What's the bigger threat? Low turnout or high tune-out?

Not long ago, I sat at the kitchen table of my 90-year-old mother's assisted-living apartment, helping her go through her mail. One item puzzling her was an application for an absentee ballot for the upcoming election.

I explained that a new Minnesota law, aimed at making voting more convenient, allows anyone to vote "absentee" without saying why they can't make it to the polls on Election Day.

Did she want to send in for a ballot?

No, Mom replied. She doesn't pay that much attention to politics or the news anymore, she explained.

Passing over the worrisome professional implications of this revelation, it occurred to me that if I weren't such a lackadaisical son — or perhaps such a lackadaisical partisan — I would have mildly lectured Mom about her solemn duty to vote, then helped with her selections.

But instead, as a lot of people see it, I probably demonstrated that I'm a lackadaisical citizen, too. I replied that in my view she has every right in the world (or anyhow, in America) to ignore politics if she pleases — and that if she does, her very best contribution to good government would be to sit out the election and leave the voting to those more interested and better informed.

Many thoughtful people I respect seem to disagree with me about with this. It is widely declared that America's chronically low voter turnout compared with many democracies is an intolerable embarrassment, a sign of ill health in our political life, and a problem that needs to be solved by making voting ever easier.

I got curious after the fact about how Mom came to receive her ballot application, since she hadn't requested one. A spokesman at the secretary of state's office reports that governmental agencies send applications only in response to requests. He speculated that my mother received hers from a private get-out-the-vote drive, perhaps by one of the political parties.

A front-page news story last Friday chronicled how "party canvassers push hard to get early ballots in supporters' hands," putting "traditional get-out-the-vote efforts on steroids."

There's no doubt the parties have a special interest in who among us votes. The often bitter debate over "voter ID" requirements — Minnesotans rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have created one two years ago — often inspire charges that Republicans exaggerate concerns about voter fraud because they see a partisan advantage in making voting more challenging for the elderly and poor, and for others more likely to lack identification. Republicans counter that Democrats shrug off fraud concerns and promote ever more effortless voting in hopes of bringing out more likely Democratic supporters.

It would be hopelessly naive to doubt that partisans on both sides are sometimes inspired by such self-serving calculations. Fact is, voter fraud doesn't seem to be a grave threat, and obtaining ID doesn't seem an insurmountable obstacle for a motivated voter.

But clearly, the argument for hurdle-free voting is easier to make. Who could doubt the benefits of having more eligible people voting?

I only wish this were a bigger compliment.

This month the Pew Research Center published its latest report on "What Do Americans Know?"

Answer: Not much.

Pew asked 1,002 American adults a series of 12 rather easy multiple-choice questions about prominent matters in the news. Take it yourself at http://tinyurl.com/ab44rro.

I gave Mom the Pew quiz. She got 11 of the 12 questions right. I may have to nag her about voting, after all.

Chronicling the ignorance of average Americans — either through polls or person-on-the-street interviews — has become a comic cliché in our time. But Pew conducts its research carefully. And how funny is it, really, that fewer than half of American adults, according to Pew, know that it is oil — not tourism, soybeans or auto manufacturing — that is fueling an economic boom in North Dakota?

And how amusing is it that only one in five of us can guess that Social Security costs the federal government more than transportation, foreign aid or interest on the debt?

How to address Social Security's financing problem is a hard problem — and finding a sensible answer will be harder still if so few Americans grasp how enormous the program is.

Of course, people can know where their interests lie without knowing much about the news. And, of course, they have every right to vote those interests; they should face no unnecessary obstacles.

But at bottom it seems probable that the real cause of low voter participation is the same disinterest in current affairs that in this age of superabundant information must explain the Pew survey's mortifying results.