BREAKING: President Obama Wants To Propose 'Mandatory Voting.' It would change everything.

[Demit]

317. Your comment at #139 was snottiness ground zero, for the record.

Also, how am I supposed to know you don't think that? With all your assuming this & presuming that, you came up with words that no one ever said. The idea only exists because it came from your head.

It's bizarre that one of your arguments against the idea is "it's not going to happen." That's not an argument against the substance. If it's any kind of argument at all, it applies equally to 1) getting a nationwide vote-by-mail system or 2) making election day a holiday (and what about primary elections?) or 3) getting candidates to engage citizens who don't currently vote (whatever your concrete plans for achieving THAT are).

Of course there is precedent for the state to do things that benefit the common good. Helmet laws for motorcyclists; seatbelts for cars; there was once a time when we had no federal income tax. People squawked about being forced then, when those things were being debated.

And whether or not the idea is constitutional can be debated, too—and ultimately resolved by the Supreme Court, which is the final arbiter of constitutionality, notwithstanding an anonymous poster's flat assertions on a political board on the internet.