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Voting Should Be Abolished In America

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It is no secret that America has a voting problem. According to Pew Research, only 55.7% of voting-aged citizens cast votes in the 2016 election. Voting turnout in the United States has been on the decline since the 1960s and mobilization efforts have been in place since the 1990s, yet turnout still persists as a problem. The most appropriate way to combat this problem is simple; make voting mandatory.
The definition of a democracy is a system of government by the whole population, typically through elected officials. How can we be considered a democracy then if the whole population is not being involved in the election process? The other glaring problem is that the failure to vote is highly concentrated among certain groups, namely, the poor, the unemployed, the young, new citizens, and the homeless. Without their vote in the elections, the whole opinion of the public is not complete. …show more content…
This sets up a dangerous implication however that if you don’t vote you must be stupid and if you are stupid you must not vote. Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, found in a study that only 34% of Americans can even name all three branches of the government. This study shows that most voters in fact are already uniformed. Those that are not informed are not necessarily stupid, but often times that they are rightfully ignorant. Somin went on to say that, “It is rational for us to be ignorant about many, many subjects, and instead devote our efforts to seeking out knowledge that interests us or might make a difference in our lives.” It is not likely that increasing the voter turnout would also increase the illegitimacy of the

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