Australia to fine citizens who didn't vote in Saturday's election

The real question is what type of people you are getting to vote when people don't care enough to vote. It is clear that it doesn't pay to vote in a purely economic context. Usually economists assume some altruism on the part of those who vote. So the implication is that the fine will force non-altruistic to vote. Also get people who are less informed on the issues. From Australia:

The commission will issue a notice to all non-voters requesting that they either provide a reason for their failure to vote or pay penalties.
Australia's compulsory voting system requires citizens show up at their polling stations on Election Day. Around 14 million electors took part in a mandatory vote in the pacific nation on Saturday.
The commission says if apparent non-voter cannot provide a valid reason within three weeks, then legally they are obliged to pay a 20-dollar fine.
Prosecution proceedings may be instigated against those violators who decline to pay the penalty.
If the matter is dealt with in court and the person is found guilty, they may be fined up to $50 plus court expenses.
However, penalties for failing to vote are not always strictly enforced.
This is while early vote counting in Australia suggests that the country could be heading for a hung parliament in one of the most closely contested general elections in years. . . .

Dept of Justice claims Blacks aren't smart enough to figure out who to vote for unless politicians are labeled by party

From the Washington Times:

Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party.

The Justice Department's ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their "candidates of choice" - identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters' right to elect the candidates they want. . . .

After seeing this, I do think that we need some type of intelligence test for voters

These women don't even know who the Speaker of the House is let alone what her views are.

Dumb voters?

Kathleen Parker has this story at the Washington Post:

Out of 2,500 American quiz-takers, including college students, elected officials and other randomly selected citizens, nearly 1,800 flunked a 33-question test on basic civics. In fact, elected officials scored slightly lower than the general public with an average score of 44 percent compared to 49 percent.

Only 0.8 percent of all test-takers scored an "A."

America's report card may come as little surprise to fans of Jay Leno's man-on-the-street interviews, which reveal that most people don't know diddly about doohickey. Still, it's disheartening in the wake of a populist-driven election celebrating joes-of-all-trades to be reminded that the voting public is dumber than ever.

The multiple-choice ISI quiz wouldn't deepen the creases in most brains, but the questions do require a basic knowledge of how the U.S.

government works. Think fast: In what document do the words "government of the people, by the people, for the people" appear? More than twice as many people (56 percent) knew that Paula Abdul was a judge on "American Idol"

than knew that those words come from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (21 percent).

In good news, more than 80 percent of college graduates gave correct answers about Susan B. Anthony, the identity of the commander in chief of the U.S. military, and the content of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

But don't pop the cork yet. Only 17 percent of college grads understood the difference between free markets and centralized planning.

Then again, we can't blame the children for what they haven't been taught. Civics courses, once a staple of junior and high school education, are no longer considered important in our quantitative, leave-no-child-behind world. And college adds little civic knowledge, the ISI study found. The average grade for those holding a bachelor's degree was just 57 percent -- only 13 points higher than the average score of those with only a high school diploma.

Most bracing: Only 27 percent of elected officeholders in the survey could identify a right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Forty-three percent didn't know what the Electoral College does. And 46 percent didn't know that the Constitution gives Congress power to declare war. . . .