About 30 years ago I was in Sydney, Australia, riding in a taxicab. I like to talk with cabbies and asked my driver, “How do you like living in a country that makes you go to vote?” I thought he would complain about overbearing bureaucrats.

He turned around and gave me an impatient look, replying, “Why, mate, that’s a civic duty.” Imagine asking a Houston cabbie this question.

Australians have known this civic duty to be mandatory since 1924, when the Australian Parliament passed a law making universal voting a legal requirement. Actually, you just have to mark a ballot “present” if you don’t want to vote for a candidate. Those who don’t show up can pay a small penalty or provide an authentic letter saying they were sick or otherwise physically unable to vote.

The turnout by age-eligible voters in Australia’s federal elections is over 95 percent—astoundingly higher than in our country, where a turnout of 60 percent of registered voters is considered high.

Currently 22 countries provide for compulsory voting, but only about half make varying efforts to enforce that obligation. Australia is the only English-speaking country to have such a mandate. Election Day in Australia is on Saturdays, not on weekdays. There is often a festive atmosphere at voting booths, with civic groups selling sweets and raffle tickets as fundraisers.

Political parties have no role in administering elections, which are run by nonpartisan public servants. Candidates for public office don’t have to spend huge sums getting people to vote or restricting their outreach in the name of that objective. They strive to appeal to all the voters, instead of just courting their base with tailored incitements.

Judith Brett, in her recent book From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting, writes that the most persuasive argument among the people before passage of the 1924 law was that “the elected government should represent not just the majority of those who vote but the majority of those eligible to vote. That would increase the government’s legitimacy and make sure it paid attention to the interest of all the people.”

Australia has universal health care; one of the highest minimum wages in the world; extensive social services for children, the elderly and retirees; and few if any election irregularities or charges of voter suppression.

In the U.S. Donald Trump received the vote of 27 percent of eligible voters—nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton received—but was “selected” by an unelected Electoral College that makes foreigners shake their heads with astonishment, if not dismay. Our practice of gerrymandering electoral districts, so that whichever political party controls a state can get to pick their voters, is also shocking.

The United States, with the lowest voter turnout among Western democracies, is ripe for voting as a legal duty, joining the only other legal duty in the Constitution: serving on juries. We have a Bill of Rights, but without fuller voter engagement the unlimited money special interests can spend to support candidates seriously undermines our democracy.

When I raised the taboo issue of mandatory voting in my presidential campaign, starting in 1996, there were objections to the idea of forcing people to vote for candidates on the ballot. Such a narrow requirement would be prohibitive, especially since many voters dislike our two-party duopoly. Moreover, the perpetrators of this duopoly think they own the voters and have passed laws severely restricting ballot access for third parties and independent candidates. The U.S. has far more obstacles for third-party candidates than any other democracy in the world.

I argued on the campaign trail that mandatory voting would allow voters to choose among the candidates on the ballot, a write-in (even for themselves or their favorite aunt) and a binding none-of-the-above (NOTA) position. NOTA, a “sleeper” argument that attracts huge majority support, gives voters an opportunity to record a “no confidence” vote against the candidates on the ballot for each electoral office. Today, you can only vote “yes” for someone. (To make matters worse, there’s often only one dominant candidate on the ballot in really red or really blue states’ legislative races.) Giving voters the choice to vote “no” in a binding manner means that if NOTA wins that ballot line for mayor, governor, senator etc., a new election with new candidates would have to be called within, say, 30 days. Talk about a mechanism of accountability to challenge the smug proponents of “take it or leave it” politics.

Wide-choice ballots would address civil liberty and libertarian objections. After all, we have to obey the laws passed by lawmakers; it stands to reason that deciding who becomes legislator should be a civic duty.

A great benefit of mandatory voting is that all the ways the politicos and their paymasters scheme to obstruct, repress, delay and inconvenience voting in America (again, worse than in another other Western nation) become crimes. Under the current system these bad actors keep you, the voter, from obeying the law.

Voter repression is a creative, proliferating campaign by political autocrats. They are getting away with it because it is so difficult to prove voters were selectively blocked from voting. The offenders just open champagne bottles after their illicit results roll in on election night. People who commit a parking offense pay a greater fine than those who manipulate votes. The psychological impact on various categories of people—usually minorities and the poor, who see how they’re being excluded from democratic participation—is significant. They lose trust and withdraw.

People don’t realize there is no affirmative constitutional right to vote in America. The 15th Amendment disallows restricting the right to vote based on racial grounds. The 19th Amendment prohibits restricting the right to vote on account of sex. The 24th Amendment prohibits discrimination in voting eligibility based upon an inability to pay any tax. But ostensibly non-discriminatory voter suppression, perfected by computer programs that use class and geography, achieve comparable goals that could not be achieved by explicit racial exclusion (as with slavery and later Jim Crow laws). All the contrived obstacles would be swept away by making universal voting a legal duty. Barriers to voting, now viewed as “politics as usual” and to “the victors belong the spoils,” would become clear criminal obstructions of justice.

Somehow mandatory universal voting has always been a taboo topic for candidates. They do not propose it, and reporters rarely ask them about it. President Barack Obama, asked in 2015 about mandatory voting, commended Australia’s system and said it would be “transformative” if enacted in the United States; still, with all the bold views of the Democratic presidential candidates vying to make it through the primary season, silence has governed what could be a rousing proposal for many bored or turned-off eligible voters.

As President Obama noted, “The people who tend not to vote are young, they’re lower income, they’re skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minority groups.” This segment of our population tends to vote more for Democratic candidates when they do turn out. Add the reality that voter suppression disproportionately affects most of these potential voters and the absence of discussion among Democrats becomes virtually impossible to explain—except, perhaps for fear of the easily rebutted cries of “coercion.”

In addition, anecdotal evidence suggests that mandatory voting brings with it reduced political corruption. With fewer cynical voters staying home, more of them would be likely to vote against corrupt politicians, according to Shane P. Singh of the University of Georgia. Transparency International ranks Australia as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, ahead of the United States and the United Kingdom.

FairVote, an American reform group, believes that voting as a duty would reduce political polarization in the U.S: “Making voting mandatory alters civic norms so that eventually it is simply expected that everyone takes part in elections.”

One consequence is quite likely: Voting will be made easier with more accessible facilities. Many states have reduced the number of voting precincts, while Australia has promoted mobile polling facilities in hospitals, nursing homes, prisons and remote Aboriginal communities.

One caveat: There are many other aspects in a society that can enhance the social justice benefits of mandatory voting or render it less effective. Many Scandinavian countries with comparatively strong civic engagement traditions, plus low corruption and higher voter turnout, have a higher quality of life without mandatory voting.

In the United States, however, requiring all eligible citizens to vote clears away many election obstacles shamefully unique to our country. Imagine candidates putting forth substantive issues undistracted by political machinations affecting which voters are in and which voters are left out.

As we approach an election of historic importance, I’ll leave you with a simple request: Remember the sentiment expressed by the Sydney taxi driver.