They owe a duty of care, and this duty of care brings with it certain epistemic responsibilities. One might try to argue that voters owe similar duties of care to the governed. Perhaps voters should vote 1 for what they perceive to be the best outcomes consistent with strategic voting and 2 make such decisions in a sufficiently informed and rational way. How voters vote has significant impact on political outcomes, and can help determine matters of peace and war, life and death, prosperity and poverty.
Majority voters do not just choose for themselves, but for everyone, including dissenting minorities, children, non-voters, resident aliens, and people in other countries affected by their decisions. For this reason, voting seems to be a morally charged activity Christiano ; J. Brennan a; Beerbohm That said, one clear disanalogy between the relationship doctors have with patients and voters have with the governed is that individual voters have only a vanishingly small chance of making a difference.
The expected harm of an incompetent individual vote is vanishingly small, while the expected harm of incompetent individual medical decisions is high. However, perhaps the point holds anyway. To illustrate, suppose a member firing squad is about to shoot an innocent child.
Each bullet will hit the child at the same time, and each shot would, on its own, be sufficient to kill her. You cannot stop them, so the child will die regardless of what you do. Now, suppose they offer you the opportunity to join in and shoot the child with them. You can make the st shot. Again, the child will die regardless of what you do. Is it permissible for you join the firing squad?
Most people have a strong intuition that it is wrong to join the squad and shoot the child. One plausible explanation of why it is wrong is that there may be a general moral prohibition against participating in these kinds of activities.
In these kinds of cases, we should try to keep our hands clean. The firing-squad example is somewhat analogous to voting in an election. Adding or subtracting a shooter to the firing squad makes no difference—the girl will die anyway. Similarly, with elections, individual votes make no difference. In both cases, the outcome is causally overdetermined. Still, the irresponsible voter is much like a person who volunteers to shoot in the firing squad.
Her individual bad vote is of no consequence—just as an individual shot is of no consequence—but she is participating in a collectively harmful activity when she could easily keep her hands clean J. Brennan a, 68— Voting rates in many contemporary democracies are according to many observers low, and seem in general to be falling.
Many other countries have similarly low rates. Some democratic theorists, politicians, and others think this is problematic, and advocate compulsory voting as a solution.
In a compulsory voting regime, citizens are required to vote by law; if they fail to vote without a valid excuse, they incur some sort of penalty. One major argument for compulsory voting is what we might call the Demographic or Representativeness Argument Lijphart ; Engelen ; Galston ; Hill in J. Brennan and Hill —; Singh The argument begins by noting that in voluntary voting regimes, citizens who choose to vote are systematically different from those who choose to abstain.
The rich are more likely to vote than the poor. The old are more likely to vote than the young. Men are more likely to vote than women. In many countries, ethnic minorities are less likely to vote than ethnic majorities.
More highly educated people are more likely to vote than less highly educated people. Married people are more likely to vote than non-married people. Political partisans are more likely to vote than true independents Leighley and Nagler ; Evans —6. In short, under voluntary voting, the electorate—the citizens who actually choose to vote—are not fully representative of the public at large. The Demographic Argument holds that since politicians tend to give voters what they want, in a voluntary voting regime, politicians will tend to advance the interests of advantaged citizens who vote disproportionately over the disadvantaged who tend not to vote.
The thought here is that an individual voter realizes her individual vote has little significance. However, she cannot easily coordinate with other voters and ensure they will vote with her.
Compulsory voting solves this problem. Whether the Demographic Argument succeeds or not depends on a few assumptions about voter and politician behavior. First, political scientists overwhelmingly find that voters do not vote their self-interest, but instead vote for what they perceive to be the national interest.
See the dozens of papers cited at Brennan and Hill 38—9n Second, it might turn out that disadvantaged citizens are not informed enough to vote in ways that promote their interests—they might not have sufficient social scientific knowledge to know which candidates or political parties will help them Delli Carpini and Keeter ; Caplan ; Somin Third, it may be that even in a compulsory voting regime, politicians can get away with ignoring the policy preferences of most voters Gilens ; Bartels Political scientists have also been unable to demonstrate that compulsory voting leads to more egalitarian or left-leaning policy outcomes.
Many citizens of modern democracies believe that vote buying and selling are immoral Tetlock Many philosophers agree; they argue it is wrong to buy, trade, or sell votes Satz ; Sandel —5.
Richard Hasen reviews the literature on vote buying and concludes that people have offered three main arguments against it. He says,. Two of the concerns here are consequentialist: the worry is that in a regime where vote-buying is legal, votes will be bought and sold in socially destructive ways.
However, whether vote buying is destructive is a subject of serious social scientific debate; some economists think markets in votes would in fact produce greater efficiency Buchanan and Tullock ; Haefele ; Mueller ; Philipson and Snyder ; Hasen The third concern is deontological: it holds that votes are just not the kind of thing that ought be for sale, even if it turned out that vote-buying and selling did not lead to bad consequences.
