[burkaman]

>This work shows that non-voters are have even worse prejudices and are less knowledgable than voters

Does that book discuss causation? Do people not vote because they aren't paying attention to politics, or do they not pay attention because they aren't planning on voting?

I think it's at least plausible that if voting became very widespread, people might feel more pressure to stay generally informed. And of course, politicians would be forced to communicate to everyone, rather than just to groups that are most likely to vote.

[nickff]

From what I have read, it appears that intelligent and informed people also happen to be the ones that vote (likely for social or ethical reasons). I have not seen evidence that mandatory (or strongly encouraged) voting leads to a more informed public; do you have any evidence of this?

[burkaman]

No I don't, I was just wondering if it was discussed in the book you linked. But again, you're talking about a correlation in this comment, and I'm wondering which way the causation goes. I don't know if there are any studies on this.