Obama seeks ‘transformative’ mandatory voting, backs off after backlash

President Obama ired critics when he proposed the notion of mandatory voting, calling the idea “potentially transformative” while speaking to a civic group in Cleveland on Wednesday.

“If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country,” Obama said, calling it “potentially transformative” adding that universal voting would “counteract money more than anything.”

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Many surveys claim that Americans who skip the polls on Election Day are younger, lower-income and more likely to be immigrants or minorities, Obama said. “There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls,” he said.

Less than 37 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the 2014 midterms, according to the United States Election Project. And a Pew Research Center study found that those avoiding the polls in 2014 tended to be younger, poorer, less educated and more racially diverse.

Americans who skip the polls on Election Day are younger, lower-income and more likely to be immigrants or minorities, Obama said. “There’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls,” he said in a veiled reference to voter identification laws in a number of states.

The faced immediate criticism which prompted White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest to say that “The president was not making a specific policy prescription for the United States” was giving “a pretty open-ended answer” in response to a question about the impact of money in elections.

Florida Seantor Marco Rubio was asked about the remarks and said that “…first, I don’t put anything past him. I mean, there are a lot of things that have already happened that I never thought I would see, and so this would not surprise me if indeed that’s the way they move forward on it.”“But here’s the point he refuses to point out or that he misses: not voting is also a legitimate choice that some people make,” Rubio said in the Sean Hannity program. “I wish more people would participate in politics, too, but that is their choice — that is the choice of living in a free society.”

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