Saving democracy through compulsory voting?
CNN recently published a surprisingly starkly worded opinion piece titled Stupid voters enable broken government . The gist of the article is that we have governments we elect, and therefore governments we deserve. But do we, really? A commenter points out the following : Most eligible voters don't even vote. Only 37% did in the 2010 election. That means it only takes 18.87% of all eligible voters to get elected. And that means a candidate must pander to the bat shit crazies...because the batshit crazies are definitely voting. It's very likely the other 63% of voters don't show up to the polls because they don't think the candidates represent their views. This works out to a feedback effect since if they did show up, their opinions would carry weight and the candidates would reflect their views. I've spent a fair amount of time contemplating the faults of democracy, but its salvation might be much more straightforward than I thought. Edit: Wikipedia has a li