Another local election, another poor turnout. But what can, or should, be done?

In local races, only a fraction of voters bothered to show up. Provo's hotly contested mayoral race drew only 18 percent, for instance. One might wonder whether this portends the decay of local democracy.

A common nostrum in our age is the call for Internet voting. People order all kinds of merchandise online these days. They connect with friends and family on the Internet. They send their opinions spewing out into cyberspace. So why not vote online? People could do it from the comfort of their homes, at a time convenient for them, so more would vote.

Or so the theory goes.

Internet voting may not be feasible. Recently computer experts from the University of California San Diego, the University of Michigan and Princeton University studied electronic voting machines and concluded they are easy to hack and alter results. They cautioned that online votes would be even more vulnerable because they'd be far easier to intercept on public networks and coming from home computers.

Plus, the scientists pointed out, allowing people to vote from home computers would make it much easier for politicians and their minions to look over their shoulders and apply pressure.

Allow more early voting? It's a convenience, but there's little sign it prompts more people to express their views. In Utah County, only about 1 percent of the voters took advantage of the convenience.

Some folks suggest that election day should be a holiday or assigned to a Saturday, as in some other countries. That would require a major shift in how voting is handled here, however. And it would be especially hard to justify such a change for local voting anyway.

If people aren't motivated to go to the polls on Tuesdays, there's little hope they'd be more eager to vote on Saturdays or holidays.

The question might really be: Do we want more people to vote? Many polls and studies show that many people just don't know much. They're detached and uninformed anyway, too busy with TV, distracted with the detritus of life.

For instance, in one survey, only two of five voters could identify the three branches of the federal government. Nearly half thought the president has the authority to suspend the Constitution. Only 27 percent of Americans knew that the Constitution forbids the government from establishing an official religion. And only 17 percent could correctly define free-market capitalism. Study after study has shown that there's widespread ignorance about politics and government.

So maybe it's a good thing that more of those people don't vote.

Government has enough problems. Maybe they would be worse if such folks people went to the polls, cast ballots and made a bigger mess.

This leads to a certain logical inevitability: In political campaigns it is widely agreed that voters should spurn poorly qualified candidates. So why shouldn't poorly qualified voters also be spurned?

Society demands tests for many things. You must pass a test to become a naturalized citizen. Heck, you have to pass tests to become a barber or manicurist. Why then would it be wrong for voters to pass a test proving they have some minimal competence to decide the fate of their town, state or nation?

We're not talking about literacy tests like the ones Southerners used to use to deny blacks the vote, just a basic query to see if the lights are on. A video on a computer monitor could pose simple questions that a prospective voter should be able to answer. For example:

• Utah County is governed by:

a. The governor.

b. Three commissioners.

c. An oligarchy of 30.

d. Multi-level marketing.

If you get it right, you get to cast a vote, then move to the next office on the ballot. In municipal races, queries could be more specific:

• What is iProvo?

a. A brand of dog food.

b. A broadband network.

c. A Will Smith movie.

d. The biggest boondoggle in history.

Or ...

• What is Midtown Village?

a. An Indian settlement where University Mall is now.

b. A city between Goshen and Genola.

c. A Borg cube in Orem.

d. The biggest boondoggle in history.

You get the idea. So, should society find more ways to bring people indiscriminately to the polls, or find a way to screen out more of the morons? The basic criterion for voting in early America was property ownership, but now we can offer reasonable measures of citizen aptitude. Voters ought to both know and care about the future of their community, don't you think?