You can't make people feel like they're criminals when they fail to vote. What happens is the electoral commission sensual letter and says I notice you didn't vote. It's not criminal activity failing to vote but you do have to vote because we all have to pitch in. People just usually just pay the $20 fine. But there's people that are exempt for example if you're homeless you're exempt from being required to vote. And also you don't get fined if you're registered and don't vote. There was a bit of grumbling but because we had compulsory voting then we decided we were going to have really well-funded electoral commissions. So we had these electoral commissions that
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.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
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