Why would increasing turnout make a difference? It is not that high turnout is a surefire indicator of civic health and democratic values -- the former Soviet Union, after all, boasted 98 percent turnouts. The greater impact is on the culture of politicians. Australian politicians of all stripes say that knowing both parties' bases will certainly vote motivates them to focus on those persuadable voters in the middle. They do not emphasize the kinds of wedge issues like guns, gays, or abortion that dominate American discourse. Instead, politicians focus on the bigger questions -- like the economy, jobs, and education -- that drive the voters in the middle, and they avoid the kind of vicious or vitriolic campaign rhetoric that turns off the persuadable voters.

Australia has another feature that is highly attractive and desirable: preference voting, where voters rank-order candidates from most preferred to least. Such a system prevents minor parties or independent candidates from acting as spoilers -- a la Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in 2000 -- but still allows voters whose first options don't prevail to influence the outcome via their second and third choices. This makes for more honest choices and broader coalitions.

Of course, mandatory voting has no serious chance of being enacted in the United States, where mandates of any sort are (as you might have noticed) unpopular. Americans rebel viscerally against the idea of taking away the freedom not to vote, even if the consequence is simply a modest penalty or the requirement to write an excuse. So I also favor exploring ways to expand the electorate by using incentives instead of disincentives.

My favorite incentive approach is a "Mega Millions lottery," where one's voting receipt is also one's lottery ticket. The lure of a major prize could and would motivate people to vote, the same way the multimillion dollar Mega Millions prize in 2012 motivated many to stand in line for hours for a chance to buy a lottery ticket that gave a one-in-176-million chance to become a multimillionaire. A lottery could increase turnout dramatically and overnight, and is a model that could be employed at all levels (say, a chance to win a car donated by a local dealer for a local election).

Our best hope for changing the damaging culture which elects people who embrace rigid and extreme ideas is for more Americans to exert some influence in elections.

Beyond incentives like these, other things could make voting easier. One is moving Election Day from Tuesday (an anachronism, initiated by law in the 1840s to make it easier for Americans to travel to the polling place without creating problems for Market Day or observing the Sabbath) to the weekend. In my ideal world, voting would take place over a 24-hour period from noon Saturday to noon Sunday, thus avoiding any Sabbath problems or overcrowding at peak periods before and after the workday. There would also be early voting on the three days before the weekend to accommodate those who will be away. I would also like to modernize our voter registration system and ballot design so that Americans could vote not just in their home precincts but also near their workplaces or in voting centers.