Donkey voting

I've been feeling kind of down for a while on the nature of campaigning for political events. I think it's mostly because people are going about this in a way that should be used to entice people to purchase a product that they may or may not care about, not to get them involved in significant (or at least somewhat significant) political matters. Personally, I prefer the grassroots take on things rather than the beauty pageant or Coke vs. Pepsi approach.. unfortunately it doesn't always work out.

Anyway, I found this on Wikipedia through an article on compulsory voting. In Australia, where voting is compulsory, apathetic voters simply rank the boxes numerically from top to bottom.
1. "Donkey vote" on Wikipedia

Even with the 2004 presidential election there was a tremendous effort to get people to the polls (e.g. "Choose or Lose", "Vote or Die"), but the heart of the act of voting shouldn't be simply casting a vote, it should be the affirmation or negation of the issues themselves. It might be better said that we should reexamine what we want out of a democracy. By "democracy", we imply that we want the will of the people to be reflected in government (which usually occurs pluralistically), but we should also consider that the will of inattentive citizens isn't usually productive, and it could be argued that if they were attentive that they would likely have different views, which may or may not be reflected by the views of other attentive citizens.

Essentially the question would be: in the ideal democratic state, would it be best that (a) all citizens participate in the act of voting or that (b) only the informed citizens participate. I think the choice is rather clear-cut in favor of (b). To not be representing a perhaps significant slice of the population isn't a violation of democratic values, because the freedom to be attentive still remains, it's not neglecting those people, but rather they're apathy doesn't actualize in the form of arbitrary "donkey votes" come polling time.

Consequently, I think that people should focus on developing and encouraging attentiveness more so than encouraging people to vote, but because such an issue wouldn't have many particular objective-oriented organizations behind it, it would most likely need to be a grassroots effort or brought forth socially...

People have the right to not care about something, but we shouldn't be holding them to express those views of indecisiveness through voting, because, to me, that seems to be the definition of self-defeating. If one chooses not to vote, it can be a "productive" (in the sense of not being counterproductive) action-- they are leaving the decision up to those who actually have a handle on the issue, rather than skewing the results arbitrarily.

4/16 update: The problem with an effort to restrict the voting process is that it could logically be built up and become further and further restricted-- essentially a slippery slope. Since it is best when the votes are cast only by attentive voters, it would be better if they were cast by more informed voters. Practically, this could only be verified to a much lesser degree, but it would reduce the body of voters down to a single person or an elite handful, and likely give way to the pleasantries of totalitarianism. Consequently, I'm inclined to assert the the choice to not vote is a subjective/social one. I don't think it should be formally instituted, even though I often talk about how it should be mandatory for voters to attend debates between the parties they are choosing between.