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Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Where Voting is Mandatory

A trivia question for this US election day. What do the following 21 countries have in common?

Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Bolivia
Brazil
Costa Rica
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
Greece
Honduras
North Korea
Luxembourg
Mexico
Nauru
Paraguay
Peru
Singapore
Thailand
Uruguay

According to the CIA World Factbook 2017, these are the countries of the world that have compulsory voting.

I'm not in favor of compulsory voting, but for elections held in nonpresidential years, when decisions are made and directions are set for national government with relatively low levels of turnout, the option does come to mind.