Comparative Election Turnouts Among Countries

The Wikipedia has a long article on voter turnout discussing the various factors that affect turnout. While Americans like to think of the U.S. as the world's best example of a democracy, if one uses voter turnout as the metric, the data show a different picture. Here are the voter turnout numbers for elections in a number of democracies from 1960 to 1995.

Country	# of elections	Turnout	Notes
Australia	14	95%	Voting is compulsory
Malta	6	94%
Austria	9	92%
Belgium	12	91%	Voting is compulsory
Italy	9	90%
Luxembourg	7	90%	Voting is compulsory
Iceland	10	89%
New Zealand	12	88%
Denmark	14	87%
Germany	9	86%
Sweden	14	86%
Greece*	10	86%
Venezuela	7	85%	Voting was compulsory until 1988
Czech Republic	2	85%
Brazil	3	83%	Voting is compulsory
Netherlands	7	83%	Excludes compulsory elections (before 1968)
Costa Rica	8	81%
Norway	9	81%
Romania	2	81%
Bulgaria	2	80%
Israel	9	80%
Portugal	9	79%
Finland	10	78%
Canada	11	76%
France	9	76%
United Kingdom	9	76%
South Korea	11	75%
Ireland	11	74%
Spain	6	73%
Japan	12	71%
Estonia	2	69%
Hungary	2	66%
Russia	2	61%
India	6	58%
United States	9	54%	Includes only Presidential election years
Switzerland	8	54%
Poland	2	51%

As you can see, voter turnout in the U.S. is far less than such beacons of democracy as Malta, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. It is kind of embarrassing having to explain this to your Maltese, Czech, and Bulgarian friends. What the table doesn't show, but is absolutely the case, is that in other countries elections are about the issues and what the parties and candidates will do if elected. Who is the most friendly and likeable person doesn't play much of a role elsewhere. What the U.S. needs is an elected King or Queen who would be chosen for his or her user friendliness so the presidential election could focus on the candidates' respective plans for governing.

VIA electoral-vote.com