Word: voter
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...smaller size of the council will make it more accountable regardless of voter turnout, Driskell said...
...upperclass voter participation doesn't go up, that doesn't mean downsizing has failed," she said...
...answer is by no means clear. From a purely instrumental standpoint, there is little evidence (at least in national elections) that boosting voter-turnout fundamentally alters the complexion of an election. Had the recent presidential campaigns been re-run with everyone voting, Clinton still would have defeated Dole and Bush the elder, Bush still would have trounced Dukakis, and so on, as far back as such statistics are kept...
...with "Survivor" and stock options than with the details of Al Gore's prescription drug plan, will suddenly bestir themselves, flip on CNN, and catch up on all the politics they have missed during our comfortable, decade-long Gilded Age. More likely, a sudden and artificially induced increase in voter turnout would only mean an increase in the number of ill-informed, poorly thought out and just plain stupid votes. To be blunt, most of the people who don't vote, shouldn't vote...
Granted, if voter participation drops too low, government ceases to be responsive to the needs of the masses, and we slide into a kind of large-scale oligarchy. But this danger, though real, is not particularly germane to our present circumstances, in which America's elected officials have, if anything, become too responsive to the shifting currents of popular opinion. In an era when our President conducts polls to determine where to take his family on vacation, the country might benefit from a sharp decline in the power of the vox populi...