it's election season, Beehaw, so — what are your thoughts on compulsory (mandatory) voting?
good idea/bad idea, necessary democratic reform or authoritarian imposition? are there better or worse ways to do it?
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good idea/bad idea, necessary democratic reform or authoritarian imposition? are there better or worse ways to do it?
Our preferential voting also helps to drag the main parties towards the middle too. But that seems unlikely to ever get in over there since it'd allow more than two parties
Oddly, IRV is actually seeing some success, slowly growing across the States. But compulsory voting is basically a non-starter over there.
USA trying to improve the electoral system!? Shocked Pikachu face
Surprisingly good news
Yeah, it's one of the very few advantages of the fact that their elections—even federal elections—are not actually standardised nationwide. States run them according to their own rules. Mostly this is a bad thing, but it does mean that one place can improve their system like this as an experiment, without needing to convince the entire country to do it at once.
So I think there are 2 states that do IRV currently. And there might be a few more places where IRV is used in non-congressional/presidential races.