Bangladesh’s political discourse is torn between urgent elections and the need for structural reform. While the BNP demands swift polls to end authoritarian rule, others insist reforms must precede any vote. Arguing that neither path alone suffices, the author proposes elections coupled with a binding reform mandate, enforced constitutionally or via political accords. This approach seeks to prevent past failures where democratic transitions lacked substantive change, aiming instead for a system where power is inseparable from reform-driven accountability.

The main aim of this final essay is to draw on the insights gathered in the Debate “Do Referendums Enhance or Threaten Democracy” to inform future normative and empirical discussions about the design of popular vote processes. We first offer some clarifications regarding three of the concerns raised by respondents about our introductory essay. We then propose a systematic classification of the lines of variation along which the design of popular vote processes usually varies. More precisely, we highlight (...) nine lines of variation: trigger, origin of the text, legal basis, scope, trigger requirements, time, ballot, information, and decision rule. We conclude by emphasizing the relevance and necessity of debating the formal institutional design of popular vote processes. (shrink)

This article examines the nature and justification of voting rights and their implications for criteria of electoral inclusion. Normative debates on voting rights typically follow two main approaches: the all affected interests view, which holds that anyone affected by political decisions should have a say, and the all subjected view, which argues that all those subject to a polity’s laws should be allowed to participate in shaping them. I explore the underlying rights theories informing these positions, highlighting an overlooked connection (...) between debates on the nature and justification of rights, on the one hand, and the allocation of voting rights, on the other. The analysis shows that all affected interests justifications often stem from an interest-theoretical conception of rights, whereas subjection-sensitive theories align more closely with a will-theoretical understanding. Though I remain cautious about endorsing rigid, context-independent principles for electoral inclusion, I suggest that the all subjected principle better aligns with the nature and justification of the right to vote. (shrink)

In his 2007 Ethics article, “Responsibility Incorporated,” Philip Pettit argued that corporations qualify as morally responsible agents because they possess autonomy, normative judgment, and the capacity for self-control. Although there is ongoing debate over whether corporations have these capacities, both proponents and opponents of corporate moral agency appear to agree that Pettit correctly identified the requirements for moral agency. In this article, I do not take issue with either the claim that autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are the requirements for (...) moral agency or the claim that corporations possess them. I claim that if both of these claims are correct, then corporate moral agency entails that, in a liberal democracy, corporations should have the right to vote. I show that under the conception of democracy supported by most liberal political theorists, all parties subject to the law are entitled to the right to vote, and all parties that possess autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are subject to the law. Therefore, if the proponents of corporate moral agency are correct, then corporations satisfy the requirements for the right to vote. I then consider potential objections to this argument. I show that the strongest objection to the corporate right to vote is undermined by Pettit’s own argument for corporate autonomy. I then show that objections derived from other arguments for limiting the rights of corporations are equally unavailing. I conclude with some observations about the implications of my argument for the question of corporate speech rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACTReceived wisdom in most democracies is that voting should be seen as a political freedom that citizens have a right to exercise at their discretion. But I propose that we have a duty to vote, albeit a duty to vote well: with knowledge and a sense of impartiality. Fulfillment of this obligation would contribute to the epistemic advantages of democracy, and would thereby instantiate the duty to promote and support just institutions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Casting a Vote for Subordination Using a SlurDuckkyun Lee1. IntroductionIn this paper, I develop an account of slurs focusing on their two underappreciated features. The first underappreciated feature is what I call their "communal nature." Slurs are communal. The meaning of a slur depends on the existence of a significant number of people who are bigoted against the target. When this condition is not satisfied, a slur loses (...) its power to offend. This can be seen when we consider how philosophers choose examples of slurs to avoid offending people. For example, Williamson, in his essay "Reference, Inference and the Semantics of Pejoratives," uses a slur for Germans as his main example. What makes the slur for Germans a safe example to use is the fact that there is no widespread bigotry against Germans in any Anglophone country. Had there been strong enmity between Germans and the people in the Anglophone countries, even if Williamson had chosen an outdated slur, his example would not have been such a safe choice. Slurs are words that bigots use to offend and harm the people they are bigoted against. When there are no bigots, neither are there slurs.The focus on the communal nature of slurs leads to the second underappreciated feature of slurs. A bigot does not use a slur just to express his beliefs or feelings, but to subordinate his target. To subordinate others, a bigot needs to cooperate and coordinate with other bigots. In this paper, I will propose a mechanism for how slurs work as a tool for coordinating subordination. To account for the communal and subordinating nature of slurs, I turn to speech act theory and explain what kind of illocutionary act is performed when one uses a slur.1My proposal is to understand utterances made using a slur, or slurring,2 as an act of casting a vote for ranking the target as socially inferior. On this [End Page 37] view, a slur is a conventional tool used to cast a vote demanding the subordination of its target. The considerations that motivate this view are as follows: First, the uses of a slur are the results of consciously choosing it over its neutral counterpart. By explicitly avoiding a neutral counterpart term, one can show their support for fellow bigots and the willingness to participate in whatever activity they do. Second, the point of using a slur does not seem to be exhausted by its role of expressing the bigot's negative beliefs about the target. We can see this when we consider that the way to fight a slur is to impose strict prohibitions against its use, not by objecting to the content of the slurring utterance. This can be better explained when we understand the slur as a conventional tool for the performance of a certain type of action, rather than a word that has distinctive descriptive content different from the descriptive content of its neutral counterpart. Finally, the point of some speech acts is not just expressing the state of the mind of the speaker. The point of some speech acts is to change what is the case in society. To make an utterance using a slur seems to fall into this latter category of speech acts. What would bigots be up to if they were not engaged in the project of creating a society where their target was inferior to them? This consideration suggests that making an utterance using a slur might fall into the kind of speech act Searle calls declaration (Taxonomy 361–68). As a declaration, slurring is an attempt to change society such that the target is subordinated.Insofar as an election is understood as a process within which people collectively decide on what should be the case in society by indicating their stance for or against a proposal, slurring can be understood as a casting of a vote in the election bigots' proposal to subordinate their target. I argue that this account can better explain why a slur cannot function as a slur without there being a significant number of bigots, and how it is used to coordinate the bigots' effort of subordinating their target.The paper... (shrink)

