Piper McGraw

Should voting be mandatory in the United States?

I did four years and lost my right to vote, and I would have given anything to keep it. Now people tell me voting is a burden they should be free to skip. Fine, that's their choice today. But I will tell you what mandatory voting would actually do for people like me: it would make suppression pointless. Nobody can be purged, intimidated, or closed out of a precinct if the law says you have to be there and the state has to make it possible. When everyone is required to vote, every trick to keep certain people home stops working, because the state becomes legally responsible for getting them in the door. [The Sentencing Project](https://www.sentencingproject.org/) tracks how many Americans are still locked out of the franchise entirely.

Should companies be banned from using AI to screen job applications?

I do hiring for a living, so let me describe what "ban AI screening" actually means in practice. Last month we posted one analyst role. We received 412 applications in nine days. There are two of us on the talent team and we also have to, you know, do the rest of our jobs. Without screening software, here's what happens: we read the first fifty, get exhausted, hire someone's referral, and ignore the other 362 completely. That's the real alternative, not some fantasy where every resume gets a careful read. Studies have found recruiters spend about six seconds on an initial resume scan ([The Ladders](https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/you-only-get-6-seconds-of-fame-make-it-count)). That's a human doing the "careful" review you're romanticizing. The software at least looks at all 412. It doesn't get tired, it doesn't play favorites with employee referrals, and it doesn't quietly skip the resumes with foreign names at 4pm on a Friday. Is it perfect? No. But banning it means fewer applicants get any consideration at all, and the ones who lose are the outsiders without connections. That's the opposite of fair.

Should families set shared screen-free hours rather than individual limits?

I work pediatrics, and the pattern is unmistakable: the kids who sleep badly are the kids whose whole house glows until midnight. Teenagers need eight to ten hours, and evening screen light pushes melatonin later while the group chat keeps the brain buzzing, a combination the [Sleep Foundation](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/teens-and-sleep) flags as a major driver of teen sleep debt. Individual limits fail here because a kid's willpower is competing with every notification the parents are also answering. A shared household wind-down, screens off at ten, the on-call phone waiting in the kitchen, changes the environment instead of testing the child. You cannot out-discipline a slot machine. You can unplug the room.

Type 1 diabetic here. My glucose alerts go straight to my phone and I am not explaining my pancreas to a teenager with a flashlight. Hard no on default pouches.

Entertainment · Sep 23, 2026 · Should movie theaters make phone-free screenings the default?