So, we know Pres. Obama never suggested mandatory voting...right?

here's his statement:

In Australia, and some other countries, there’s mandatory voting. It would be transformative if everybody voted. That would counteract money more than anything. If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country, because the people who tend not to vote are young; they’re lower income; they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups; and they’re often the folks who are — they’re scratching and climbing to get into the middle class. And they’re working hard, and there’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls. We should want to get them into the polls. So that may end up being a better strategy in the short term.

here's an article highlighting this today:

No, Washington Post, President Obama didn’t “suggest requiring everyone to vote”

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a piece titled “Obama suggests requiring everyone to vote”. It was total clickbait that went nuts on Facebook. Other media outlets followed suit but it was the WashPo piece that went viral. And it’s pretty provocative, right? I mean, what sort of dictator would take away your hard-earned patriotic right to not vote? We didn’t send men and women to war for that! Here in the greatest nation on earth we have the liberty and freedom to not exercise our franchise and no dictator is going to take that away from us.

I’ll bet they got some serious traffic from that headline. Unfortunately, it’s a complete misrepresentation of what President Obama actually said. He was, in fact, responding to a reporter’s question about limiting the amount of money spent in our elections and the corrosive, non-democratic efforts by those on the right who are trying to suppress voter turnout.

Nowhere in his discussion of mandatory voting does he suggest that we should adopt Australia’s policy (which, by the way, is that you are fined around $20 – about $15.75 in U.S. dollars – for not voting.) He saying (a) it would be “transformative” if everybody voted, (b) if everybody voted, it would change our political map, and (c) the best way in the short term to get money out of politics isn’t to pass laws changing campaign finance rules but to make it easier for people to vote instead of harder. That’s what he meant when he said, “So that may end up being a better strategy in the short term.”

I know that it’s titillating to suggest that our president wants to pass a draconian law compelling everyone to vote but, come on. Barack Obama didn’t fall off the apple cart yesterday. He’s way smarter than that. He knows as well as anyone that a bill like that wouldn’t even make it out of committee much less get passed by the House or Senate. But even the Washington Post isn’t above a provocative headline now and then to drive traffic to their site.


read: http://www.eclectablog.com/2015/03/washington-post-gets-it-totally-wrong-obama-didnt-suggest-requiring-everyone-to-vote.html

watch: