Mandatory Voting

The RFD starts here and continues to Comment #20 and beyond.
Arguments:
Pro starts off by showing 4 things we generally consider to be key to a democracy - 1) civic participation, 2) fair elections, 3) protecting rights, and 4) equal laws. Pro links all of this to the resolution by saying, "the basis of mandatory voting is identical to the basis of proportional representation, if anything it is a purer form of that reasoning."

Pro is basically making a case for a hyper-democracy, which is precisely what he has to do to win, because by Pro showing mandatory voting to be a "pure" representation of democracy, one who concludes that a democracy is the best form of government would have to conclude that making voting mandatory would be the truest representation of that best government by taking democracy's benefits to their extremes.

While I find Pro's explanation for HOW this would be made mandatory very weak and sort of just an after thought at the end of Pro's round, it would serve as a means to implement this mandate, so at this point Con needs to negate the benefits of a hyper-democratic idea like mandatory voting or poke holes in the implementation of the mandate.

Con's a fightin' little devil, and he comes out with some great points that do both.
Con mentions that about 120 million people didn't vote in the last US election, there are those who are unwilling to vote, those who are uninformed, those who would choose to feed their family instead of vote, and that not having to vote is a democratic freedom as well, when Con says, "Can't we simply have the freedom to not vote as well as the freedom to vote?"

Con points out that by implementing the mandate, you would necessarily mitigate democracy by forcing people to do something, quite antithetical to the very keys to democracy Pro pointed out 1st round, and that by implementing this mandate, 120 million americans would be fined for making what should be a democratic choice, i.e. "the freedom to not vote" and if people choose their family over voting, they are punished for making a decision on something they are consenting to make a decision on instead of making a decision they are being mandated to make.

This speaks to a poor implementation of the mandate, which directly impacts the resolution "should voting be mandatory?" because if we can't reasonably implement the mandate, we probably "shouldn't" mandate it and if it is in fact antithetical to democracy as Con contends, hyper-democracy should definitely not be mandated.

Pro responds nicely with the caveat that there could be an option at the ballot to choose to abstain from voting, thereby realizing your freedom to not choose with the mandate, but as Con points out "Some people may not have the time for voting" so these people would make the decision to help their family instead of going to the damn ballot and marking that they abstain. Choosing your family and your time over a ballot with "abstain" on it is an easy decision to make, and being fined for making this decision would be antithetical to a free and fair election.

The discussion on dictatorship and democracy is moot because both debaters agree that democracy is good and dictatorship is bad, it's just that they disagree on how that democracy is realized in a society and whether or not certain actions lead toward that democracy that both debaters agree is good.
Pro was unable to respond last round, but even considering that lack and giving Pro some more ground, Con successfully negates this resolution because Pro is just simply less than sympathetic to the actual harms of mandating voting on people to the extent that Pro does not go to any real length to address why people would choose voting over feeding their family if voting were mandated, or how in a democracy antithetically fining 120 million people is possible to implement to those people or how fining those who choose family sustenance is reasonable or worth mandating voting for.

Arguments to Con for successfully negating the resolution.

Arguments:

I feel Con wins the day here ultimately because Pro's idea of fining so many people is just outlandish and Con even says "You have failed to even state how much of a percent you want to take from people as a punishment for refusing to vote. What if that money that you take from them was their food money?" Pro was trying to tell everyone that democracy is all about civic duty and participating actively in government so as to preserve and protect the rights of the people, but Pro is telling me that people who'd rather choose to feed their family in the immediate outcome should then be fined for doing so?
Con's points on this were much more compelling, because unlike Pro's points about mandatory voting, Con took a forceful look at the real harms delivered by such a mandate and Pro seemed apathetic to it all and did not really respond to it Con's points in depth.

Con also makes a point that being able to not vote is part of true democratic elections and that forcing non-interested to people vote would yield votes based on less than reasonableness, and Pro makes a good response "You can botch the thing if you want or preferably there'd be an 'abstain' box to tick instead. Active abstaining is totally different" which would seem to satisfy Con's contention with the non willing/interested being forced to vote.

So now I imagine that I'm some single mom given the choice to go vote or keep my job and feed my family, even though there's this pretty little option to choose on the ballot, abstain, and even with that option I'm going to take the voting penalty and keep my job/feed my family, so really I've just been fined for choosing my family over my right to choose/not choose.