Many people think vote selling is wrong because it would lead to bad or corrupt voting. But, if that is the problem, then perhaps the permissibility of vote buying and selling should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps the rightness or wrongness of individual acts of vote buying and selling depends entirely on how the vote seller votes J. Brennan a: —; Brennan and Jaworski — Suppose I pay a person to vote in a good way.
Or, suppose I think turnout is too low, and so I pay a well-informed person to vote her conscience. It is unclear why we should conclude in either case that I have done something wrong, rather than conclude that I have done everyone a small public service.
Certain objections to vote buying and selling appear to prove too much; these objections lead to conclusions that the objectors are not willing to support.
For instance, one common argument against voting selling is that paying a person to vote imposes an externality on third parties.
However, so does persuading others to vote or to vote in certain ways Freiman If paying you to vote for X is wrong because it imposes a third party cost, then for the sake of consistency, I should also conclude that persuading you to vote for X , say, on the basis of a good argument, is equally problematic.
As another example, some object to voting markets on the grounds that votes should be for the common good, rather than for narrow self-interest Satz ; Sandel Some claim that vote markets should be illegal for this reason. However, if that is sufficient reason to forbid markets in votes, then it is unclear why we should not, e.
Further these arguments appear to leave open that a person could permissibly sell her vote, provided she does so after deliberating and provided she votes for the common good. It might be that if vote selling were legal, most or even all vote sellers would vote in destructive ways, but that does not show that vote selling is inherently wrong.
One pressing issue, though, is whether vote buying is compatible with the secret ballot Maloberti Regardless of whether vote buying is enforced through legal means such as through enforceable contracts or social means such as through the reputation mechanism in eBay or through simply social disapproval , to enforce vote buying seems to require that voters in some way actively prove they voted in various ways. But, if so, then this will partly eliminate the secret ballot and possibly lead to increased clientelism, in which politicians make targeted promises to particular bands of voters rather than serve the common good Maloberti Not all objections to vote-buying have this consequentialist flavor.
Some argue that vote buying is wrong for deontological grounds, for instance, on the grounds that vote buying in some way is incompatible with the social meaning of voting e. Walzer Some view voting is an expressive act, and the meaning of that expression is socially-determined.
To buy and sell votes may signal disrespect to others in light of this social meaning. This view has recently come under criticism, though, both from friends and foes of democracy. Call this the boundary problem or the problem of constituting the demos Goodin 40; Ron Democracy is the rule of the people. This is no small problem. There are a number of competing theories here. The basic argument is that anyone who is affected by a political decision-making process should have some say over that process.
However, this principle suffers from multiple problems. It may be incoherent or useless, as we might not know or be able to know who is affected by a decision until after the decision is made Goodin We cannot assess whether the members of the former African colonies are among the affected interests until we know what the outcome of the vote is.
If the vote is yay, then they are affected; if the vote is nay, then they are not. See Owen for a response. Sometimes political decisions made in one country have a significant effect on citizens of another country; sometimes political decisions made in one country have little or no effect on some of the citizens of that country.
One solution Goodin 55 to this problem of who counts as an affected party is to hold that all people with possibly or potentially affected interests constitute part of the polity. This principle implies, however, that for many decisions, the demos is smaller than the nation-state, and for others, it is larger. For instance, when the United States decides whether to elect a warmongering or pacifist candidate, this affects not only Americans, but a large percentage of people worldwide.
Other major theories offered as solutions to the boundary problem face similar problems. Further, who will be coerced depends on the outcome of a decision. If a state decides to impose some laws, it will coerce certain people, and if the state declines to impose those laws, then it will not.
The commonsense view of the demos, i. Goodin 49 proposes that what makes citizens special is that their interests are interlinked. This may be an accidental feature of arbitrarily-decided national borders, but once these borders are in place, citizens will find that their interests tend to more linked together than with citizens of other polities.
But whether this is true is also highly contingent. In many decisions, many citizens have little to nothing at stake, while other citizens have a great deal at stake. Otherwise, in a system of one person, one vote, issues that are deeply important to the few might continually lose out to issues of only minor interest to the many Brighouse and Fleurbaey There are a number of other independent arguments for this conclusion.
However, even if this proposal seems plausible in theory, it is unclear how a democracy might reliably instantiate this in practice. Before allowing a vote, a democratic polity would need to determine to what extent different citizens have a stake in the decision, and then somehow weight their votes accordingly. In real life, special-interests groups and others would likely try to use vote weighting for their own ends. Citizens might regard unequal voting rights as evidence of corruption or electoral manipulation Christiano 34— Early defenders of democracy were concerned to show democracy is superior to aristocracy, monarchy, or oligarchy.
However, in recent years, epistocracy has emerged as a major contender to democracy Estlund , ; Landemore A system is said to be epistocratic to the extent that the system formally allocates political power on the basis of knowledge or political competence.
Arguments for epistocracy generally center on concerns about democratic incompetence. Epistocrats hold that democracy imbues citizens with the right to vote in a promiscuous way. Ample empirical research has shown that the mean, median, and modal levels of basic political knowledge let alone social scientific knowledge among citizens is extremely low Somin ; Caplan ; Delli Carpini and Keeter Further, political knowledge makes a significant difference in how citizens vote and what policies they support Althaus , ; Caplan ; Gilens Epistocrats believe that restricting or weighting votes would protect against some of the downsides of democratic incompetence.