This chapter begins by examining the psychological and political forces underpinning Australia’s rejection of a First Nations Voice to Parliament in the October 2023 referendum. Framing the ‘No’ vote as a manifestation of deep, national denial, the author links this rejection to a broader historical context of colonial violence and dispossession, revealing how the same psychological state fuels Australia’s brutal treatment of asylum seekers. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, particularly Freud’s concepts of mourning and melancholia, and Klein’s theories of psychic (...) splitting, the author argues that Australia’s national psyche is trapped in a regressive, infantile state of denial. This denial perpetuates both the oppression of Indigenous peoples and the ongoing abuse of refugees, seen in the country’s policies of offshore detention and mandatory detention. The chapter contends that Australia’s failure to confront its colonial past and the trauma it has caused continues to shape its political landscape, resulting in policies that dehumanise and marginalise vulnerable populations. Ultimately, it calls for a national reckoning to confront these realities and heal the nation’s collective psyche. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that widespread expert disagreement about sufficiently many issues central to a democratic decision-making procedure can nullify the duty to vote. I begin by drawing a distinction between different ways that we might conceive of the duty to vote, i.e. whether it is a duty to vote, no matter how one votes, or a duty to vote well. I then review some prominent arguments in favor of the existence of the duty to (...) vote and suggest that they go through only when the potential voter in question would vote well. So the most promising existing arguments for the duty to vote, if successful, really show not merely that citizens have a duty to vote, but more strongly that they have a duty to vote well. I then discuss the epistemology of expert disagreement to show how circumstances of expert disagreement can nullify such a duty by making it impossible to vote well. To my knowledge, no one has yet brought considerations of the epistemology of expert disagreement to bear on this topic. That is my aim in the main argument of this paper. The remainder of the paper addresses alternative characterizations of ‘voting well’, and argues that on other plausible characterizations, expert disagreement will still often nullify the duty to vote. (shrink)

