Many suggestions are floated to improve democracy. One idea: Require people to vote. Make voting mandatory. There might even be a penalty for not voting.

It’s not as far fetched or unlikely an idea for Oregon as we once thought.

Some countries already require it. A couple years ago, when authors E.J. Dionne Jr. and Miles Rapoport wrote a book about it, we wrote about the idea.

Now in Washington state, a Senate committee voted to move ahead with a policy of requiring all eligible voters to return ballots in primary and general elections, as our sister paper The Capital Press reported. Election officials could give someone a kind of “conscientious objector” status to get out of the obligation. And nonvoters may face penalties. Democrats on the committee voted yes and Republicans voted no, which could be instructive.

In any case, maybe it’s not out of the question that the idea may be brought up in the Oregon Legislature.

The idea would put to rest some of the debate about the right to vote. Turnout would be increased. That seems almost certain. But would civic participation actually increase?

It would create the appearance that there is civic participation, whether or not there actually is. Some people may just fill in the bubble on their ballots at random to avoid any penalty.

Forcing people to vote may be less odious than other things government could compel people to do. And maybe our groans and gurgles over requiring people to perform a civic duty are overwrought, but it seems to be a reform that in itself makes a person less a citizen and more a subject.