Canadian PoliticsEditorialMorning Musings

Mandatory Tax Reporting – Mandatory Voting

Its cold outside somewhere around -16 °C  however my morning coffee is hot and comforting, as my thoughts drift to how we ended up with the cockroaches running the chicken coup.  I cannot help but think about the extremely large number of people who did not bother to vote, or were bribed into voting by promises that were never kept.  We are all used to and accept that we have no choice but to do our taxes every year, after all you know the quote “Nothing is certain but death and taxes”  I won’t make this a long story, we need to keep the fire stoked (burning carbon equals heat in the house), after all this is just food for thought.  It was not that long ago when Taylor Bachrach tried to pass legislation to allow kids to vote, kids highly manipulated by an almost 100% NDP Teachers Union,  thank God that failed.  Maybe a better angle would be to get more adults voting? Could mandatory voting bring democracy back to Canada?

 

According to Statistic Canada “Among eligible Canadians who did not vote in 2021, the most common reason for not casting a ballot was not being interested in politics (32%). Similar to 2019, this was the most commonly cited reason in the majority of age groups, with two exceptions: illness or disability (39%) was the most reported reason among people aged 75 and older, and being too busy (34%) was most prevalent among those aged 35 to 44. Overall, citing political issues (including not being interested in politics) as a reason for not voting was more common among men (41%) than among women (37%).

 

The quotes below were stolen from CTV News (a goverment funded state news agency)

 

“Mandatory voting laws aren’t new. Belgium has had mandatory voting on the books since 1893 for men and 1948 women. Australia has had a compulsory voting law in place since 1924. Brazil, Uruguay and Luxemburg also have mandatory voting laws.  States that have mandatory voting, they just become a fixture of the landscape. In Australia, roughly 70 per cent of the population supports mandatory voting.”

“In Australia, things are pretty straight forward on election day — citizens must go to the polling station. If they don’t, they will receive a letter, he said. “You can then send a letter which says that, ‘I was out of town’, or ‘I was taking care of a sick child’ or whatever it may be,” said Elliott. “And very often, that explanation is sufficient, that’s the end of it. If not, you receive a monetary fine between $20 and $50 Australian, at this point, and that’s the end of the story.” More than 90 per cent of Australians turned out to vote in their 2019 election. Elliott said that this number is consistently high in that country.”Australia has some of the best voting rights, highest turnout in the world, regularly in excess of 90 per cent turnout, and it’s been fairly stable at that level for, most of the period of time that they’ve had it since 1924,” he said.”

 

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