Tell that to my Australian friends who hate it.

Being legally forced to go to a polling station and hand in a blank piece of paper is ridiculous to me. And all of my other points still stand: I believe mandatory voting increases the likelihood of people voting for candidates whose policies they don't understand, simply because they are legally and financially dissuaded from not voting. You say "well over 90% of the population", but how many of those people simply wrote in the name of a random candidate for arbitrary reasons?

People will say "Oh, well since I have to vote I guess I'll vote for [X]" without understanding their policies. Total bullshit. Voting should be a conscious decision where the goal is for people to select candidates that best represent their ideas, feelings, and thoughts on policy. Not something people feel they have to do because they are threatened.

Those voting systems are, like many aspects of government regulation, an unecessary use of force to enforce a negative action. If I don't turn up to the polling station and hand in a blank piece of paper, which is functionally identical to me choosing not to vote, I will be fined. If I refuse to pay that fine, the state will use force to put me in prison. I can be literally imprisoned for consciously choosing not to vote.

There are better ways to increase informed voter turnout. Send mail-in ballots to every house. Register voters by default. Send concise literature detailing policy for each candidate in each constituency to each household. That alone would encourage people to choose candidates they best felt reflected them, based on actual policy - you don't need to put a gun to someone's head to make them perform a positive action.

As for the "poor and working class", you can have electoral holidays without legal punishments for non-participants, so that's invalid.