Ms Moffat's Class

Throughout all of recorded history people have spoken out against oppression. If speaking out did not work they would turn to violent means. A people with personal freedom and agency do not instigate a coup against their government. The introduction of compulsory voting would take that freedom away. You claim that a society with higher voter turnout is more stable and peaceful. However the very act of taking away a person's freedom would cause hate, loss of respect for the government and riots. The riots cause the people who believe in compulsory voting to become more entrenched in their beliefs. Afterwards if the riots don't cause the government to change the people will grow more hateful until a possible civil war. Compulsory voting does not make for a peaceful state it makes for a divided one.

That may very well be true however there is also a vast amount of people who because of this system would resent elections and avoid education on the political parties. There is a much simpler solution to educating citizens about politics then forcing them to vote hoping they would care enough to learn, teach them directly while they are in school. The school system should be completely unbiased and simply educate the next generation on what the political parties believe in. This is a much simpler solution which does not require the restricting of people's freedom.

Forcing a man to do something leads to malice and apathy. The hateful who cry out against the system will concur onto themselves any punishments that abstinence from voting causes to rebel against the oppression that they see. While the apathetic pick any candidate on their list and normally the first one, making the results less and less accurate as the candidate with a name at the top of the ballot gets hundreds of thousands of inaccurate votes. These two kinds of people without forcing them to vote may very well vote and educate themselves on politics causing the system to become less representative after implementation.

How does a government maintain a compulsory vote? They wither spends millions on the tracking of every citizen and the punishment of people not attending the vote, essentially making an authoritarian government, or they start a massive propaganda campaign where they convince the citizens themselves to condemn non conformists and subvert the essence of a free state.

If voting becomes a responsibility or even worse mandatory then this would inherently defeat the purpose of a free nation, by forcing people to spend their time on voting. Therefore mandatory voting is subversive to the very idea of democracy that it tries to support.