One economist says most people don't know enough to choose well – but he discounts education efforts.

We voted on Tuesday. Not enough of us, of course, but more than 30 percent of Mainers went to the polls to exercise the fundamental right in a democracy: the right to vote.

We take this right for granted and have gotten lazy about it, but think for a moment about Zimbabwe, where authorities will hold a presidential runoff election later this month.

The ruling government in this so-called democracy is systematically beating, detaining and withholding food supplies from opposition supporters.Even with these terrors, however, a greater percentage of Zimbabweans likely will vote in their runoff June 27 than will Americans in our presidential election Nov. 4.

What can we do to get more Americans involved in the political process? One thing that should help is the presumed nomination of Barack Obama as the Democrats' presidential candidate.

Obama has shown in the primaries that he energizes a whole new stratum of young voters who have hitherto been apathetic about the political process. Just by having him on the ticket, we're likely to significantly increase the proportion of 18- to 25-year-olds voting.

Another approach to increasing voter participation is, simply, to require citizens to vote. This is the practice in 32 democracies, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Ecuador, Singapore and Turkey. In most of these nations, one is subject to a fine if one does not vote.

A WINNING SCENARIO FOR COTE

The argument for such a practice is, of course, that the more people who vote, the better the will of the majority is represented. In earlier columns, I have made this argument in regard to the Maine Legislature.

If more people were to vote in the primaries, for example, moderate candidates from each political party would be more likely to be elected. For example, had there been greater turnout for last Tuesday's Democratic 1st Congressional District primary, the likely winner would have been runner-up Adam Cote, the moderate, rather than Chellie Pingree, who represents the more liberal wing of the party.

Most of us take for granted the thesis that our democracy would be better if more citizens exercised their right to vote. We may not be willing to mandate voting – somehow, this seems un-American – but we surely want to encourage it.

Not so fast, says economist Bryan Caplan in his new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter." Caplan's thesis is that encouraging more people to vote is not necessarily a good thing, because voters are not generally well-enough informed to make good choices.

Like a good economist, Caplan cites extensive survey information and analysis to demonstrate that the average voter, given a choice on economic issues, will often make the wrong one.

A typical finding is, for example, that most economists believe trade agreements have helped create jobs in the U.S., while the average voter believes they have caused the U.S. to lose jobs. Similarly, on the issue of downsizing U.S. corporations, most economists see this as good,while most voters see it as bad!

REWARDING ECONOMIC LITERACY

All of this is unsurprising – this is how economists think. What is novel is Caplan's solution: He proposes to raise the economic literacy of the median voter by giving extra votes to individuals with greater economic literacy. In a word, economists should get multiple votes. As an economics major, I think this is a splendid idea. I would give myself at least five votes. Other readers, however, may not agree.

For those of you who view this as too radical, Caplan suggests simply reducing efforts to increase turnout. His rationale is that education is one of the strongest predictors of turnout and is also positively correlated with economic literacy. Thus, the lower the turnout for an election, the more likely we would be to get a higher proportion of economically literate voters.

And if this proposal seems too anti-democratic, his third proposal is since well-educated people are better voters, an alternate way to improve democracy would be to give voters more education. However, he is skeptical that this could work.

So friends, we are back to Winston Churchill's famous comment: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

For me, I still hold out hope for voter education – but education that comes from good, unbiased sources such as www.votesmart.org, not the 30-second ad that has become so ubiquitous in these times.