One argument for epistocracy is that the legitimacy of political decisions depends upon them being made competently and in good faith. Instead, we think the criminal has a right to a trial conducted by competent people in good faith. In many respects, electoral decisions are similar to jury decisions: they also are high stakes, and can result in innocent people losing their lives, liberty, welfare, or property.
If the legitimacy and authority of a jury decision depends upon the jury making a competent decision in good faith, then perhaps so should the legitimacy and authority of most other governmental decisions, including the decisions that electorates and their representatives make. Now, suppose, in light of widespread voter ignorance and irrationality, it turns out that democratic electorates tend to make incompetent decisions. If so, then this seems to provide at least presumptive grounds for favoring epistocracy over democracy J.
Brennan b. Some dispute whether epistocracy would in fact perform better than democracy, even in principle. Epistocracy generally attempts to generate better political outcomes by in some way raising the average reliability of political decision-makers. On the Hong-Page theorem, it is possible that having a large number of diverse but unreliable decision-makers in a collective decision will outperform having a smaller number of less diverse but more reliable decision-makers.
There is some debate over whether the Hong-Page theorem has any mathematical substance Thompson claims it does not , whether real-world political decisions meet the conditions of the theorem, and if so, to what extent that justifies universal suffrage, or merely shows that having widespread but restricted suffrage is superior to having highly restricted suffrage Landemore ; Somin —5.
However, assuming the theorem applies to real-life democratic decisions, whether the theorem supports or condemns democracy depends on how reliable voters are. If voters do systematically worse than chance e. One worry about certain forms of epistocracy, such as a system in which voters must earn the right to vote by passing an examination, is that such systems might make decisions that are biased toward members of certain demographic groups.
After all, political knowledge is not evenly dispersed among all demographic groups. At the very least, the kinds of knowledge political scientists have been studying are not evenly distributed. Whether other kinds of knowledge are better distributed is an open question. On average, in the United States, on measures of basic political knowledge, whites know more than blacks, people in the Northeast know more than people in the South, men know more than women, middle-aged people know more than the young or old, and high-income people know more than the poor Delli Carpini and Keeter — If such a voter examination system were implemented, the resulting electorate would be whiter, maler, richer, more middle-aged, and better employed than the population at large.
Democrats might reasonably worry that for this very reason an epistocracy would not take the interests of non-whites, women, the poor, or the unemployed into proper consideration. However, at least one form of epistocracy may be able to avoid this objection.
Under this scheme, no one has any presumptive right to vote. Instead, everyone has, by default, equal eligibility to be selected to become a voter. Before the enfranchisement lottery takes place, candidates would proceed with their campaigns as they do in democracy. However, they campaign without knowing which citizens in particular will eventually acquire the right to vote. Immediately before the election, a random but representative subset of citizens is then selected by lottery.
These citizens are not automatically granted the right to vote. Instead, the chosen citizens merely acquire permission to earn the right to vote. To earn this right, they must then participate in some sort of competence-building exercise, such as studying party platforms or meeting in a deliberative forum with one another. In practice this system might suffer corruption or abuse, but, epistocrats respond, so does democracy in practice.
For epistocrats, the question is which system works better, i. One important deontological objection to epistocracy is that it may be incompatible with public reason liberalism Estlund A persuasive … Expand. View 2 excerpts, cites background. Almost everyone would agree that vote buying is morally wrong, and that prohibitions on vote buying are morally justified. Yet, recently, several philosophers have argued that vote buying is morally … Expand.
Responsibility judgments in voting scenarios. Democratic compatibilism. ABSTRACT The argument that democratic authority is superior to other forms of authority on the basis of its respect for the personal autonomy of citizens faces a fatal problem that I term the problem … Expand. View 1 excerpt, cites background.
Voting and Causal Responsibility. Votes are pivotal when an electoral option wins by one … Expand. The "9" is a stand-in for particular political entities. My concern here will be with modern nation states and the relatively large-scale general elections they hold.
But 9 could also stand for other … Expand. Abstract This paper concerns the question of whether the political liberties tend to be valuable to the people who hold them.
In contrast, we might ask whether the liberties are valuable in the … Expand. Causation in Legal and Moral Reasoning. Causation looms large in legal and moral reasoning. People construct causal models of the social and physical world to understand what has happened, how and why, and to allocate responsibility and … Expand. The probability that an individual's voting in a presidential election will determine the outcome being negligible, it is argued that participation is irrational if predicated on principles that are … Expand.
A Theory of the Calculus of Voting. Citizenship in Social and Political Philosophy. Democracy in Social and Political Philosophy. Government in Social and Political Philosophy. Edit this record. Mark as duplicate. Find it on Scholar. Request removal from index. Revision history. Download options PhilArchive copy. From the Publisher via CrossRef no proxy doi.
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