In both 2010 and 2014, President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party took a beating in those years’ midterm elections. Many factors have been cited for these tremendous losses, both of which came just two years after Obama’s rather convincing presidential election victories in 2008 and 2012. One undeniable factor in the midterm shellackings has been low voter turnout. Historically, voters that tend to vote for the populist party — in this era the Democrats — have had a drop off in the midterms, for reasons ranging from voters not feeling inspired, voters still burned out from the previous election cycle’s nonstop ads and news coverage, to any number of reasons for people to not taking voting in the “off” years as seriously as they do when selection a new president. Obama recently intimated he believes making voting compulsory — a requirement of of all U.S. citizens of voting age — would be “transformative” to use his term.
But would Americans feel being required to vote would take a bite out of their apples of freedom?
A new flash poll conducted by The Iowa Conservative Business Gazette and News, Inc. shows that just the suggestion that voting would be made a legal requirement of citizenship would inspire some to turn out to vote in protest of such an idea. Of the 982 registered voters that the poll surveyed, 12% of respondents said they were so upset by Obama’s proposal that they’d “possibly” turn out next time to “vote for a Republican who won’t force socialist voting laws on you.” The poll found that of those who identify as Republicans, 92% oppose making voting mandatory, and of those 45% oppose it out of concerns that “furriners would flood the polls for Democrats,” while another 35% reject the notion out of “distrust for anything that Kenyan-Communist-Socialist proposes.”
There are currently more than 20 other countries with compulsory voting laws on their books, though only roughly half of them actually actively enforce those laws. The poll asked respondents if knowing that a country like Australia has compulsory voting would make them less nervous about changing our laws here at home. 95% of Republican respondents said they’d “rather drink the blood of a diseased rat” than “change a single thing about America.” 25% of Republicans responded by hanging up the phone at the mere suggestion.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was asked at a D.C. area gun range whether he felt Americans should be required to vote instead of just showing up whenever they feel so inclined, leaving the country to be run by people who were voted in by the most partisan, ideologically extreme voters possible. “I think forcing people to do anything except not get married to whatever adult they want to get married to sounds a lot like Hitler’s dream scenario, don’t you?” Cruz seemed to echo what 85% of Republicans who responded to the poll thought when they answered the question, “Does this mandatory voting thing that Obama talked about sound like Hitler’s Germany to you too?” with a “yes.”
“I remember reading about another guy who pretty much did whatever he wanted to do,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner during his usual mid-morning cocktail hour, “and that man’s name? Adolf Hitler. Obama’s acting like Hitler, just so I’m clear. Hitler Obama is what we should call him. Or would be Adolf Obama? Barack O’Hitler? Oh hell, fuck it, hand me the scotch, assholes.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert while out at WalMart, reminding workers there they need to be thankful for the pittance they earn and not demand a dime more, said that he feels “any day now, Hitler himself will come over to the White House and commend our Dictator in Chief for turning America on its ear and shredding our Constitutionalistic principles with his asparagus hating ways.” When asked if he could clarify his position, Gohmert said, “no, probably not.”
