YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE.

I don't have a problem with people not voting: if at the margin they decide that none of the outcomes of the election will materially affect their condition (whether that condition is good or ill) or if they decide that their participation or not has an effect of measure zero on the outcome.

In case you have any doubt, dear reader, that politics is show business for unattractive people, in the same way that the gate matters to the impresario, the turnout matters to the politician.  Then elective office means control of the levers of power, i.e. a monopoly on violence, and turnout becomes something to be enforced at point of a gun.

American democracy—or, at least, the California simulation of it—requires that even disinterested and actively hostile non-voters mark a ballot so government officials can gin up participation numbers, says Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael). Levine has introduced a bill that would make voting compulsory, with civil penalties for the non-compliant. It's a proposal that seems guaranteed to make disaffected non-voters become even less impressed with a sketchy political process.

California is morphing into the Soviet Union almost as quickly as Canada is unraveling.  "California, by contrast, has a top-two primary system, which often results in a general election ballot featuring 'rival' candidates from the same party—usually Democrats, given the state's current political tilt."  Somewhere, the shade of Stalin is grumbling, "Bozhe moi, why didn't I think of that?  Then could purge loser as enemy of people."

Oh, wait, California is still going through motions of being Enlightenment polity.  Stronger turnout is somehow a marker of civic health.  (And long lines at the driving license bureau are a marker of safe driving.)  It's all too much for Reason's J. D. Tuccille.  "Are we really supposed to believe that the social contract is strengthened by threatening people with fines unless they mail in a sheet of paper?"

The problem is that "Participate in our bogus process or else" used to be one of the things we'd mock about Soviet elections with 99% turnout and 99% approval of the Party's slate.