National Journal By: Ron Fournier

President Obama is like the half-baked doctor who diagnoses what's wrong with you and prescribes the wrong medicine. Good call, bad doctor. Take two major ails of the U.S. polit­ic­al system:

1. De­clin­ing voter par­ti­cip­a­tion, par­tic­u­larly among young and minor­ity voters who are most likely to feel dis­en­fran­chised.

2. An un­healthy ap­proach to fin­an­cing cam­paigns after Cit­izens United, the Su­preme Court rul­ing that out­lawed re­stric­tions on polit­ic­al spend­ing.

Obama’s pre­scrip­tion? Force every­body to vote.

“In Aus­tralia, and some oth­er coun­tries, there’s man­dat­ory vot­ing,” the pres­id­ent said Wed­nes­day in Clev­e­land, where he ad­dressed middle-class eco­nom­ics. “It would be trans­form­at­ive if every­body voted””that would coun­ter­act money more than any­thing.”

Trans­form­at­ive how? Coun­ter­act money in what way? “The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower in­come, they’re skewed more heav­ily to­wards im­mig­rant groups and minor­ity groups,” Obama said.

Oh, so it would be trans­form­at­ive in the sense of help­ing the Demo­crat­ic Party? In oth­er words, this is a par­tis­an play. “There’s a reas­on why some folks try to keep them away from the polls.”

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