Should Democracy Be Compulsory?

Option 1: "Compulsory voting makes about as much as sense as having the death penalty for attempted suicide," says civil rights activist Roger Bush. "You can't force people to be free! You can only give them the choice. Besides, if all those derelicts who can't be bothered to get off their ass once every few years voted, who would they elect? I shudder to think."

Option 2: "It's not contradictory at all," argues political commentator George W. Nagasawa. "The fact is, if not everyone votes, the outcome isn't truly representative. Some groups--like elderly gun nuts--vote more often than others. That's why we always end up with such terrible politicians."

Option 3: "This raises an interesting issue," says Randy Licorish, your brother. "And that is: why do we need elections, anyway? Seems to me it would be much simpler if you just decided what was right, and did it. Wouldn't that save everyone a lot of time?"

OR

Dismiss this issue.

First post!

Hey everyone! Check out our nationstate at http://www.nationstates.net/east_pac_nation. When I set it up I tried answered each initial question with a liberal or conservative view (I switched off, so it was half liberal and half conservative) but for some reason it came up as "Liberal Democratic Socialists". Well if you don't like it, your votes can change it! Every week day I will post a different issue and you can vote on the outcome, or you can vote to dismiss it. Majority rules, and I will count up the votes at 10.30 pm and cast the collective vote of the club. You can only comment if you are a member of the blog, so be sure to make a blogspot username (if you have one for a class at school, you can use that one). For the first issue, I'll allow until 10.30 on Thursday night for you to cast your vote since we're off from school. Feel free to discuss the issue within the comments but please only cast one vote. Also! We need someone to make a spiffy flag for the nation so if you have graphic design skillz, be sure to design one for us. It has to be a jpeg, 107x71 pixels, no larger than 10 kb, and cannot be offensive (no nudity and no, like, swastikas). We'll vote on a motto and a national animal in the club. Also, I created a region so we can all kind of battle against each other (http://www.nationstates.net/33227/page=display_region/region=smithtown_political_awareness). The password to enter the region is 12345.