the thing is, most view voting as a chore and forcing them to do it will not go over right. Automatic registration is far better than forcing people to vote.

I disagree with this argument. It's what's usually trotted out against compulsory voting, and it's conservative nonsense, because they can make you come out, but they can't make you vote for any of the candidates. You can spoil your ballot, that's legal. Under compulsory voting, you can literally come out, write "FUCK YOU" on your ballot, and turn it in. For electronic voting, you'd have to choose write-in and write in "FUCK YOU" but it still gets the same point across. All citizens should have to vote, it should be a civic duty. Even if you only come out to say that you reject everything they have to offer, you should still have to do it.

With compulsory voting, forget Macron barely beating a fascist in France, instead you'd likely have had Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France Unbowed, the democratic socialist party, winning the 2017 election in France. With compulsory voting, not only would Brexit definitely not have happened, there's a good chance there would be a Labour majority under Corbyn right now. Bernie wouldn't have to build an international progressive front, because it wouldn't have waited for him to build itself. It's no cure-all, as Australia can attest, but it beats what we have by a long shot and would fundamentally change campaigning from a "turn-out-the-base" strategy to an actual contest of ideas and persuasion.

To those asking how they support their candidates, I for one donate to Bernie, and hope to contribute several hundred by primary's end. I'll volunteer as Iowa comes closer, I've already signed up to do so.

I don't know anybody who really feels like voting is a chore here in Luxembourg, and we have mandatory voting here for everybody with Luxembourgish citizenship, no matter where they are (when I was living in the Philippines, I voted by postal vote casting). We get a specimen of the voting form months in advance in a sealed letter with a clear date and a letter you're supposed to bring (bringing just your ID is enough, though) with the instructions on it, to avoid any misconceptions or misinformation.

What compulsory voting does, however, is that everybody is following politics more closely, since everybody wants to make an informed decision when they vote. During elections, the different parties also send you their prospectus with what they want do do when (if) they get elected in rather great detail (generally 20+ pages). Having their detailed plans right in front of you also resulted into the Pirate Party gaining 2 seats (out of 60) as this allowed people to look past their unfortunate name and see what they are really up to.

There and here is different, they legit do view it as a chore and if people were paying more attention and knew what was up that would be great however american politics is full of propaganda through our corporate media. We have people pushing a narrative that a Jewish person running for president is an anti-semite among other smears. The media doesn't push back and instead highlights these things. Things are very different there than here is what I'm getting at. The problem we have is voter's can be purged among other things, automatic registration fixes that. Ending closed primaries would also be a big help but I personally think this is a push too far imo.

No, registering to vote is a chore. Actually voting is interesting. If we made Election Day a national holiday like it fucking should be already, it wouldn't be seen as a burden at all, it'd be seen as a celebration, like it should be. And if your response to that is "nuh-uh, my anecdotal evidence says that people would still hate it!" then the problem is that you lack the courage to change that. It's absurd, especially if there's a holiday to celebrate it, to view voting as a chore. As for this "push too far" nonsense, everything Bernie does is a push too far, if we get him in there, things are already obviously changing in a big way, so why be afraid to dream big? Everything auto-reg fixes, compulsory voting fixes too and does better.

I'm not sure about the does better part, forcing people to vote does not mean they will educate themselves on the issues and be in better positions to vote for things they think are right. I agree with election day being a holiday, and registering and voting is a chore. Not just one. How we currently work with election day not being a holiday means people, some who work in other states etc have to go out of their way to go to their polling station then head off to work. A holiday helps fix that, automatic voter registration fixes the entire issue of voter suppression through using voter rolls.

To expound a bit, I think everyone should vote however we have so much lies and propaganda in our media that trying to get educated about what policies really do is legitimately hard through "legitimate" sources. So while I do think everyone voting is good, I don't think forcing them to vote is. Stop voter suppression by having everyone registered. Make election day a holiday and everyone who wants to vote will get to vote. Whether they protest by doing invalid ballots, or by staying home is their choice. That's just how I feel about it. I'm personally not a fan of forcing someone to go out and do something. I view this in the same light as compulsory military service, while its not that extreme I can see how many would not want to do it.

You know something that I've thought is pretty amusing is that poll after poll shows that the three front-runners have a lot of support coming from 3 distinct ethnic groups. Sanders with a lot of his support coming from latinx voters, Biden with black voters and Warren with white voters. Obviously all this is an oversimplification of their supporters as Warren does fair well with latinx voters as well and Sanders with black voters too. It's just kinda funny to think about.

Biggest endorsement of the entire primary! How will the other candidates recover?

PUSSY RIOT BERNIE 2020 pic.twitter.com/cV3xRFHK3v

— 𝖕𝖚𝖘𝖘𝖞 𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖙💦 (@pussyrrriot) December 16, 2019