system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Mandatory voting is a good thing.

I've seen a couple of posts discussing this, but I'd be interested to see answers in the current context of Brexit and the upcoming US election. From my perspective, if you want the right to have your views as a people represented and implemented (i.e. democracy), you should have the responsibility to vote on them. 

In both the EU referendum and the upcoming U.S election I've seen a lot of talk about issues along the lines of "only X percent of young voters, who were supportive of cause Y came to vote". The campaigns of politicians are about getting people that already support them to bother to vote rather than convincing the general populace of the righteousness of their cause.

 One of the most common counterarguments I've come across is that it impedes freedom, but I think that its quite bizarre because many people have given up freedom for far less important causes (e.g. copyright/privacy), even where freedom is best marketed, in the U.S. It has been equivocated to good. Absolute freedom would be anarchy. Even if this is untrue and freedom is sacred, it seems that it is more sacred than democracy. Specifically, your freedom to not vote is more sacred than the government acting on behalf of its people. 

Another point I've come across is that it stops people who are too uneducated or disinterested from voting. The problem here is that there is always someone less or more informed than you, and you could go with that point to separate even groups of those that do vote. You don't know where to draw the line, you don't have the ability to and nor should you. It is certainly a flaw in democracy that sometimes it can just be determined by 'mob rule' where the public is generally misinformed, but if you have a problem with that with everyone voting, you will certainly have a problem with it with fewer voters, as people don't necessarily decide to vote based on how informed they really are. 

As an Australian, I recognize that my upbringing has certainly helped this bias, but it's hard to see the other perspective given these points. Democracy is a flawed system, and sometimes it doesn't produce the best results, or those you want, but it has done a lot of good, and much has been done to maintain it. To throw it away for a trivial bit of freedom or because of some misplaced sense of elitism seems like a waste.
gpt
Anyone who doesn't want to vote is someone who shouldn't.

Most of them would vote for a joke candidate or the one with the most advertising budget. These are people who don't understand the ramifications of voting or don't care.

A better idea would be to have a bit of political studies in high school to raise awareness.