Should Democracy be Compulsory?

Maybe we should enforce mandatory voting.  That way all the ignorant voters can swing the election either way.  Kind of like a big raffle drawing but with our nations leaders.

^^^Makes sense in a way, but that still leaves us with the problem of minorities voting for the majority. Democracy was designed to represent the will of the public as a whole, not just the educated public. Hence, guliable idiots will vote that barely deserve to live, and ocassionaly devious idiots will get elected that don't even deserve to think about living. I could use this opportunity to make some rather pointed anti-Democrat remarks, but I'll pass.

The Constitution designed the voting system to represent what people WANT, not what people NEED. That is the basic principle of Democracy, and also it's greatest flaw. A representative Democracy is a little better, but the problem of Idiots ellecting Idiots still exists. The solution to the problem is to completely educate the public, but short of creating a mandatory class for every citizen in the United states about every issue of a given election, it's not gonna happen.

Ps. I think AdmiralSenn could pass without much trouble.

Slimz.357 wrote: ^^^Makes sense in a way, but that still leaves us with the problem of minorities voting for the majority.

How is this a problem?

I am not aware of ANY democracy where everybody had a vote, nor do I think we would want such a democracy.

In this country we exclude people under 18, many of whom pay taxes, and all of whom suffer the consequences of the election.  We also exclude many felons, many insane folk, and (to some extent) the people of the District of Columbia.  We also exclude people who have been living here for decades (and paying taxes), just because they happen to be foreign citizens.

Why should we assume that more people voting is better?