It is no surprise that the US wins another Gold Medal, this time in the
non-voting Olympics.  We have the best democracy that money can buy, and
since not that many people have the money, they don't vote.  This
tabulation exists in many different sources, but is analyzed in a
forthcoming book available at:
http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mfrankli/Synopsis%26outline.html

USA       55.8
Switzerland    56.6
Japan          71.3
Ireland        73.2
Canada    74.6
Finland        75.9
UK        76.4
France         76.7
Israel         80.4
Norway         80.6
Denmark   85.6
Germany   85.6
Sweden    86.1
Netherlands    87.6
Malta          88.2
New Zealand    88.6
Iceland        89.5
Luxembourg     89.8
Italy          90.6
Austria        92.1
Belgium   92.6
Australia 94.6

These figures are the mean turnout 1945-99 percentages.

In a previous book chapter the author reasons why the US has such a
stellar showing:
Franklin, M. N. (1996). Electoral Participation. Comparing democracies :
elections and voting in global perspectives. L. LeDuc, R. G. Niemi and P.
Norris. Thousand Oaks, Sage: 216-235.

There on page 232 in the last paragraph:  The fact that voters are not
fools is also suggested by the extent to which they bypass electoral
routes where those routes prove unreponsive.  The United States suffers
much from the unresponsive nature of its institutional character 28

Footnote 28:  To say it "suffers" from  its institutions is to look at
things purely from the perspective of electoral turnout.  The founding
fathers, of course, designed a system that would be unresponsive to the
popular will and their system works pretty much as intended.  Our finding
suggest that low turnout is an inevitable concomitant.

Your Olympic Scorekeeper, Stephen Bezruchka

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