Meanwhile, as Con said to Pro "you spent much of your arguing as to why a democracy is good as opposed to why voting should be mandatory."
The discussion on dictatorship and democracy I felt was slightly irrelevant, though it seemed to me that neither debater was arguing for dictatorship and they both agreed with democracy.

Because Pro failed to compel me to mandate this to people, and I'm granting that Pro could not respond in the last round, arguments to Con for showing exactly why doing this could be harmful to people.

Sources:

Pro provided sources to show what makes a democracy and the strengths of democracy.
One issue I had with one of Pro's sources is that it explicitly said something quite opposite to what he was trying to indicate.
Pro's source directly said,
"In reality, however, democracy is slightly more problematic"
This makes me as the voter look at Pro's source and not consider it effective towards his argument.

Con on the other hand frequently quoted statistics from references that cited the US census bureau for their data, which seem reliable.
The data is precisely what Con stated it to be, and after checking those sources out, the data is corroborated and it was this piece of evidence, from the us census bureau that compelled me to vote Con because it showed just how many people would be hurt by this harm that Con proved was a detriment, and I was totally convinced by this substantially supportive data.

Since Con's sources were so much more effective than Pro's, sources to Con.

Conduct

Pro got a little snippy at the end and said "There is no way to deny it now Con, you dug your own grave on this one." which shows a little bit of intimidating aggression and then when Pro was supposed to just kindly waive the round he said "Unfair to bring so many new points in the last Round...
Sadly I can't rebuke as per debate structure."
This is both not true and a conduct violation in my view because Pro was instructed to waive the last round, however commented regarding new arguments which to me is not waiving the round at all, it's trying to attempt to sway the voters one last time so conduct point Con, as per the rules.

Arguments: Pro offers pre-emptive arguments for democracy - these are unnecessary as con has not yet made the argument and is more a protection against a Kritik - it mostly just breaks up the flow.

Pro focuses on potential harms of non mandatory voting:

That urban voters would outweigh rural voters. Pro doesn’t make it clear why this is the case, or how MV would avoid it.

Pro makes a case that it creates an oligarchy in favour of those who have time to vote, then focuses on how that could then be manipulated.

While there are aspects of this argument for which that I felt pro didn’t offer sufficient warrant (that media manipulation is avoided by MV), I felt the general thrust pro made is generally compelling.

Cons R2 counter must either negate pros benefits, or submit harms. Practicality issues are normally avoided by fiat in these types of debates, and so as Con doesn’t show harm from practicality - I have to ignore this.

Cons argument about fines doesn’t appear to have warrant - as pro already states fines are proportional to income which is not addressed.

Cons other proposed harm is relating to stupidity of voters. I don’t feel con shows this is a specific harm from mandatory voting as much as voting in general.

Pro very much counters the argument of informed voters by pointing out the solution is to inform them - this is an excellent rebuttal.

Pro also elaborates his main harm - that without voting being mandatory - voting must be incentivized by other means that are easy to exploit (such as sensationalism) - I find this a better formulation than in pros opening.

In his final rebuttal con does not really elaborate on his harms, or really counter the harms pro shows. Con raises a couple of objections to pros point relating to Latin America - which in my view do not counter the harms - and a practicality issue that pro cannot respond to.

As a result, I felt pro established a harm on the status quo, whereas con neither negated pros harm, or proposed a reasonable harm. Thus arguments go to pro.

I don’t feel spelling, sources or conduct was sufficient warranted points either way - I don’t feel pro pointing out new points is a clear enough violation to warrant conduct point deduction.

I apologize in advance in case I misuse pro and con on this (I'm used to the instigator being pro, and the contender being con).

Arguments: Pro. I don't agree with him, but he supported the case well (much stronger than the opposition). The Swiss free media example was the highlight (even while I'm leaving sources tied...), which tied nicely into the points about how sensational private media is when trying to manipulate idiots into voting for bad candidates (really surprised it was con who brought up Trump and Clinton). The suggested penalty of a flat tax (not regressive or progressive), seemed quite reasonable and easy to implement; the counter points were too weak for serious consideration, since tax agencies are known to exist (they already send a bill to the majority of the population... usually this does not lead to the claimed mass starvation). how con twisted that into sending out the military on election day to round everyone up to vote, is quite beyond me.

