Voting Ideas

Rather than just bitch about voting, how elections turn out, and how so few people actually vote, I thought I'd offer some suggestions as to how to improve not just the voting process, but the results.

It seems like many of the people who vote on the various ballot measures vote no because they don't really know what they're voting for - a "no" vote is a "safe" vote in their minds. But it's a stupid vote - if you don't know what you're voting on, you shouldn't be voting. But that's wrong, everyone has a right to vote. So I have a couple of ideas that would let people vote, but wouldn't let their uninformed voting screw things up for the rest of us:

1. For each ballot measure, have a short quiz which tests a voter's knowledge on the subject measure/proposal. How well the voter does on the quiz determines how much their vote counts - a weighting of sorts. For example, if someone only scores 50 points on their quiz (out of a possible 100), they don't really know what they are voting on, so their yes/no vote only counts for 1/2 of a vote. If someone scores 100 points, then their vote counts as a whole vote.
   
   
2. Since uninformed voters are simply voting "no" on everything, let's just add another ballot measure, labelled "Should my vote count?" - if someone votes "no," on it, then none of their other votes count.
   

Both of these should be readily implementable with electronic voting machines. Who knows, maybe one or both are already being done!