Final answers

On inflation, direct democracy, and the things even the lowest-performing tier of voters still needs to know

A lot of effort is exerted in pursuit of median voters and swing voters. That makes sense inasmuch as small margins can make big differences in tightly-contested elections. But for the civic health of a country, someone ought to put their attention on the underlying skills of two other classes of people: The 50th-percentile voter and the 20th-percentile voter.

■ Some questions will typically be decided among experts or near-experts. We don't ask voters to decide what the Federal Funds Rate should be, nor the appropriate level of staffing at air-traffic control centers, nor where to deploy aircraft carrier groups. Representative democracy permits us to outsource questions to those with qualifications.

■ But we do depend on voters to be moderately alert to the world around them, and to have a broad sense of whether inflation is tolerable, skies are safe, and the military appears prepared for conflict. To no small extent, these questions depend on the awareness and engagement of the 50th-percentile voter: The most average person any one of us knows. It's hard to reach a majority for good outcomes if half of the voters are dissociated from what's going on.

■ Beyond that, though, certain questions depend upon really overwhelming supermajorities. In these cases, it's not enough to enlist just the best 50% of voters -- it needs to be four out of five or more.

■ Questions like, "Can we all agree on the plain language of the Constitution?", "What are the basic rights of a person under arrest?", and "Can the government target specific people, firms, or industries with punitive taxes or other treatment just because of who won the last election?" These questions demand consensus or near-consensus all the way down to the bottom quintile of voters (by interest, engagement, intelligence -- whatever metric keeps them from turning bad).

■ Calvin Coolidge once remarked, "If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions." Coolidge was right -- but even the right answers are not self-enforcing. They can only be perpetuated by agreement not just among a majority, but among an overwhelming super-majority. That doesn't renew itself without our help.