And Michael Graham responds at the Boston Herald:  

You want to know who loved mandatory voting? The late Saddam Hussein. He got 100 percent of the vote from the 11,445,638 eligible voters in 2002. Voting mandates are the tactic of a bullying, overbearing government. Which may explain why some liberal politician brings the idea back up every few years.

The left loves mandates. They love the idea of the government ordering you to vote, forcing you to buy government-approved health insurance, making you buy lousy CFL light bulbs and demanding that you stop smoking in your own car.

The left knows what you ought to be doing, whether you know it or not. So charging you your own money and using it to coerce you into doing what they say is, for a liberal, like achieving nirvana.