So some guy in Arizona is proposing a ballot measure to turn general elections into lotteries, offering a shot at a million bucks to everyone who votes.
This happens to be a violation of federal laws, which make it illegal "to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate."
This is more than just a technicality, it's a bedrock principle of democracy, which correctly values the right not to vote as highly as the right to vote. Most people argue that civic duty values voting over not voting, but a lot of the time, there are plenty of good reasons to not vote at all.
Perhaps a way to make the Arizona measure legal is to also embrace a reform that we ought to be considering anyway: adding a "none of the above" choice to all ballots. Not only would abstainers get their shot at the prize, it would allow elected officials and the general public to quantify how much non-voting is truly apathy, as we're usually told, and how much is a protest against inadequate choices.