Pro. You could have made your case stronger with emphasis on voter suppression in the US.
Con. You may have just been introduced to the term moving the goalpost, but that does not mean that everything is that. Pro wanted to use dictatorships as a lead-in, that's perfectly permissible. It would be moving the goalpost if he skipped out on the topic and advocated he should win for his argument in favor of dictatorship as opposed to anything on topic.

Conduct: Pro. I won't call the final round a blitzkrieg tactic, but it did try to manipulate the voters unduly by changing what both debaters had discussed. There was talk of a simple fine, claiming that pro was advocating rounding people up was in no way a misunderstanding, but a strawperson of the worst degree. Pro had agreed to not respond, and con attempted to bait him with blatant lies about the debate. ... As per pro's two sentence signifying waiving of the round, I see no debate points brought up or replied to. He was not instructed on any particular phrase to use. To penalize this would be akin to penalizing "Thanks for the debate, I had fun."

I was originally going to make this debate a massive google doc, but I think that it really does not need so much ink. So, to save the time of the readers, I will try to keep my RFD under 5 pages.

To be frank, I do not see how this debate has much to do with totalitarianism. Is the lack of a mandatory vote akin to tyranny? Regardless this argument functions as a defensive argument. Defensive argumentation does not offer an impact, and instead is used to block another opponent’s point. Generally, you would want to save this block of text until your opponent supported totalitarianism.
Besides this defensive point, RM has 3 points of offense that he uses

1. People in densely populated areas carry more influence in comparison to areas that are sparsely populated and usually rural.
2. People are busy and may not have enough time to vote.
3. Cynical people are not going to vote because they realize that their vote doesn’t matter.

RM argues that when enough people come together to vote on an issue, then that issue gets representation in political entities such as congress. This system, he argues, is better than the oligarchic system that pervades political institutions right now and solving for the three problems he mentioned. RM notes that he would implement a fine when people did not vote.

Alec responds to the point about tyranny by stating it is essentially a non-sequitur since he is not defending totalitarianism. He discusses the harms of fining practically ½ of Americans who would not vote even after implementation, and he also claims that people who are unaware of current events would ruin the democratic vote for everyone as they essentially choose a name out of a hat to vote.

RM’s explanation as to why uninformed voters are not going to hurt democracy is told through 3 responses.

He first brings up Switzerland, which mandated voting, and ultimately is doing well on scales of human development. (I understand that the logic follows that mandatory voting led to all these benefits, but it needs to be established that mandatory voting led to the good human development rating.)

Also, RM mentions that people will become informed out of necessity when they elect bad politicians who enact bad policies that affect them.

Finally, RM talks of the importance of a publicly funded media to inform people, (which Alec points out is moving the goal posts.)

To be clear, none of the arguments that RM has used thus far are perfect, but Alec drops the ball on responding to them. He does respond to RM’s third issue with the idea of the uninformed masses, but the other 2 responses still stand, as do his original contentions.

Furthermore, Alec does mention that the Switzerland comparison is not accurate, and the health of the nation could be other factors besides mandatory voting. Sans a causal link, RM’s point here falls.

Alec also mentions that the fines would also be a problem. (It would have been beneficial here to quantify the issue. You could have quantified how fines hurt the lower class right now, or that minimum wage jobs in retail/food preparation are not likely to find the time to vote anyway Give me a sob story or a statistic to make this point pop. Otherwise, I do not know how to weigh it.)

However, even if both of RM’s arguments responded to are nullified, and the point about fines still exists, I am still voting for RM. His arguments supporting the idea that people become more informed and put better people into power out of necessity is uncontested, as is the idea that undemocratic representation is limited as more people vote, and previously dense, urban areas lose much of their political clout as other areas get higher representation as well.

Whiteflame brought this up, but it must be repeated. Con, you can’t be passive in allowing Pro to establish burdens.

Have a framework for the judges to establish criteria as to why I should vote for your side. RM established early on that we need to value the democratic vote over anything. If you tied your points to your own framework, or show how your points accomplish what RM wants, you would have fared better in this debate.

