Beyond the Voting Debate (original) (raw)
Related papers
Voting as a Duty of Common Pursuit
Geogetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, 2021
This essay argues in favor of a moral duty to vote as an example of a duty of aid toward our fellow citizens in society. I show that voting as an individual act is perfectly rational because voting is a duty of common pursuit. Moreover, I claim that said duty is not morally trivial simply because other ways of helping others exist, which could conceivably be more effective from an individual standpoint (in the sense that they do not require collective action, or much collective action, to achieve an outcome). The essays also argues that voting is a weighty duty (all else being equal) even if other forms of political participation can, arguably, contribute to helping others and society by enabling fair governments to gain power.
'Should Voting Be Compulsory? Democracy and the Ethics of Voting'
The ethics of voting have received relatively little attention from philosophers and political scientists, though they are far more complicated than one might have supposed. It is hard to draw a sharp line between the principles that might justify adopting or rejecting compulsory voting, and the evaluation of individual and collective behaviour within those rules. Resolving disputes about compulsory voting, therefore, requires us to decide when, if ever, people are morally entitled to vote on sectarian identities and interests, rather than for the ‘common good’ of their fellow citizens; when, if ever, they are morally entitled to vote on altruistic, rather than self-interested, concerns; and when, if ever, they may vote strategically, rather than sincerely. We do not yet have good answers to these questions. Above all, it is difficult to resolve disputes over the ethics of voting in general, and compulsory voting in particular, without relating the conceptions of rights, duty, freedom and equality involved to those in other areas of moral and political philosophy, and to more empirical work on voting, on comparative public policy and political economy. This chapter explains why this is the case.
Ratio, 2002
The view that there is a duty to vote in a fair and free democracy has been a source of philosophical debate. In this paper I turn from the question of whether there is a positive duty to vote to whether there can be a duty not to vote in a 'decent' democratic state. Considerations of fairness and of respect for one's peers underpin an argument that a voter who is indifferent about the outcome of an election has a duty not to cast her ballot. This is not an argument against a general duty to vote, other things being equal, but points to one of the ways in which such a duty can be undermined or outweighed by competing considerations.
Merely voting or voting Well Democracy and the requirements of citizenship
Inquiry , 2023
Much ink has been spilled in the last years on whether voting is a duty that citizens ought to discharge in a democracy that aspires to be acceptably just. In this essay, I concentrate on whether a moral duty to participate in elections logically entails that people ought to vote simpliciter or well. I propose that voting welli.e. with information and a sense of justiceis the electoral duty that we should value. Voting as such is notat least, not if we care about the substantive quality of democratic outcomes, not only about equality of participation. As a matter of fact, voting well seems to be a more adequate form of political participation than simply voting under varied normative conceptions of democracy, as I will show. At the same time, while we can't freely choose not to follow a moral duty to vote well just because we're not inclined to do so, we have to allow for the possibility that some individuals will not be in a good position to act on it. I conclude by discussing admissible reasons for this inability with respect to our citizenship responsibilities.
Civic Virtue without Politics: Reflections on Jason Brennan's The Ethics of Voting
The 2012 U.S. presidential campaign was long on intervention and short on principle. No viable candidate stood for the U.S. Constitution. Friends of liberty were left wondering what to do: Should I vote for Ron Paul, even if he doesn’t stand a chance? Should I abstain from voting, because I don’t want to give legitimacy to a broken system? Should I vote for the least awful candidate? Jason Brennan’s The Ethics of Voting addresses some of these questions.1 His book offers flashes of brilliance that can go far in advancing liberty, though a few problems detract from the book’s insight. Section 2 summarizes Brennan’s argument, Section 3 highlights the book’s strengths, Section 4 discusses weaknesses, and I offer a conclusion in Section 5.
An Epistemic Justification for Voting
2016
Received wisdom in most democracies is that voting should be seen as a political freedom that citizens have a right to exercise or not to exercise. But would liberal democracies be any less liberal if voting were seen as a duty? Contrasting the libertarian argument against the moral duty to vote, this paper proposes that we have a duty to vote well – with knowledge and a sense of impartiality. The obligation is one among many instantiations of a natural duty to promote and support just institutions in society. The paper links justice with democratic epistemic virtues to ground the morality of the electoral duty.
European Journal of Political Research, 1995
The article offers a new solution to one of the major puzzles facing the public choiceparadigm: the 'Paradox of not voting'. Utilizing a principal-agent model, I argue that voting may be regarded as a rational investment decision: not an investment in a particular electorial outcome, but in a type of reputation which the individual is interested in maintaining when carrying out hisiher everyday activities. This solution not only solves the paradox, but may also provide a bridge between adherents of the public choice-paradigm and scholars who advocate 'sociological' approaches to political behaviour.
Is civic duty the solution to the paradox of voting
Public Choice, 2019
Although sense of civic duty is seen by many scholars as the most obvious solution to the paradox of voting, very few empirical studies provide clear evidence on that motive. We use blood donation to build proxies, focusing only on intrinsic motivations, and then introduce such measures into electoral turnout regressions. Our results show that civic duty has a strong influence on voter turnout rates, confirming that the satisfaction voters receive from voting matters regardless of election outcomes. The results are even stronger when we incorporate the number of plasma and platelet donations, which take more time and require stronger commitments from donors.
The Distinctive Value of Elections and the Case for Compulsory Voting
American Journal of Political Science, 2019
In this article, I defend compulsory voting on the grounds that it reinforces the distinctive and valuable role that elections play in contemporary democracy. Some scholars have suggested that mandatory voting laws can improve government responsiveness to members of poor and marginalized groups who are less likely to vote. Critics of compulsory voting object that citizens can participate in a wide variety of ways; voting is not important enough to justify forcing people to do it. These critics neglect the importance of voting’s particular role in contemporary democratic practice, though. The case for compulsory voting rests on an implicit, but widely shared, understanding of elections as special moments of mass participation that manifest the equal political authority of all citizens. The most prominent objections to mandatory voting fail to appreciate this distinctive role for voting and the way it is embedded within a broader democratic framework.