7/2/25
geekandmisandry: “I was thinking about how I have grown to value mandatory voting over a system that allows allegedly more freedom. Because in country, mandatory voting means I just have to send in a ballot. It can be empty or filled with the write in ballot “pickle farts” if I want.
“If I go to the voting station all I have to do is get my name checked off. I don’t have to vote if I don’t want to.
“But it means it is much more difficult for the government to try and suppress voters. Because voters have a legal obligation to go to the polls, so you can’t restrict them or try tactics to dissuade them.
“Voting polls are open long hours with access to food and water being a fairly standard staple. You don’t need any form of ID, you have to be given time to go vote in work hours without penalty if you cannot do it after work hours.
“Every now and then a politician tries some small way of voter suppression but it isn’t as easy. And so I have learned to appreciate it.
“But when I googled, out of curiosity, if the USA had ever had anything like that I was met with a barrage of websites talking about freedom and justice and the absolute liberty of Americans. I thought an eagle was going to bust out of the screen.
“Going through some of these I noticed they were think tanks connected to billionaires, one of them was funded and created by the Koch brothers.
“Gotta love how often the American ‘freedom’ is actually used as a way to further deny actual freedoms, both linguistically and politically.”