Is There a Complimentary Voting Regime in Australia?

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I feel like compulsory voting wouldn't fix is the fact that a lot of people in this country and I'm sure that country don't know a whole lot about their candidates who are running for office. Living in a compulsory voting regime makes you more politically sophisticated because they know they're gonna have to vote so they just pick up a lot of incidental information. Belgium still has it, Costa Rica, Vanuatu and Samoa are just moving to it to fight corruption there's lots of different places that have had it at various times.

Midterm elections are a tough sell in the United States. Half of eligible voters show up in a good year. On Election Day, we’re revisiting an episode about how things work down under, where “sausage sizzles” and “bathers” make mandatory voting feel like a party.

This episode was originally produced by Noam Hassenfeld and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. It was updated by Amina Al-Sadi with help from Efim Shapiro and Matt Collette. New reporting by Amanda Lewellyn, Miles Bryan, Laura Bullard, and Hady Mawajdeh.

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