Low Voter Turnout

In a recent conversation with a member of the State Assembly the conversation turned to the problem of low voter turnout.  The wealthy and politically powerful in California have learned they if they are willing to spend some money on an initiative measure that grants them some special benefit they can reap rewards vastly exceeding their costs if they time the ballot measure to make sure it gets on the ballot during a election with little on the ballot to attract voters to the polls.

A year or so ago it was the Banking industry seeking to require a 2/3 vote before taxes on Banks could be increased.  They timed the ballot measure for an off year election where the turnout would be very low, knowing that this issue was low on most voters radar, and that they could reliably sell their proposition to the 25% or so of voters who are virulantly anti-tax.  If turnout was down around 50% they were in the ball game, and below 50% approval was a slam dunk. They could, with 25% of the voting public, effectively preclude the legislature from changing corporate taxes with less than a 2/3 majority.

This member of the Assembly, clearly somewhat frustrated, suggested a laundry list of proposed solutions, automatic voter registration (not a bad idea) and mandatory voting (a bad idea) stuck in my mind.

The idea of mandatory voting raised my eyebrows (figurativly, I hope not literally as we were facing one another).  Clearly we could not, in a country that prides itself on its individual freedom, require people to vote.

It is a very real problem, but there are better solutions.  Here are a couple ideas:

1.  Make how many voters are needed for a measure to pass be contingent on turnout.  The lower the turnout, the higher the percentage for approval required.

2.  With regard to imposing 2/3 vote requirements specifically, the law should not allow a supermajority voting requirement to be imposed for any higher percentage than that percentage of the registered voters who actually vote for the proposition.