For those interested in the subject, you might want to check out this post at Volokh on whether increasing voter turnout is necessarily a good thing. The punchline:
Moreover, the non-problem of low turnout diverts scarce media and academic attention away from what I have repeatedly argued is the far more significant problem of widespread political ignorance[...]. I don’t worry about whether turnout in this year’s election will be 40% or 50%; I do worry that most of the voters are likely to be ignorant of very basic facts about many of the candidates and issues.
I think that’s a fair concern. I think that everyone who is eligible to vote and wants to vote should be able to vote, and that laws governing elections should operate with that in mind. I can agree that such efforts should not extend towards encouraging apathetic voters from walking into the voting booth to make random selections.
However, I also wonder if more could be done to combat apathy and misinformation….