Politics Essay Example: Does Everyone Should Vote?

There are, of course, those who challenge the idea that everyone should vote. According to an often heard argument, theres no point voting because, in most elections, the chance that one vote will make a difference is close to zero. In the 2008 presidential election, for example, the average voter had just one chance in 60 million of deciding the race. This argument is based on a highly questionable assumption: that theres no reason for me to vote if doing so wont decide the election.

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But in a democracy voting is communal, not individual. Sovereign power is in the citizens as a whole, and my vote has weight as part of this political community. Even though its utterly unlikely that an individual vote will decide a large-scale election, the group of all voters will do so. Therefore, I have reason to vote insofar as I have a good reason to join this community. And there are many good reasons for getting in the voting line with my fellow citizens. I may want to express my solidarity with everyone who favors my candidates, to support the democratic process in general, to set an example that will encourage others to vote, or even just to feel the personal satisfaction of having voted.

A deeper worry is that even the will of a majority may have little or no influence on how the country is governed. Theres a widespread conviction that rich people and corporations determine government actions, and recent research by political scientists offers at least preliminary support for that conclusion. Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page looked at almost 1,800 cases of controversial policy issues in the United States and explained: [T]he majority does not rule at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.

They added, Even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

Gilens and Page note that their results are still tentative and call for considerable more investigation. But if youre one of the many who are convinced that our system is effectively an oligarchy, why play in an electoral game you think has been rigged?

Of course, the game is not entirely rigged. As long as we have free elections, our wealthy rulers do not have dictatorial power. They may get what they want, but only as long as they limit themselves to what the voting majority will tolerate. But, some will say, ever increasing economic inequality shows that the majority is willing to extend its tolerance for privileging the rich indefinitely. For them, I suspect, the only reason for voting would be to elect someone like Bernie Sanders, who promises to lead a citizens rebellion against the rule of the superrich.

Those who think everyone should vote also think that voting should be adequately informed about the candidates and issues. But theres a tension here, since theres considerable evidence from polling not to mention just reading online comments about politics that many people are poorly informed about candidates and issues. In The Ethics of Voting, the philosopher Jason Brennan has argued that such people have a duty not to vote. Its unlikely that many of them would agree with that conclusion, but given a large number of poorly informed voters, we might consider dropping campaigns urging everyone to vote or even insisting that we all have a duty to vote.

At least one political philosopher has put forward the radical idea that we could ensure informed voters by employing an enfranchisement lottery. Such a lottery would restrict voting to a randomly chosen group of citizens who are provided unbiased in-depth information relevant to an election. We can think of this approach as a matter of modeling our voting on our jury system. We would never accept deciding important and highly publicized trials by a vote of the general public. We think only people fully informed of the facts and relevant arguments put forward in a trial should make such important judgments. Shouldnt we be at least as careful in deciding who should be president?

Notice that answering yes does not imply the elitist view that only a small minority of citizens are capable of making informed votes. The idea is not that voters are too stupid or biased to access the needed information; its just that they dont have the time and resources to do so. Ideally, we would provide everyone with the relevant knowledge, but that would be impractical, time-consuming and expensive.

Why not, then, randomly choose, from the list of registered voters, a national jury that would meet for a week or two before the election? The jurors would be sequestered and listen to presentations from and debates among the candidates and their policy teams. The jury might also hear from and question experts on major policy issues. The result would be voters informed to a level most us can only hope to achieve. We would need a fairly large jury perhaps several thousand to properly represent the nations diverse views and interests. Televising the proceedings would help ensure transparency. Since the jury was randomly chosen, its vote would very likely represent

Apart from the many difficult details that would have to be worked out, isnt a jury system of voting unconstitutional because it denies most citizens the right to vote? Surprisingly, theres some dispute about a constitutional right to vote. Scholars have pointed out that theres no passage in the Constitution that says explicitly that there is a right to vote, but most argue that such a right is implicit in, for example, amendments that prohibit denying the vote because of race and gender. So it seems clear that a jury system would require amending the Constitution.

More important, such an amendment would reverse what has perhaps been the main thrust of our democracys historical development. Initially, only white male property owners could vote. There was a long and often bloody struggle to include all citizens, regardless of economic status, race and gender and the fight still continues to oppose de facto exclusions of those legally allowed to vote. As a result, the electoral jury system would face huge opposition from a public that quite properly regards the right to vote as the hallmark of a free citizen.

We could, however, get many of the jury systems benefits without eliminating our current form of elections. We could have an unofficial jury chosen, perhaps, by a consortium of major universities or of television news divisions that would meet, discuss in depth and vote several weeks before the actual election. Coverage of its proceedings could substantially raise the quality of debate in the final weeks of the campaign. Candidates might hesitate to participate at first, but if so the project could begin with informed and articulate nonofficial supporters making their cases. Once the jury established itself as a significant factor in the national electoral debates, candidates would likely insist on taking part themselves. Even though the jurors would not decide the election, their vote would very likely come to exercise considerable influence on the result. Such a jury might well be the best practical way toward more informed and intelligent voting.

Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author, most recently, of What Philosophy Can Do, a collection of essays, expanded from his Stone columns.

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