• Zagorath
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    4 months ago

    It has more advantages than just the ones you describe, although even that alone is good enough reason to do it.

    It also forces the government to make voting easy. To put them at a time when a maximum number of people can make it (in Australia elections are on a Saturday, when most people are not working—prepoll is also extremely easy to do they just ask you if you’re unable to vote on election day, without requiring any actual proof, and postal voting not much harder than that). To have numerous places to vote within easy access of where everyone is.

    • beardown@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      It also forces the government to make voting easy.

      No it doesn’t. I could easily see Republicans making voting very difficult under such a system, particularly within zip codes that vote for Democrats. This would punish Dem supporters who failed to vote, and would generally make the public hostile to mandatory voting - which would help build public support for the abolition of such mandatory voting

      The government is only incentivized to make voting easy if all major parties are loyal to the public. That isn’t the case in the United States