Should U.S. Make Voting Mandatory?
ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And then there's Donald Trump. Don't boo, vote.</s>ZAKARIA: President Obama urged audience members of the Democratic National Convention last week to express themselves at the voting booth. Only 60 million Americans voted in the Republican or Democratic primaries and half of those citizens voted for a candidate other than Trump or Clinton, according to the "New York Times." In fact only 9 percent of the entire country cast ballots for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, as the "Times" pointed out. And it's not just this whacky election. The United States consistently has voting rates that are among the lowest in the developed world. Only 53.6 percent of eligible citizens voted in the 2012 election according to Pew. By comparison, Pew reports that 84.3 percent of Turkish adult citizens and 87.2 percent of eligible voters in Belgium exercised the right to vote in their most recent national elections. Why? Well, maybe because voting is mandatory in Belgium and Turkey. And you get fined if you don't go to the polls. They are just two of the 26 countries in the world that have some form of compulsory voting, according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. So should the United States follow suit to boost turnout? President Obama has pointed out mandatory voting could be transformative.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The people who tend not to vote are young; they're lower-income; they're skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups. There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls. We should want to get them into the polls.</s>ZAKARIA: The president touted Australia as a success story. Mandatory voting was introduced "Down Under" in 1924 to address abysmal voter participation rates. A fine of 20 Australian dollars has been enough of a disincentive to mobilize voters. Over 90 percent of Aussies voted in the last federal election, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. Not only are Australians more represented; they might even be more politically aware. Quartz points to a groundbreaking comparative study which shows that countries that strongly enforce compulsory voting have populations that are more politically informed. In the study, Jill Sheppard, a political scientist from Australian National University, surmises that, in countries with strong enforcement, quote, "compulsory voting increases citizens' political knowledge, either because voters choose to become informed, given the requirement to vote, or because the process of voting itself imparts incidental knowledge," unquote. Back in the United States, jury duty and taxes are mandatory, so why not voting? At the very least, the government should make it easier for Americans to cast a ballot, like in Sweden, where citizens are automatically registered to vote and turnout is among the highest in the OECD, according to Pew. Or how about Oregon, the only state that automatically registers people to vote when they get a driver's license or state ID, a step in the right direction? Or take Estonia, the small Baltic nation, which allows online voting. On the other hand, the United States might look to countries like Australia, Brazil and Greece, which, according to Think Progress, do a very simple thing; they hold elections on weekends so people can partake without having to skip work. After all, American elections are only on Tuesdays because of truly arcane logic. In 1845, Congress deduced that Sunday was the Sabbath. It would take a day for people to travel into town by horse-and-buggy to vote. And Wednesday was market in the farming communities, so Tuesday was the most convenient day for voting. Clearly our society has evolved. The rules governing our elections should do as well. Next on GPS, the great Malcolm Gladwell gives us some of the big ideas he's been pushing on his terrific new podcast called Revisionist History.