This paper argues for an expansion of the suffrage in American local governmental elections significantly beyond what is currently permitted in most local elections in the United States. Two recommendations are proposed: (1) Allowing non-citizen residents to vote in local governmental jurisdictions. (2) Allowing individuals who demonstrably live in two local areal jurisdictions to claim dual residency with local voting rights in both districts. The paper defends these two recommendations by calling attention to the global change in our understanding (...) of citizenship and residency and the implications of these changes to the exercise of the franchise. These changes include the rise of dual citizenship. Citizenship in one state is no longer preclusive of citizenship in another state. A second change is the importance assigned to a single declared and recognized residency within many countries including the United States. A third change is the shifting understanding of the relationship between citizenship and residency and the implications for how we should think about voting rights at home and abroad. (shrink)

The question raised in this paper is whether legal rights to vote are also moral rights to vote. The challenge to the justification of a moral right to vote is that it is not clear that the vote is instrumental to the preservation of some critical interest of the voter. Because a single vote has ‘no impact’ on electoral outcomes, the right to vote is unlikely to serve the interests of the individual. The account (...) developed in this paper holds that moral voting rights can be justified once we acknowledge that voting by a sub-set of citizens is among the necessary preconditions for democratic institutions making a significant difference to their collective interests. The justification of a moral right to vote does not, then, apply to each individual citizen but only to a sub-set of them. In order to justify inclusive moral voting rights, the further consideration must be added that individuals have critical interests in public recognition of equal status. An inclusive moral right to vote accordingly depends on both collective interest in the outcomes of democratic institutions and on individual interest in equal recognition. (shrink)

Lachlan Umbers defends democracy against Jason’s Brennan’s competence objection, by showing that voting even incompetently does not violate the rights of others, as the risk imposed is negligible, and furthermore lower than other permissible actions, e.g. driving. I show there are costs in taking this line of argument. Accepting it would make arguing for the duty to vote more difficult in two ways: since voting incompetently is permissible, and not voting imposes less risk than not voting, then not voting (...) is permissible; in terms of fairness, voting incompetently is worse than not voting, if voting incompetently is permissible, then there cannot be a fairness-based duty to vote. (shrink)

This study investigates how adoption of advisory governance policy encourages firms to become more responsive to their shareholders over time. Although shareholder activism is costly and often viewed as unable to drive meaningful change, we identify increasing shareholder voice as an underlying mechanism to explain how advisory policy adoption ultimately reshapes board–shareholder relations. Drawing on signaling theory and behavioral views of board–shareholder dynamics, we test our predictions following the broad shift in corporate board voting policies from plurality to majority (...) class='Hi'>vote standards. While prior research shows that majority vote adoption has little to no direct impact on director elections, empirical results from 2,390 firm-year observations provide support for our hypotheses that adoption of this advisory electoral standard signals a willingness to hear shareholder concerns, leading to increased shareholder activism and, in turn, board responsiveness to shareholder proposals. Overall, our results help explain why some firms continue to fight the purely advisory policy and why an era of shareholder empowerment followed the majority vote campaign. (shrink)

Policy disputes arise at all scales of governance: in clubs, non-profits, firms, nations, and alliances of nations. Both the means and ends of policy are disputed. While many, perhaps most, policy disputes arise from conflicting ends, important disputes also arise from differing beliefs on how to achieve shared ends. In fact, according to many experts in economics and development, governments often choose policies that are “inefficient” in the sense that most everyone could expect to gain from other feasible policies. Many (...) other kinds of experts also see existing policies as often clearly inferior to known alternatives. (shrink)

Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any vote is right. Citizens should not vote badly. This duty to avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of restraint is low. Good governance is a public good. Bad governance is a public bad. We should not be contributing to public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low. Many democratic theorists (...) agree that we shouldn’t vote badly, but that’s because they think we should vote well. This demands too much of citizens. (shrink)

Multiple-vote majority rule is a procedure for making group decisions in which individuals weight their votes on issues in accordance with how competent they are on them. When individuals are motivated by the truth and know their relative competence on different issues, multiple-vote majority rule performs nearly as well, epistemically speaking, as rule by an expert oligarchy, but is still acceptable from the point of view of equal participation in the political process.

