[Willwhatley]

I've wondered about variants on democracy. The parliamentary and constitutional forms seem to me to incentivize (for those who want power) going along to get along. Sophists, flatterers, demagogues; there is no good incentive to vote, only the strong disincentive of some other party's bums overseeing you rather than ones you know.

There's a Twain short story about folks who get more than the initial vote, in proportion to their accomplishments. So a propertied or moneyed man is so much more enfranchised, a doctor of philosophy has a couple more votes, and so forth. The incentive there for demagogues would seem to weight one even more firmly than presently in favor of the rich and the academic guild. I don't support any scheme that brings us closer to a plutocracy than we already are--merely mention this as a starting point.

And then there is government by lot; the next dogcatcher, etc. to be selected in some randomized fashion, perhaps confine the pool to certified catchers of dogs, treason for tampering, and so forth. The incentive becomes enormous to raise the general quality of the citizens in proportion to how broad the pool of candidates is; and, of course, to monkey with the criteria for candidates to benefit oneself and disadvantage one's adversaries.

[Volpe]

There are democratic countries where it is compulsory to vote .

This of course brings it's own set of problems...

[ra]

In Australia it is compulsory to vote. Having lived here through four general elections, I actually believe it has a negative effect on democracy.

That is to say, compulsory voting forces the most disinterested and politically ignorant members of society into the polling booths. It usually favors the most conservative party. In Australia that translates to maintaining "old-fashioned" views on, most notably, processing of refugees.

[Volpe]

Is that problem really caused by compulsory voting, or more Australian society in general?

Australia was sporting the White Australia policy up until about 30 years ago, and still requires citizen applicants to pass an 'English' test. It's rather primitive and discriminative processing of refugees (arriving by boat only!?) seems to fall in line with that as well.