I am also kind of confused as to why the entire BoP falls on Pro. The resolution is normative, so both sides have a share of the burden. Pro intends to prove that mandatory voting should occur, while Con needs to prove why it shouldn’t.

If there are any questions, PM me. Thanks for the interesting debate! 😊

-Arguments-

Pro argues that democracy embodies the power of the people to participate in elections and civic live, have equal rights, and have laws equally apply to all people, so mandatory voting would actually yield more people voting, or more properties of this embodiment by necessitating the participation. Pro suggests that the mandatory voting could be imposed by fining those who don't vote, proportionally to their income, to act as an incentive to vote.

As a voter, this all seems like a substantial case for not only how voting could be made mandatory, but how making it mandatory would increase the very things we want and expect from democracy.
I'm leaning Pro at this point.

Con does pretty well though. Con points out, with statistics, that in the last election at least 120 million people did not vote which would require, with Pro's idea, to fine just that many people, and as Con also points out, "Some people may not have the time for voting. Should the US government round up people to vote in an election..." which was pretty much what I was thinking about with this idea and why it might not be implementable which speaks to this resolution "Should voting be mandatory?" Con also shows that while Pro showed the Netherlands to have a great country and successful mandatory elections, that much of Latin America is rife with poverty and despair and most of the countries are mandatory voting countries.

This left Pro's case about the products of democracy coming from mandatory voting less impactful, because if mandatory voting is going to fine 120 million people for making free choices and there's a possibility that mandatory voting leads to the many cases of despair like that of Latin America, plus Pro gives me no reason to doubt these points, then mandatory voting would actually serve to mitigate, instead of exacerbate, democracy, antithetical to Pro's case.

Now I see that Pro could not respond last round, that is a real shame, but Pro I feel like you had the opportunity to knock down how impactful fining 120 million people was in the round where you could have responded but you did not address anywhere near the level it was impacting on the resolution. By leaving Con's point about how you could reasonably fine 120 million people for not having time to vote, it makes implementing this mandatory voting a harsh penalty for choosing, say, to go to work or babysit your children.

Con wins arguments because implementing the mandatory voting would require fining too many people for making a free choice about their time.
Arguments to Con.

This is relatively straightforward. Con allowed Pro to dictate almost the entirety of the burdens of the debate, basically stating that all he has to do is show that a) a democratic system is the best possible system (conceded by Con), and b) that that system is best served by mandatory voting. Pro spends way too much time on the former in his first round, perhaps under the impression that Con would argue this differently. Pro then argues the need to have a mandatory system, examining the importance of being informed (and that the consequences of not being informed will eventually lead people to keep informed), the nature of democracy and why it's facilitated by more voting, and arguing that a democratic system lacking a mandate might as well be oligarchic. Some of these are a little short on explanation, but the points basically stand unopposed, largely because Con fails to address them in any meaningful way.

Instead, Con's argument seems to buy into a lot of what Pro is arguing. He talks about the dangers of uninformed voters, which he is correct would increase with a mandate. However, Pro points out that there's a tremendous incentive to be informed for the sake of electing leaders who aren't going to cause you a great deal of harm. I can still see problems with that argument, but I don't see Con pointing them out. Con does make the argument that the fines associated with the mandates will still unduly harm the poor, arguing that getting to the polling place itself may be difficult. I think this is Con's strongest point, but he doesn't do much with it, leaving its impact largely up to interpretation. I buy that there is a harm, but what makes this point less meaningful is the lack of some broader issue to attach it to. Con is telling me about what is, effectively, the death of democracy (or at least its corruption). Pro, you have to tell me about classism. Give me another value to challenge Pro's. Without it, I can only say that this is a minor, largely transient issue.

Besides all this, both sides seem stuck on this argument that mandating nations are better/worse, though it seems like neither side is garnering much from this largely correlative comparison.

With all these points taken into account, and though I think Pro is hyperbolizing a bit with his arguments, I can't do much else but vote for him. Mandating voting has clear benefits to democracy as a whole, and supporting such a wide-reaching value with the promise of representative leadership that actually cares and has real purpose and power to change things is simply unchallenged. I will, however, award conduct to Con. Pro was advised to waive the final round, but instead inserted a remark regarding new arguments (just FYI, I see rebuttals, not new arguments). That's not waiving the round in its entirety, so he loses the conduct point, as per the rules.