« Dans la sphère économique, un acte, une habitude, une institution, une loi n’engendrent pas seulement un effet, mais une série d’effets. De ces effets, le premier seul est immédiat ; il se manifeste simultanément avec sa cause, on le voit. Les autres ne se déroulent que successivement, on ne les voit pas, heureux si on les prévoit. Entre un mauvais et un bon Economiste, voici toute la différence : l’un s’en tient à l’effet visible, l’autre tient compte et de (...) l’effet qu’on voit et de ceux qu’il faut prévoir. » Frédéric Bastiat (1850), Ce qu’on voit, ce qu’on ne voit pas. Abstract: Outre l’économiste érudit, le spécialiste de l’école autrichienne et de la théorie du Public Choice, Bertrand Lemennicier se passionnait pour la prévision en général et la prévision politique en particulier. Dans cet article en forme d’hommage, nous proposons de faire un point d’étape sur les méthodes de prévision électorale, en allant des méthodes non quantitatives aux méthodes quantitatives au sein desquelles les modèles de vote politico-économiques occupent une place éminente. En l’espèce, nous évoquerons la contribution de Bertrand Lemennicier à « l’art » de la prévision électorale. (shrink)

The genre of public service advertisements that appear with two- and four-year cyclical regularity is familiar. Cameras pan across scenes of marines hoisting the flag on Iwo Jima, a bald eagle soaring in splendid flight, rows of grave markers at Arlington. The somber-voiced announcer remonstrates: “ They did their part; now you do yours.” Once again it is the season to fulfill one's civic duty, to vote.

Many proponents of corporate agency take corporations to be responsible for their conduct, but few take them to merit rights over and above the rights of their members. Hasnas (2016) argues that, given a widely-held view of liberal political theory, corporate agency entails that corporations should have the right to vote. In response, I show that there are problems in appealing to liberal political theory, and that the view of voting Hasnas actually endorses need not be accepted. Should it (...) be, however, the implications go far beyond the right to vote. (shrink)

In this study, we are concerned with how agents can best amalgamate their private information about a binary state of Nature. The agents are heterogeneous in their “ability”, the quality of their private information. The agents cannot directly communicate their private information but instead can only vote between the two states. We first describe possible methods of sequential majority voting, and then we analyze a particular one: the first n-1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$n-1$$\end{document} jurors (...) vote simultaneously and, in the case of a tie, the remaining juror has the casting vote. We prove that when n=3\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$n=3$$\end{document}, the probability of a correct verdict is maximized when the agent of median ability has the casting vote. (shrink)

According to Austen-Smith & Banks (1996, A-S&B hereafter), under the setup of the Condorcet Jury Theorem (the CJT hereafter), sincere voting is not fully rational in the presence of other voters. A sincere voter ignores the fact that her vote will only make a difference when she is pivotal. A fully rational voter, having this fact in view, should vote as if she were pivotal. Two related yet distinct arguments can be made based on this observation: one against (...) the rationality of sincere voting and the other against its empirical adequacy. In this paper, I provide a two-part defense for sincere voting. The first part of my defense responds to the two arguments derived from A-S&B’s observation. I show how both arguments crucially rely on the use of Nash equilibrium as the solution concept and then reject the applicability of Nash equilibrium to the CJT based on certain features of large elections. The second part of my defense proposes to use an alternative solution concept, focal point, for understanding voter behaviors in the CJT. The focal-point analysis will highlight several attractive features of sincere voting and support it on both empirical and rational grounds. (shrink)

