Should voting be mandatory?
There are two primary problems that I see. First, if it were mandatory and hold outs were forced to vote, then the use of force (sending a cop or soldier to escort you to the polls) is real or imagined pressure to vote for the incumbent candidate or candidate of the party in power. It is like the cop who has his hand on his gun while stopping you for a minor traffic violation. You may know he has no grounds to use or threaten deadly force against you, but this will generate extra mental stresses. Second, as at least one other has already noted, if a person who was not interested in the people, parties, or issues is forced to make a decision then you have an element of skewed results. In most cases, the person voted for is either the first on the list, perhaps the last on the list, followed by the middle of the list — all based on the prevailing whim of the moment because humans are terrible at making random decisions (one of the reasons we can easily presume the recent Iranian electio
