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The Al Franken Podcast

130: The Case for Universal Voting. Like in Australia!

The Al Franken Podcast

The Al Franken Podcast

Government, Progressive, Politics, Senate, Liberal, Senator, Minnesota, Franken, News, Saturday Night Live, Comedy, Snl

4.67.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

WaPo’s E.J. Dionne & Harvard’s Miles Rapoport on making everyone vote!

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everybody, we've got a great one today, you know, for a change.

0:08.5

And let me tell you why for a change, because this one is about a useful idea for a change.

0:16.6

Universal voting.

0:18.7

What?

0:19.6

You heard me.

0:24.8

Universal voting. They do this in about 20 countries around the world. In Australia, they've been doing this for over 100 years. Everyone is required to

0:31.7

vote in Australia. If you don't, you pay a fine, a small fine, but a fine. Ninety-seven percent of Australians are registered to

0:41.0

vote. 90 percent vote. But I'll let my guest explain it. They're E.J. Dion, columnist for the

0:47.0

Washington Post, Miles Rapaport, director of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Authors of

0:52.9

100 percent democracy, the Case for Universal Voting,

0:57.3

and the forward is written by Heather McGee, my favorite guest. So you know this is going to be

1:04.1

a great one. But before you hear from E.J. and Miles, let me just say something about this

1:10.6

idea of universal voting.

1:13.3

Do you know how much time and money and effort campaigns spend on getting people not to vote

1:21.5

and how much state legislatures focus on suppressing votes? Yes, this is not going to happen right away.

1:29.5

The strategy is to get a state or a few states to do it.

1:32.3

Florida, for example, is not a candidate for that.

1:35.6

But California is, and Massachusetts, huh?

1:39.7

Or Minnesota.

1:41.2

And speaking of Minnesota, a little little while ago we just joined the

1:46.3

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact the what Al come on Al you're

1:50.8

throwing away too many concepts by us well I've talked about this before a few

...

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