Addressing differences in political participation by income level

I'm reading Galston's 2007 review of civic knowledge and civic engagement and wanted to drop a thought. He describes the disparity in participation between lower and upper income citizens: those in the top quintile of income are 5x more likely to participate than those in the lowest quintile.

So one approach to this issue is to try to raise participation among those in the lowest quintile, which is certainly necessary, but I also think this points to the need for a democratic elite as described by Anderson (2007). Some folks will be more likely to vote and we should encourage them to do so in a way that takes the interests of all into consideration. Need to be careful with this because of the danger of this outlook leading to the exclusion of the voices of those in the lowest quintile (because their interests are 'sufficiently' represented by the 'elite'). Rather the emphasis needs to be on training the 'elite', who vote in larger numbers, to be listening to the voice of those in the lower income quintile – not to replace their voice.

Anderson, E. (2007). Fair Opportunity in Education: A Democratic Equality Perspective. Ethics: An International Journal of Social, 117(4), 595-622.

Galston, W. A. (2007). Civic Knowledge, Civic Education, and Civic Engagement: A Summary of Recent Research. International Journal of Public Administration, 30(6), 623.