pudge's Journal: Election Lottery

If you need to be bribed to vote, you shouldn't be voting in the first place. I don't want you picking my government, if that's what it takes to get you to polls. Sorry.

-- Tucker Carlson, on a plan in some states to enter voters into a special lottery, to encourage people to vote

I agree wholeheartedly with what he said, except for the "Sorry" part. I unapologetically say that you shouldn't vote unless you take a personal interest in doing so. There's only three requirements for voting in this country, two explicit, one implicit, and all important: be a citizen, be 18, and be interested.

I agree

[sulli]

The election lottery is a crazy idea. People may well vote randomly just to enter the lottery.

We do need to do everything we can do increase turnout, but this would have nasty unintended consequences. (As does mandatory voting in places like Australia.)

Re:I agree

[pudge]

We do need to do everything we can do increase turnout

I agree with a caveat: we should try to increase turnout, but only to the extent that people are wanting to cast a (at least somewhat) educated vote, rather than just voting for the sake of doing so. But that appears to be implied by the other things that you said.

Also, I wrote about this before [slashdot.org]. But apparently certain state governments don't read my journal. ;-) There may be some things in there people can take issues with, and I may have overstated

Re:I agree

[ces]

I have to say I don't like the lottery idea either.

Depending on what state you live in it isn't as if it is terribly hard to vote. Many states have same-day voter registration and many states will let you vote by mail just by asking for it.

Right now at least you can give those who cast uniformed ballots credit for taking the time to vote in the first place, but as you say increasing the number of voters who really couldn't care who they vote for does nobody any good.