I'm surprised to hear that about both Britain and Australia. I didn't realize voting there was mandatory. I'm especially surprised to hear that Britain's voting turnouts could actually be worse than America's, though. We do tend to sensationalize our politics over here, but I'd still thought we ranked pretty poorly as far as democracies go, and that most European countries tended to do a little better in that regard. I always think back on the statistic from a decade or so ago that we had a higher turnout in voting for American Idol than we did our presidential election lol.