described as a Constitutional scholar:
ALL of it here:
Obama confirms I really love mandates Hot Air