Critics often argue that there cannot be a moral duty to vote because whatever reason there is to vote can be satisfied in other ways. This chapter develops a novel theory of the duty to vote—which the authors call the egalitarian theory—that responds to this challenge. The egalitarian theory grounds the duty to vote in the unfolding demands of treating others as equals in the pursuit of justice. Whatever private actions individuals perform to help some subset (...) of individuals in need, they have a duty to recognize the equal importance of all individuals in need. And the only way for most individuals to do so is by voting in elections. This is because elections present a unique opportunity to advance justice in a holistic way that takes account of the full range and scope of human need, and in a way that treats each person’s need as equally important. Furthermore, voting uniquely pursues justice in a way that is not unilateral and treats people as equals in the process. In the course of developing the egalitarian theory, the authors defend the idea that voting is not a merely symbolic act, but can partially contribute to the moral improvement of institutions. (shrink)

Multiple-vote majority rule is a procedure for making group decisions in which individuals weight their votes on issues in accordance with how competent they are on them. When individuals are motivated by the truth and know their relative competence on different issues, multiple-vote majority rule performs nearly as well, epistemically speaking, as rule by an expert oligarchy, but is still acceptable from the point of view of equal participation in the political process.

Proponents of the duty to vote (DTV) argue that in normal circumstances, citizens have the moral duty to vote in political elections. Discussions about DTV analyze _what_ the duty is, _who_ has this duty, _when_ they have it, and _why_ they have it. Missing are answers to the Specification Question: to _which_ elections does DTV apply? A dilemma arises for some supporters of DTV—in this paper, I focus on Julia Maskivker’s work—because either answer is problematic. First, I argue (...) that it is implausible that DTV applies to _all_ elections because this makes the duty too costly for the voter. Second, I argue that there are no good reasons why under normal circumstances DTV applies only to _some_ elections. I consider objections but conclude that the dilemma is successful and therefore the case for DTV is incomplete. (shrink)

Vote mobilization qua local and national organizations has played an important role in postwar Japanese elections for both Houses of Parliament. However, while there is an abundant literature on personal support organizations (kôenkai) of individual politicians in the Lower House, the role of national organizations for vote mobilization in Upper House elections has so far received only scant attention. The phenomenon of the in postwar Upper House elections in Japan raises a number of questions. How important has it (...) been in terms of voting behavior? What are the factors underlying organized voting? And how has the electoral clout of national organizations changed over time? This article tries to make a modest contribution to the debate on . In particular, it addresses the proposition that the ability of national interest groups to mobilize votes has declined significantly. The main empirical point of reference in this article are the 2001 Upper House elections. (shrink)

Is it morally important to vote? It is common to think so, but both consequentialist and deontological strategies for defending that intuition are weak. In response, some theorists have turned to a role-based strategy, arguing that it is morally important to be an excellent citizen, and that excellent citizens vote. But there is a lingering puzzle: an individual vote changes very little (virtually nothing in large-scale elections), so why would the excellent citizen be so concerned to cast (...) a ballot? Why bother with something that has so little effect on the common good? This paper answers by developing the idea of respect for a practice, and then arguing that respect for democracy will often require citizens to vote. (shrink)

No citizen should be denied the right to vote due solely to her age. We can see this by showing that all objections to it fail. It might be objected that it is not unjust to so deprive children because children as a group are unintelligent or irrational, have their interests already represented by the parents, or are justly deprived of many other rights, among other reasons. But all these objections fail because there is no evidence to support it, (...) even if true, this would not justify disenfranchisement, or, most prominently argued here, they deprive individuals of political rights based upon their membership in a group. The voting age should be abolished. (shrink)

Ethical consumerism is the thesis that we should let our values determine our consumer purchases. We should purchase items that accord with our values and refrain from buying those that do not. The end goal, for ethical consumerism, is to transform the market through consumer demand. The arm of this movement associated with food choice embraces the slogan “Vote with Your Fork!” As in the more general movement, the idea is that we should let our values dictate our choices. (...) In this paper, I offer a critique of the Vote with Your Fork campaign (hereafter VWYF) that focuses on the agency of individuals. For VWYF to be effective, minimally, individuals must act _intentionally_ when making food choices. In the ideal case, individuals adopt and endorse the values implicit in VWYF and exhibit _autonomous agency_ when they purchase and consume food. The problem, though, is that a number of things can go wrong along the way. I argue that very few of us are in the position to exhibit autonomous agency with respect to our food choices. Because of this, VWYF could very well undermine its own goals. (shrink)

