Just skipping past most posts to add my two cents - that I suggest periodically in various political threads - that we used to have required high school classes in Civics. Students used to have to study Social Studies. Or high school had Government classes. I think I took different classes with those various names - they were interspersed through our education. It's where we learned about the bodies of government at different levels, how offices were filled, how long they were held, and who could run for them.

All of that is pretty much gone in favor of more time for "teaching to the test" that is a proficiency level test that kills a lot of good time for otherwise teaching critical thinking about government (even if the name "critical thinking" was never used.)

I taught my kids the term critical thinking at home when we were looking up subjects for them or even just doing simple tasks like shopping online to compare products. It's especially important when comparing political parties or candidates.

I would like to see mandatory voting. What Dave describes as a "license," alas, sounds like a Poll Tax. Not a good path to travel down.