Making voting mandatory would be the absolute worst possible change you could make. It would ensure, 100% and without fail, that the least capable make all the decisions in our society. Nothing could possibly be worse than that.

Representative democracy doesn't work. Statistically we don't even have a democracy- regardless of who we elect the interests of corporations are served and the interests of people are ignored. There was a princeton study awhile back that statistically demonstrated that we have no democracy, and Hillary Clinton's staff in the WikiLeaks emails commented "I guess they needed a study to point out the obvious."

If you have a topic that involves economics and foreign policy, then qualify for both. Or have a test specific to the ballot. Even give the test and answers out for free beforehand- if people memorize the answers, they still got exposed to them.

What our current system does is ignore the needs of the people. Using marijuana is a good example, because we now know that if the topic had been voted on, it's very unlikely we would have had 40-50 years of elevated organized crime and elevated prison populations as the result of people smoking a plant that makes you silly. The war on drugs is a perfect example of the failings of representative democracy. No one wanted it, and now that we get to vote on it it's quickly on the way out.

Instead of voting on someone you hope to end a war, just vote on ending the fucking war. Every recent person elected to political office has lied like hell about their intentions, and it seems like Trump may be even worse than the others, as he's stacking his cabinet with the swamp.