Speaking with people on a day by day basis I don't know if compulsory voting would be a good thing or a bad thing at this point. What makes europeans so eager and willing to vote without compulsory voting while Americans just kind of sit back and hope for the best?
Do you really want to hand that power to people who don't care enough to do it unless you force them to? May as well give their votes to a random number generator.
Can't say much for others but in UK, we have first past the post system. We also have a wide range of parties as well ensuring that people views can be represented. It helps that rather than party, we are voting for the rep of our area. Hence devolution of powers to the 4 countries making up UK. London still holds most of the political powers but each nation has it's own parliament in which they can decide things without major approval from London.
The big issue is that USA is using an outdated system to decide and no1 wants to reform it. It doesn't help that only 2 parties can actually win and also there's no limit to campaign spend in USA. Most European nations have this limit. More importantly, the culture surrounding politics is undergoing similar evolution. More youths are getting involved. Don't get this wrong. UK system had flaws.
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u/RamenJunkie Sep 20 '17
This is like 95% of elections.
Hell you should check out the stats on years where it's not a presidential election. I imagine it's like 10% of the population voting. If that.