I just read an interesting post by the guys over at freakonomics, where they talk about the economist's view of voting. It's a waste of time, and many people who would otherwise recognize that do it for reasons that have nothing to do with the result of the vote. That's consistent with the political science experience that there's relatively little you can do to change who people vote for. Easier to change whether or not they vote.They do point out that there is some social utility that isn't captured in voting when voting is voluntary. If no one were to vote, then only the most motivated, and by implication the people who most disagree with the status quo, would vote, and they would rule the world, and change would become more revolutionary than evolutionary. That's a serious problem for everybody, but it doesn't show up in the calculus of the individual voter.From an economist's point of view, paying people for their vote would seem to make a hell of a lot of sense. Probably better if it wasn't the party or candidate receiving the vote that was doing the paying. :) Alternatively, going the Australian route and making it illegal not to vote might be seen as an effective way of internalizing the externality. I prefer the idea of paying people, because it doesn't inhibit peoples' freedom as much.But really, why would I want either to happen, from my point of view? I have strongly held views, and I want them represented in the government of the day. Why should I want to share power with other people who don't care as much as I do? I don't. I want more power, and if I can take it from them, because they voluntarily give it up, then where's the problem?If you look at it from a statistical point of view, polls are surprisingly good at predicting election outcomes despite the fact that polls are randomized and votes are self-selecting. Small polls of just 1000 people have been known to predict the results of federal elections to within tenths of a percent of popular vote.So if we had only picked 1000 people at random and allowed only them to vote, we would have essentially the same result (at least in party popular vote). So you can't even really say that having too few people voting is a problem in terms of the result. The problem is which people vote, and whether or not they are a representative sample.What's there in the current structure to prevent the crazies from taking over? Two things that I can think of. First, fundraising. Presumably, campaigning is effective (at least at getting people to vote), and expensive, and the cost of campaigning has to be borne by people with resources, both time, effort, and money. Money is of increasing importance, and money and extreme opinions are not positively correlated in my experience, which means that people with extreme opinions don't tend to get the help they need in order to win.Also, the civic duty argument. As per the freakonomics people, a lot of people actually vote for the same reason they go to church. It's just the right thing to do.Given the choice between those two things, I'd sure prefer the latter. It's undemocratic to allow money to control the result of an election in which every citizen's opinion is supposed to be valued equally.So what should happen? I don't know. I guess we should promote civic-duty voting to the degree necessary to ensure that the sample of voters is sufficiently large that the crazy-person contingent becomes relatively insignificant. Anything more than that, and we're just diluting our own votes. So from that analysis, I don't see a real problem with the current level of voter participation.The only caveat is that if everyone has to vote, that changes what you have to do in political contests. Get out the vote is done for you, so you have to focus entirely on issues, and on getting your candidate in front of people. People who weren't voting because it wasn't worth the effort before have had most of that effort made sunk costs. It's unlikely that they're just going to spoil their ballot. They're already in the room, might as well make the most of it. So they're all going to vote. If that was going to be more effective for me than for other people, I might be motivated to encourage it. So I guess we an expect that kind of recommendation from parties that are either in the popular majority, or are in the centre of the spectrum and are most likely to benefit.I think, though, that in a truly free society, you have to be free not to exercise the rights you're given, and mandatory voting is offensive to that.