Voting should be mandatory.
In the meantime, voluntary voting should be as easy as possible, and your suggestion would discourage the apathetic from voting by making them jump through meaningless hoops before they gain the ability to vote.
That's just as bad as forcing people to take a test.
This is moderate hero nonsense. There are legitimate concerns about mandatory voting, but to compare being forced to vote with being denied the ability to vote is ridiculous anti-extremism straight out of the Computer09 playbook.
The purpose of mandatory voting is not to force those who are actively boycotting the democratic process for whatever reason to vote. Its purpose is to give those who believe their vote is meaningless a stake in the political process. The latter reason is much more common among the 42.8% of Americans who chose not to vote in 2012. The issue of uninformed voters (and the uninformed who choose not to vote) is larger than mandatory voting, but no, people do not have a right to remain uninformed. That's ridiculous.
Democracy is improved when government is more representative of its constituents, so increasing the number of people voting does indeed improve democracy.
1) Maybe its not as bad, but its pretty bad. Its taking away freedom either way. Whether its the 40% or so Americans that choose not to participate or the millions that would vote but couldn't because of a stupid test.
2) Why would any person who believes their vote isn't worth anything think their vote would be worth something after everyone voted? Its usually because they believes politics in general is corrupt, they don't like the political parties and their establishments, or something along those lines. Having everyone vote would not make people think their vote counted more (actually less since their a smaller piece in the bigger pie). And people do have a right to be uninformed. I choose to be uninformed about all sorts of stuff. We're all somewhat uninformed about our government, its the degree to which its true. But if you don't like freedom, then yeah its a great idea to force people to vote whether their informed or not.
3) Democracy is government by the people. If people are forced to participate in a democracy by the state, then the state is partially determining the outcome, which is antithetical to the idea in the first place.
Side note: Fining people for not voting would probably disproportionately hurt the poor and uneducated, but I know you care about the poor so much so its all good.
