WHEN THE SOCCER moms showed up, James Glaser of Tufts University and his two colleagues knew their political science experiment was going to be a success. It was May 10, Election Day in Hooksett, NH, and Glaser and company had set up a tent outside the town’s single polling place in hopes of attracting voters. Among the offerings were sandwiches, drinks, chips, and cotton candy. Those who took the bait, he says, included mothers and fathers who were able to get their kids supper—free, at that—while doing their civic duty. Then the families piled back into their minivans and SUVs and headed off to the ball fields.

“There were loads of kids there,” says Glaser.

The idea was to see whether making Election Day more of a festive event would boost voter participation. The initial findings—by Glaser, Yale political scientist Donald Green, and Yale doctoral student Elizabeth Addonizio — are that it did. Based on a statistical comparison with nearby Hanover, which had just 401 voters come to the polls, Hooksett’s turnout should have been just 433. Instead, 1,498 cast ballots that day.

In Massachusetts, the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Election Laws plans to report out a package of voting enhancements this fall in hopes of increasing participation, according to Sen. Edward Augustus Jr. (D-Worcester), who is Senate chairman of the committee. Getting a close look are proposals to allow voter registration on Election Day and to ensure that workers get time off for voting without loss of pay. (The Tufts and Yale researchers chose to conduct their experiment in New Hampshire because same-day voter registration is allowed there.) Augustus and the committee’s House chairman, Rep. Anthony Petruccelli (D-East Boston), are also sponsoring a constitutional amendment championed by the League of Women Voters to remove restrictions on absentee voting and allow early voting by mail.

But what if removing obstacles to voting is not enough? What if voters need enticements to go to the polls, or even sanctions for not casting their ballots? Does the Commonwealth need a carrot-and-stick approach to Election Day?

Daniel Winslow thinks so. A former state District Court judge and former legal counsel to Gov. Mitt Romney, Winslow has been pushing a plan to make voting pay, or at least make it costly not to vote. The Norfolk lawyer came across a little-known provision in the state Constitution that provides for compulsory voting, with the Legislature’s approval. (Article LXI states: “The general court shall have authority to provide for compulsory voting at elections, but the right of secret voting shall be preserved.”) Though there is no such thing anywhere in the US, a number of countries, including Australia, Brazil, and Belgium, actually require their citizens to cast ballots.

Winslow is also on the board of overseers of the University College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts, in Medford. Attending a dinner there shortly after last November’s presidential election, he mentioned his discovery to Glaser, an assistant political science professor and dean of undergraduate studies. Glaser brought in Green and the two academics and the lawyer did some brainstorming. Then they set out to test the carrot-and-stick approach to voter turnout, with the academics pushing the carrots and Winslow carrying the stick.

Winslow approached the Norfolk board of selectmen in April with a proposal to charge citizens who don’t vote in local elections higher fees for municipal services. Under his plan, fees would be raised to the maximum allowable by law (that is, the actual cost of providing a particular service), but voters, who would be given a receipt upon leaving the polls, would automatically qualify for the old, lower rate.

“The failure to participate in civic life at the local level has costs,” says Winslow. “Usually they’re hidden costs. This approach would make those costs apparent.”

But it was no sale in Winslow’s hometown, where just 15 percent of voters participated in this year’s town election. “I don’t see the average citizen of Norfolk viewing it as a great thing,” says chairman Ramesh Advani. “They might think they’re being forced to vote.” Winslow also approached the Massachusetts Municipal Association, but the MMA decided not to submit the idea to its policy committee for review, according to executive director Geoffrey Beckwith.

Legal concerns have also been raised about making people pay a financial penalty for not voting. Winslow’s proposal “has the smell of a poll tax,” says Heather Gerken, a Harvard Law School professor and election law specialist. “Some people might argue it sullies the right to vote.” The US Department of Justice put up a red flag not only for Winslow’s idea but also for one put forward by state Sen. Brian Joyce to provide a $25 tax credit for voting in state elections.

“Federal law makes it a crime to pay for a vote,” says Eric Holland, a Justice Department spokesman. “The receipt of anything of value, including a tax incentive, could potentially violate federal law.”

But cotton candy for kids is a different matter. In addition to the free food, the Hooksett poll party featured raffles and a DJ, at a cost of $3,500 covered by the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies, of which Green is the director. Addonizio, the Yale graduate student, says that in planning and promoting the Hooksett festival she aimed “to recreate the 19th-century excitement of elections.”

For analytical purposes, Hooksett was paired with Hanover. The two New Hampshire towns were of similar size (less than 10,000 in the 2000 Census), had similar voting rates in last year’s town elections, and held elections on the same date. A coin flip determined which town got the poll party—and a tripled voter turnout.

Hooksett town officials are not so convinced that the tent produced the turnout. The festival “may have helped some, but there is no hard way of linking the data to what the turnout was,” says Moni Sharma, interim town administrator at the time of the vote. Town clerk Leslie Nepveu, who supervises elections, attributed the turnout to get-out-the-vote campaigns conducted by backers of ballot proposals to fund a new air-conditioning system for the town library and to rebuild a playground, both of which passed.

Green and Glaser admit that the Hooksett experience was just a first take in looking at poll-party impact. The researchers are seeking approval to conduct experiments this fall—in Boston and Marlborough—that will compare precincts within the same city, so that ballots and issues will be similar, if not identical. But Green says it’s clear to him that the poll party made the difference in Hooksett’s turnout.

“I don’t think there was a GOTV effort in Hooksett on a scale sufficient to generate even 200 votes,” says Green, who also says the civic celebration got a warm reception from voters. “The reaction I heard most was we ought to try to do this again.”

Former Attleboro Sun Chronicle editor Ned Bristol is a freelance writer and Boston Globe correspondent.