Did you vote?

I think the candidates would still be poor choices no matter how many people voted. If every single person in the country eligible to vote actually voted, that would suddenly (magically) make the candidates better? How do you figure that?

If everyone was voting, then the candidates would have to be appealing to the people that vote. As it is, they're only appealing to the people that do vote, we don't end up with 'bad candidates' like you and others are saying, we have candidates that are appealing a big portion of the people that tend to consistently vote.

In theory, yes.

The way that, at least up to this point, I've seen it run is that a handful of issues are brought into the ring and discussed. Not all of them, just the ones that are big enough to push a lot of people's buttons one way or the other.

So, if everyone got out and voted, the candidates would simply have more buttons to press about the same issues..

I highly doubt that they'd widen the scope of issues, which is what really needs to happen -- beyond voting and campaigning.