Friday, September 11, 2009

Compulsory Voting Research

So far through my preliminary research on the debate topic I've discovered that Chile has a voting system that seems to combine the worst aspects of a voluntary and compulsory voting systems. The system is as follows: registering to vote is optional ... however once you are registered to vote you are required to vote and you can't unregister yourself. As a result a decent percentage population of Chile is not registered to vote (especially the young)and have no plans on registering because they don't want to have to vote in every election. The voting system raises the cost of registering to vote without increasing any benefits or registering. As a result, people not registered to vote here probably pay less attention to politics here then unregistered people in the United States do.

2 comments:

  1. that is funny. and sad. are the elections truly democractic though?

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  2. From everything I've read, seen and heard, Chile is very much a truly democratic country. Its an election year this year with the election being held in December. Its amusing because I haven't met anyone excited by either candidate .. I actually don't even know their names

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