I'd like to give another persepective on the "forced voting" issue. Please indulge me as I give a brief American history lesson. I'm sure every country has specific examples of this, but since I live in America, American history is what I'm most familiar with.
The American Continental Army was originally formed in 1775 by Congress. It originally was slated to have 10,000 soldiers to be stationed in Boston, not including the 5,000 that were already defending various places in New York. By the end of the American Revolutionary War, the number of soldiers in the Army had grown to a little over 30,000 (Congress had called for 60,000+, but had trouble recruiting that many soldiers). These were the men whose actions led to the birth of a new nation.
I have tried to find out for some time what the total population of America was at that time, but the earliest information I could get from the US Census Bureau is for 1790, about ten years later. In 1790, the census reported 3,893,635 people in the 16 states at the time.
Here's my point: even if the population had doubled in that time between the end of the war in 1778 and the time of the census in 1790, that would mean that this country was formed because less than 1% of the population held such strong beliefs that they were willing to take action and do something about them. If I was a politician, I would rather have a small percentage of the population that truly believed in my cause and were willing to influence the minds of those around them. It's the concept of quality vs quantity. Who wants a multitude of mediocre followers (and then only because they were coerced into doing so)?
EDIT:
Oops, my math was wrong. If the population had doubled in that time, it would have been 1.5% of the population in the army.
EDIT again:
<Really stupid analogy>My level 40 CHARNAME can rip through millions of gibberlings. I would rather have CHARNAME than millions of lemmings...er, I mean gibberlings.</Really stupid analogy >