What's so magical about 80%? Why not 90, 70, 50, etc? I think we are better served as long as most voters bothering to vote do so in after an honest intellectual reflection. The current status of having so many uninformed voters (their own fault, the info is out there for those who care to look), is part of the problem. It clearly helped Bush's wins.

Brasil has mandatory voting. Yet the Brasilians I work with are not fans of that system. They feel it leads to some exceptionally bad selections and fans the flames of reactionary populism.

And David, I'm not sure the blog article means a whole lot either. The statistical sample of the counted ballots looked too low to me to mean much. That of course doesn't prove any malfeasance from the machines, but neither does it automatically mean that we don't live in a democracy. Jury's out on that one, I suppose.