Voter Apathy Isn’t a Crime

It’s a sure sign someone is losing when he demands that the rules be changed.

That might explain the renewed interest in forcing people to vote against their will. Peter Orszag, President Obama’s former budget director and now a vice chairman at Citigroup, recently wrote a column for Bloomberg View arguing for making voting mandatory.
He’s not alone. Icons of the Beltway establishment Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann also favor the idea. As does William Galston, a former advisor to President Clinton. (Mann and Galston are scholars at the liberal Brookings Institution; Ornstein is a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute.)
While I have great respect for Ornstein, Mann, and Galston — I’m undecided about Orszag — I find the idea absurd, cynical, and repugnant.
Let’s start with the repugnant part.
One of the chief benefits of coerced voting, according to Orszag, is that it increases participation. Well, yes, and kidnapping drunks in pubs increased the ranks of the British navy, but it didn’t turn the conscripted sailors into patriots.

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304018/voter-apathy-isn-t-crime-jonah-goldberg