Most democratic countries either limit or deny altogether voting rights for people with cognitive impairments or mental health conditions. Against this weight of legal and practical exclusion, disability advocacy and developments in international human rights law increasingly push in the direction of full voting rights for people with cognitive impairments. Particularly influential has been the adoption by the UN of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007. Article 29 declares that states must ‘ensure that persons with (...) disabilities can effectively and fully participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others, directly or through freely chosen representatives, including the right and opportunity for persons with disabilities to vote and be elected’. This article also argues for the right of all people to vote, including people with cognitive impairments, by adopting a uniquely strategic approach. Firstly, some of the strategic limitations of existing arguments in favour of extending the franchise are highlighted. Most such arguments are flawed because they run the risk of inviting disparaging philosophical commentary which compares disabled people to animals, or because they are based on implausible empirical claims, or because they inadvertently tie the case for voting rights for the disabled to other cases unlikely to ever enjoy widespread acceptance. This article, instead, justifies extending voting rights to all people with cognitive impairments based on a simple cost-benefit analysis that avoids all of these problems. (shrink)

Legal statutes prohibiting felons from voting result in nearly 4 million Americans, disproportionately African-American and male, being unable to vote. These felony disenfranchisement (FD) statutes have a long history and apparently enjoy broad public support. Here I argue that despite the popularity and extensive history of these laws, denying felons the right to vote is an unjust form of punishment in a democratic state. FD serves none of the recognized purposes of punishment and may even exacerbate crime. My (...) strategy is not to argue for this conclusion directly. Rather, I consider seven arguments for the moral legitimacy of FD, each of which will be found lacking. My emphasis falls not on the legal or constitutional questions associated with FD, but with its moral justification within a broadly liberal political framework. These arguments draw upon a variety of philosophical outlooks; three justify FD by appealing to justice or desert, three others justify FD based on its allegedly beneficial social consequences, and a final argument is a hybrid of both sorts of considerations. Not only do all these arguments fail, but eliminating FD could have salutary effects on our present climate of political discourse. (shrink)

In the film, Please Vote for Me (2007), director Weijun Chen illustrates how leadership ambitions allowed ‘undemocratic’ means of competition during a democratic election among primary school children. Parents encouraged and teachers allowed unscrupulous competition among preselected eight-year-old candidates. The competition led to classmates being manipulated and disappointed and a ‘dictatorship’ similar to that of previous years. This film shows that a ‘democratic election’ in a primary school in Wuhan was guided by native Chinese values of ‘good leadership’ in (...) reformed China. However, the newly introduced discussions on democratic leadership could also be seen as initial steps towards reflection on democracy. The documentary has won prestigious international awards, including the Sterling Feature Award (2007) and the Adolf Grimme Award (2008). (shrink)

Democratic theory offers robust resources in order to defend the claim that noncitizens are, in many cases, entitled to the right to vote in their place of residence, regardless of their citizenship. On this, Avner de Shalit and I are in broad agreement. But the route we take to justify this right rests on substantially different argumentation: whereas I believe that residence is necessary and sufficient to justify the right to vote at the municipal and, more controversially, at (...) the national level, de Shalit believes that noncitizens must also intend to reside in a city over the longer term in order to merit the right to vote on city matters. I will argue that this focus on intention is dangerous for the most vulnerable of city dwellers, who are most in need of the right to vote, even if only at the city level. In particular, I argue that the only way that the right to vote can play its protective role is if it is available to migrants on the basis of residence, regardless of their stated intention. (shrink)

Blatantly observable in the U.S. currently, the political chasm grows, representing a prototype of political polarization in most if not all western democratic political systems. Differential political psychology strives to trace back increasingly polarized political convictions to differences on the individual level. Recent evolutionary informed approaches suggest that interindividual differences in political orientation reflect differences in group-mindedness and cooperativeness. Contrarily, the existence of meaningful associations between political orientation, personality traits, and interpersonal behavior has been questioned critically. Here, we shortly review (...) evidence showing that these relationships do exist, which supports the assumption that political orientation is deeply rooted in the human condition. Potential reasons for the premature rejection of these relationships and directions for future research are outlined and implications for refinements and extensions of evolutionary informed approaches are derived. (shrink)

