Civics

William A. Galston stated in a recent article in the New York Times Sunday Review, "Jury duty is mandatory, why not voting?" I believe jury duty is not a fair comparison to weather voting should be optional or mandatory. They are both proposed by the government but jury duty you have to agree with the same out come, where political voting is built on disagreement. Jury duty is selective with more quality citizens where voting is so broad it can observe the obliviousness of its people which would be resulted in the poles and election. more If we were to take after Australia's mandatory voting, we would be asking for every election to be voted with more people not knowing what is going on. If you lack background knowledge and do not have a good idea of your nations surrounding politics then you shouldn't vote. The belief of enforcing this law by the Australian government is citizens would be forced to be aware of what is going on, there for they would follow through and bring more accurate voting.

The Australian government supposes that this move would be  for the best for the voting and electoral system and for the citizens of Australia. But people cant mentally be forced nor can truly be interested or care in politics. This would make them inadequate to vote. there for the government would be asking for more oblivious voters. If this system was to be in place, it still wouldn't control the way people care or think about their nation's politics or of what is going on in their government. It may to some, but the Australian government is making it seem as if it would change everybody's thinking. It wont.

To quote from Jason Brennan, whose article on mandatory voting was published in the New York Times Opinion Pages, "Higher voter turnout won’t solve our problems, because high turnout is itself a problem."