Autumn Regular Tournament: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory

Thanks for the debate Philo and here's to round 2 of the tournament. Let's go over this round and who won on each major issue. First I'll talk about who has a better plan, and then since Con concedes that it's important to look at both protections of individual rights and the common good when making governing decisions, I'll divide my final analysis of this debate into how CV destroys individual rights and how it's bad for everybody. =Tax credits vs. CV=Pro totally failed to understand the multiplier effect--the point is that tax credits grow the economy and therefore the tax base. By rewarding citizens for voting we are not giving up schools and hospitals but rather increasing our ability to afford these things. Pro never disputes that tax credits are good for the economy, so there's really no reason to go with compulsory voting which does not grow the economy and poses serious ethical dilemmas. Pro concedes that we should use the Sherbert test to determine which policies we allow to violate religious freedom. In the face of my counterplan, this leads to a Con ballot--contra Pro, it's *obviously* less intrusive to reward individuals for doing something rather than forcing the religious to violate their conscience. Rewarding employers who provide contraceptives would obviously be less intrusive than forcing the Catholic Church to provide them for its employees because forgoing a financial incentive is not compulsion like compulsory voting is. Tax credits also provide the additional advantage of encouraging only those politically educated enough to know about the credit to vote. I do not concede that high turnout is inherently good and Pro never proved that we could expect good outcomes from forcing people who don't even know the name of the vice president to cast a ballot. I would make turnout nearly universal among those who we want voting. Pro calls this argument elitist, but he himself agrees that certain people are unfit to rule so I'm merely extending the logic to another conclusion--politically illiterate people who admit they don't know anything about the candidates shouldn't be allowed to vote, let alone FORCED to. =Individual rights=Let's briefly look again at my case. Pro never disputes *anything* that I said regarding the existence of certain rights, choosing only to argue that individuals can just spoil their ballots. This response fails for several reasons: First, Pro *totally* misses and drops the point that the right to Freedom of Speech and Expression includes the right *not* to speak. Whether he likes it or not, spoiling your vote *is* a speech act as it's commonly viewed as an act of protest. Pro never disputed my argument that spoiled votes are looked on as protest ballots, which makes them speech acts. Pro is violating the right of silence that he never disputed existed. Secondly, Pro makes no persuasive responses to the fact that many people don't know how to spoil their votes or think it's illegal. To avoid violating these rights would require a bizarre concerted effort by the government to educate and encourage people to spoil their ballots which would totally defeat the purpose of forcing them to vote in the first place. This whole response is nothing but a big implicit concession. If we need everyone to vote, why is Pro encouraging them to spoil their ballots? Thirdly, with regards to religious freedom Pro conceded that he would like to use the Sherbert Test. Unfortunately for him, that means that he loses the debate because forcing people to vote and violate their religious convictions and hoping that they know how to spoil their ballot and that those spoiled ballots won't be considered an act of political expression is obviously more intrusive than just providing a financial incentive to encourage the state interest of higher turnout. Pro makes the incredibly weak argument that tax credits would actually be more intrusive because people of certain religions can't claim them, but this is absurd on its face unless Pro also contends that it's a violation of religious freedom for the government to pay soldiers because pacifist Quakers can never gain that financial incentive. Religious convictions require sacrifice, and a just government is one that does everything reasonable not to violate these convictions. Fourthly, this resolution itself violates societal rights. By far the more democratic option is to reject the resolution and allow nations to decide their own policies for themselves. The electorate of the United States, by an overwhelming margin, does not WANT compulsory voting--it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to argue that it's democratic to ram it down their throat. Pro also contends that he knows enough about nations he could not name or point out on a map to dictate what policies they have a moral imperative to establish. This kind of thinking is the stuff of colonialism and nightmares. The Con position is one of humbleness--I think CV is a bad policy and Australia should abolish it in favor of tax credits, but I also recognize their right to rule their own country and that policies which work in my country may not work for everybody else. We need to allow societies to choose the policies that work best for them and reject the kind of neocolonialist mental framework that Pro is perpetuating. To declare that nations we are ignorant about have a moral obligation to establish CV is the height of arrogance. It's pretty clear that CV violates your rights. It's really as simple as this: If you don't want to vote for any reason, your right not to do so does not exist in the Pro world. Vote or die. =CV and society=Is compulsory voting good for society? Pro is hinging his hopes for winning the debate on this side of the governing equation. I argue that CV is very bad for society but unfortunately for Pro, due to my counterplan the question becomes not "Is CV good for society? " but rather "Is CV better for society than tax credits? " There has been precious little analysis from Pro on this question so you should presume a Con ballot as I've been advocating the superiority of my plan this entire debate. Pro never disputes that lots of people do not have the proper political knowledge to cast an educated ballot. He calls this notion elitist and just leaves it at that. I don't care if it's elitist. The role of the government isn't to pander to everyones feelings, it's to craft policy in accordance with the common good while respecting individual rights as much as feasible. Pro concedes in his fourth round that there is no empirical link to greater political education with CV. Pro makes no argument for why being governed by people who don't know who the vice president is or what the president does would be a good thing, he hinges his entire argument on the idea that people who consciously tune out two years of incessant media coverage to maintain their ignorance would suddenly become political junkies at the drop of a hat because they're forced to vote. Recall from my second round that in the United States OVER THREE QUARTERS of the people who rarely vote admit that they don't know enough about the candidates to make an informed choice. We should respect their decision to spare us all from their governing choices. Pro argues that with CV the government gets a mandate it doesn't have in a voluntary system. Despite being repeatedly challenged to do so, Pro never produces any evidence that governments who force their citizens at gunpoint to endorse the system are viewed as more legitimate than those who do not. All he argues is that it's more democratic to have everybody express their opinion, but not only is this non responsive to the argument that the people who are unrepresented are unrepresented because they voluntarily ceded their right to vote, a democratic expression of their opinion, and he also does not prove that we should always value democracy over every other value. He makes a new argument in his 4th round that democracy is correlated with "general welfare" so therefore more votes will lead to even greater welfare! This argument should be rejected for obvious reasons, but namely he does not establish causality. Moreover he didn't cite any evidence of what this "greater welfare" is in round, it isn't my job to argue against whatever his source says. It's incredibly doubtful that forcing people, 76% of whom admit to not knowing much about the candidates, to vote would be increase the common good. Choosing not to vote is a legitimate means of democratic expression and often a responsible choice. The only other impact Pro has is in his argument regarding extremism, but he never cited throughout the entire debate any evidence that extremism is squashed in nations that have compulsory voting. Pro argues that extremists are "overrepresented" but he never cited to what degree this is--so how do we weigh it? I don't think Pro understood my argument regarding primary elections. The *debate* isn't US specific, but the *evidence* he cited WAS, and the issue the article pointed out referred to an issue in the US electoral system that CV would not solve. My plan of tax credits WOULD solve this because the only way to get people to vote in primary elections is to use means to increase voluntary voting. Pro argues that democracy demands "equal" representation for all. This is dumb. Some people don't want representation. People who want representation and can't take fifteen minutes to vote and get a tax credit do not deserve to be represented. The resolution is clearly negated. There is little evidence that compulsory voting would be beneficial to society as a whole and absolutely no evidence that it is superior in any way to a system of tax credits. To force citizens to vote violates their human rights and we should allow individual societies to come to decide their policies for themselves. The rest of the world is not ours to rule. Be humble.