Arguments for a duty to vote face the particularity problem—that is, they must show that voting in particular is the only way for citizens to achieve the relevant moral goal (e.g., promote the common good or avoid complicity in injustice), such that the goal cannot be achieved by activities other than voting. Kevin Elliott attempts to overcome the particularity problem by defending a universal duty to vote on the grounds that universal voter turnout is needed to ensure that (...) democratic institutions function properly. We argue that Elliott’s attempt is unsuccessful. It is unable to explain why citizens may not promote turnout without voting; moreover, it does not establish that democratic institutions are morally special, such that citizens are obligated to contribute to them but not to other valuable institutions. (shrink)

Japa Pallikkathayil persuasively argues that abortion prohibitions treat impregnable people as less than equal citizens, subject to different treatment than other citizens whose bodies are protected from compulsory service for the benefit of others. Pallikkathayil's argument could be modified to avoid a tension with arguments for conscription, to stress that democratic equality is inconsistent with requisitioning a citizen's body to serve the needs of another specific citizen. Pallikkathayil also contends that ‘[t]he changes we would need to make to our other (...) laws and practices to bring them into line with restrictive abortion laws are intuitively unattractive’. To complement her approach, I contend that consistency would require that if we subject minors to involuntary pregnancy and labor, then we should enfranchise minors. We lowered the voting age to 18 on the grounds that if military conscripts were ‘old enough to fight’, they were ‘old enough to vote’. Abortion restrictions conscript impregnable minors and subject them to involuntary bodily intrusions, major life disruptions, and responsibility over life and death decisions. Old enough to carry; old enough to vote. If that conclusion is unpalatable because minors seem too immature to vote, then perhaps they are too immature to be forced to carry a pregnancy and to give birth. (shrink)

When the possibility of instituting compulsory voting arises for consideration by politicians and by the public it is commonly met with the assertion that there is a right not to vote, which would be violated by the introduction of some form of legal obligation to vote. This claim, rather than being regarded as a contribution to the debate, often functions instead to foreclose it, trumping the arguments of those who advocate compulsion with the presentation of a protected right (...) not to participate. For that reason, it demands examination, despite the fact that it is not an argument advanced seriously by those scholars who address the issue of compulsory voting. This article examines the claim of the right not to vote, arguing that it is based on a flawed interpretation of the idea of the right to vote, an interpretation which mistakes the sort of liberty which the right to vote represents and which over-looks the centrality to that right of the value of active electoral participation. There may be convincing arguments against compulsory voting, but the suggestion that there is a right not to vote is not one of them. (shrink)

This paper argues that voters have duties of political justice to rectify imperfections in the democratic process, specifically unjust exclusions from the suffrage. The basis for such duties is that voters benefit from unjust suffrage exclusions and therefore have special duties to rectify them. In order to show that these duties apply to all voters, the paper explains the relevant sense in which all voters benefit from unjust exclusions from the vote. Next, the paper specifies the claim that benefitting (...) from injustice grounds rectificatory duties, how this applies to voters, and how they can discharge their duties through the vote, either by restituting electoral injustices, compensating their victims or by disgorging the benefits they unjustly derive from electoral injustice. (shrink)

