What would politics in America look like if voting was compulsory?

[Thundercrack85]

I was speaking to a Luxemburger about politics the other day, and it made me wonder.

What would politics in America look like if voting was made compulsory?

I realize it is somewhat of an unrealistic idea – though not inconceivable on a state level.

2012 had a voter turn out of about 57.5% In other words, nearly a hundred million eligible people didn't vote.

 

[Ant-manic]

everyone would vote for whichever politician came out in opposition to compulsory voting.

 

[Sun_Down]

I don't think it would look drastically different, simply based on the idea that the non-voting population is so huge that it must roughly approximate the voting population.

I think compulsory voting is a good idea, in theory. Moreover, we should take a page from Australia et al and have elections on weekends and/or make election day national holiday. It's ridiculous that people could miss their chance to vote because of work. I know we have federal laws requiring a few free hours to vote, but as we've seen in certain areas, a few hours isn't always enough.

 

[SV Fan]

Statistics show that neary 2/3 of people who don't vote favor Democrats(or at least ones that would vote for the big 2 parties since alot probably would vote 3rd party)

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscen...epth-survey-compares-nonvoters-to-voters.html

Nonvoters tend to skew younger than voters, with nearly a third less than 30 years old. They also tend to be less educated than voters, lean Democratic (26 percent) versus Republican (15 percent), but are more likely than voters to affiliate themselves with a party other than Democratic or Republican (13 percent) or refuse to affiliate with any party (14 percent). Nearly half said they would have voted for President Barack Obama; 26 percent said they’d have voted for Mitt Romney.

Their basically is a reason the Republicans want to put roadblocks to try stop people from voting because chances are the less people who vote the better off they are.