Mandatory Voting in the United States?

[TNF]

This is an insane proposal, given that there are plenty of reasons why people choose not to vote (and some do so as a show of their displeasure with the choice of candidates or parties, or just don't on the principle that voting changes little, which is definitively true, given that voting alone has never been and will never be a cure-all for society's ills). If you want people to participate, the solution is to create participatory means of self-governance.

Thomas Jefferson's "Ward Republic" immediately comes to mind as an example of such a system, as do the early Soviets (prior to their liquidation by the Bolsheviks) and Factory Committees of the Russian Revolution. Power should be devolved and exercised directly by the people themselves. The New England "Town Meeting" is an excellent example of what democracy should look like, rather than what Really Existing Democracy does look like, which is simply the selection of different elements of a privileged class of people to rule over us every few years. People don't participate now because they understand that the system doesn't work for them. If the system did work for them, if they were able to elect and hold sway over their delegates (not representatives, who vote however they like, regardless of the opinion of those who put them in office), then they would participate. We need less lawyers in government and more electricians, more plumbers, more nurses, more sex workers (actual ones, not the corporate whores who currently represent us), tattoo artists, prisoners, etc, etc.

Make government as a whole more democratic and you won't have the problem of participation that you have now under undemocratic "representative democracy."