Mandatory Voting

George Will has a column about Eric Holder supposedly supporting mandatory voter registration or possibly mandatory voting. George Will does a nice job explaining why this would be a bad idea. However, I would support the notion of mandatory registration or voting if it meant candidates worth voting for. I would support three caveats to the mandatory voting idea:

1. Each candidate for Federal office would first have to pass the same test that immigrants have to pass in order to become citizens. This would accomplish two things - it would insure that the people running for office have some basic idea of what this country is all about and frankly it would also help weed out the morons.

2. Institute a hypocrisy law where if an office holder is found guilty of a crime that publicly was against - then that office holder would get ten-times the normal penalty. For example if a Congressman was advocating stricter gun laws but was caught trying to get a handgun through airport security or say a Congressman helped pass stricter IRS penalties but then was found to be cheating on his taxes - ten-times the penalty.

3. Any claim against a Congressman, Senator, Cabinet Member or President automatically gets sent to the Supreme Court for resolution.

I don't think that mandatory voting passes the common sense smell test but my three suggestions do - which means they would never get passed by Congress.