Using data drawn from a racially/ethnically diverse sample of participants ( N = 1,489; 52% female; M age_T1 : 18.10; 34% Latino, 21% White, 20% Asian, 11% Black, 11% multiracial/multiethnic, and 3% other), we conducted a binary logistic regression to identify which factors during adolescence and early adulthood were associated with voting behavior in the 2020 presidential election. There were three main findings. First, young adults who had more cross-racial/ethnic friendships and those who participated in volunteer activities during their senior (...) year of high school were more likely to vote. Second, having cross-racial/ethnic friendships and endorsing self-transcendence values (benevolence, universalism) in early adulthood were positively associated with voting behavior, even when controlling for high school factors. Third, those who endorsed self-enhancement values were more likely to vote when they had more cross-racial/ethnic friendships during high school. Implications for voting patterns among young adults in future presidential elections are discussed. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to explore the contours of the right to vote in a properly functioning representative democracy. I begin by noting that in all the roles voting can play—whether in non-democratic societies or, in democratic societies, in the service of a variety of democracy-independent goals—the right to vote is both an individual and a collective right. I then argue that its primary function in a representative democracy is to facilitate the participation of its members, (...) through the election of their representatives in the society’s legislature(s), in the making of the major political decisions that help to shape the framework in which they all have to live their lives.The right to vote in a properly functioning representative democracy is a complex right, a right that comprises three distinguishable rights.The first of these is the right of all the (adult) members of a society to cast ballots in the regularly recurring elections that determine the composition of a society’s legislature(s). This is the right to a universal franchise.The second is the right to have all the votes that have been cast in legally permissible ways counted and certified accurately.The third is the right to have all accurately tabulated and confirmed votes count towards the election of legislatures that are reasonably representative of all who have voted.Breaches of all three rights can occur in societies that are widely regarded as representative democracies. Thus. breaches of the first right can occur if, for example, ex-felons are excluded from voting lists, or if the right to vote is denied to certain permanent residents in disregard of the fact that they are full participants in the economic and social life of a country. The second right can be breached if, whether because of inefficiency in the structuring of vote tabulation arrangements or—a more sinister possibility—because of politically-motivated attempts to interfere with these arrangements, not all legally cast votes form part of final election tallies. The third right can be breached if not all the votes that have been correctly tallied are allowed to contribute to the election of a legislature that fairly represents the most important of the political preferences and priorities of all voting members of the electorate.While examples can easily be provided of breaches of the first two kinds that continue to occur, I focus in the paper on a sometimes-overlooked breach of the third sort that is generated by a familiar and widely endorsed electoral system. I argue that the first-past-the-post (or “single-member-constituency”) system—henceforth FPTP for short—has structural features that make it inevitable that many members of FPTP electorates don’t have a democratically defensible version of the right to vote.For one thing, the representation in a legislature that voters hope to secure by the votes they cast as members of an electorate can be obtained, under FPTP rules, only by those voters who vote for the winning candidate in the only electoral contest—viz. the contest at local constituency level—in which the system permits them to cast ballots. The many voters in all such contests who vote for any of the losing candidates are consequently deprived of representation in the legislature. Since the right of members of the electorate to participate indirectly in the making of political decisions is facilitated in a properly functioning representative democracy by the election of members of a legislature who reflect to some reasonable degree their major political preferences and priorities, the fact that the FPTP system permits the election to a legislature of only those candidates who win constituency-level electoral contests means that the many voters in all such contests who vote for any of the losing candidates are deprived of representation in the legislature.Moreover, the fact that all the votes cast in these local elections—including the votes cast for losing candidates—contribute to the jurisdiction-wide popular vote does nothing to alter the seat distribution in a legislature, simply because under FPTP the popular vote is allowed to play absolutely no role in determining election outcomes. Voters who support losing candidates in constituency-level electoral contests and who are consequently deprived of representation in the legislature cannot take comfort in the thought that at least their losing votes add to the jurisdiction-wide popular vote for the political parties they favor in the popular vote. Yes; their losing votes in constituency-level electoral contests help to boost the jurisdiction-wide popular vote secured by the political party that sponsored the local candidate they supported. But No; contributing to the jurisdiction-wide popular vote of the political party they favor makes absolutely no difference to the party’s seat-count in the legislature. The jurisdiction-wide popular vote is permitted by FPTP to play no constitutionally recognized role in determining this seat-count.The conclusion to be drawn is that the version of the right to vote that is conferred on the members of a society by the first-past-the-post electoral system is deficient in a way that threatens the democratic credentials of the representative democracies (like Canada, the UK, and the USA) in which this system is established and maintained. (shrink)