(Steve Wiegand's column in the Sacramento Bee refers to an event where director Steven Hill spoke)

Back when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth (January 1986), then-Secretary of State March Fong Eu decided to stage a contest to increase voter turnout.Eu's idea was to solicit catchy slogans from citizens, with the catchiest to be used in a get-out-the-vote campaign.

The contest elicited more than 36,000 entries, and the winner of the $1,000 first prize was a woman from Willits. Her slogan was "What a difference a vote makes!"(My personal favorite was puckishly submitted by Steve Capps, who was then a San Francisco Examiner reporter. Capps' suggestion was "Vote! Vote! Or I'll Rip Out Your Throat!")Anyway, the slogan idea didn't work very well.

Only 59.3 percent of California's registered voters voted the following November, the lowest turnout since 1942.I bring this up to illustrate two points. One is that political reformers have been trying for decades to coax the recalcitrant to vote. The other is that gimmicks don't work.It should be pointed out right here that low voter turnout is primarily a liberal concern. Studies consistently show that people who don't vote are predominantly poor, minorities or young. These groups tend to vote for liberal candidates or causes. So, while conservatives may tsk-tsk about potential voters who don't show up at the polls, they really don't miss them.The libs have proposed a bunch of ways to entice non-voters to cast ballots.

Several of them were outlined in a speech Tuesday at the Library and Courts Building, by a guy from San Francisco named Steven Hill. Hill is the political reform director for a group called the New America Foundation.Among the ideas were automatically registering every eligible Californian as a voter when they turn 18, and preregistering 16- and 17-year-olds through high school programs.Hill also talked about reforming the entire political process to engage potential voters who are turned off by a system that is essentially based on an 18th-century model. He mentioned things like an independent redistricting commission; proportional representation, which would award legislative seats based on the percentage each party won, rather than the current winner-take-all system; and "instant runoff voting," where voters could express second and third choices for offices. All this begs the question of whether we should even try to encourage unmotivated people to vote.

I'm personally not crazy about someone with the enthusiasm of a sloth and the political acumen of a gerbil casting votes that count as much as my own sloth/gerbil-like ballots.However, assuming for the moment that greater voter participation is a desirable goal, maybe we should do what they do in Australia.Down Under, they make you vote. Seriously. They've been doing it since 1924. If you don't cast a ballot, you have to submit a written reason, or pay a fine of about $15.The result is that the turnout in the last Aussie national election was 95 percent. (Of course you can also vote for "none of the above" in Australian elections, so it's a lot more palatable to go to the polls.)It's not really that radical an idea. A bunch of other countries like Cyprus and Belgium have similar laws. And the state of California already makes you do a lot of stuff you don't want to, like pay taxes, serve on juries and buy car insurance. Why not throw compulsory voting into the mix?

Sure, a lot of people would rather pay $15 than vote. But by making voting mandatory, it might instill a heightened sense of civic obligation. If it doesn't, we'd have their $15.And those of us who already vote every election, even when we know better, could adopt a new slogan:"Misery loves company."

Reach Steve Wiegand at (916) 321-1076 or swiegand@sacbee.com. Back columns at www.sacbee.com/ wiegand.

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/191867.html