An election ballot proposal to make voting mandatory

I have an idea. This article on truthout.org argues that if voting were mandatory in the U.S., it would eliminate the extremism in our political system, changing the pool of voters from highly emotional and polarized groups, into the entire country, producing a vote better reflecting the true majority opinions.

First, I love this idea, but there's no way it would pass, because everybody running the show likes the polarization - it's good for business and for politicians. Fox News would call it socialism or something and it would never get off the ground. It's similar to making election day a national holiday - it's obviously a good idea if the goal is to maximize the number of voters, so the reason it's never brought up is because the people in power don't want to maximize the number of voters.

But then I remembered how gay marriage became such a big issue. No one but gay people even thought about it until Bush's team had an item added to the 2004 election ballot, asking the country's opinion on amending the constitution to ban gay marriage.

It was a brilliant political move - Republicans came out in tremendous numbers just to vote yes on the ban, and while they were there, also voted for Bush. Kerry's supporters, unfazed by such a bogus issue, stayed at home and assumed someone else would vote Bush out of office for them. I still don't know how that happened, honestly.

The point, though, is that adding items like that to the ballot - something that directly impacts peoples' lives (as opposed to electing politicians, which most people feel doesn't do anything except elect politicans) - mobilizes people to vote. So what if we just added an item to the election ballot proposing to make voting mandatory? It would have the same effect as making it mandatory - everyone would leave the house to vote on it. It would be the first thing we've voted on in a general election that has a direct impact on our actual lives - a proposal to force us to leave the house once every couple years to vote.

Or it would backfire and only the Fox News fans would leave the house to veto it.

It would be so interesting to see an honest and comprehensive election in this country. Just to filter out the noise from the media and see what the majority of the country really thinks. From what I've read, I suspect the vote would steer far more left than it usually does.