Voting and Collective Rationality

This concluding chapter offers a final overview of the argument for a Samaritan duty of justice via the vote. It reminds us that voting with care is not the stuff of experts but of informed regular citizens, and that it is not the task of Saints—it is well within the scope of common morality. The chapter offers a condensed summary of the skeptics’ views against the morality of voting and highlights their most evident errors and fallacies. If voting carelessly is wrong despite its negligible impact as an individual act, that means that good individual votes ought not to be dismissed as morally trivial because they are drops in a proverbial ocean of votes, either. There is something else to the morality of voting, it is the commitment it denotes on the part of citizens who, together, can make a difference. The chapter also addresses the possibility that we can value voting (and democracy) instrumentally because of its capacity to bring about justice as well as intrinsically because of its power to reflect equality of political influence and collective self-government.

Being a Good Samaritan Requires You to Vote

This chapter expands on the notion of a Samaritan duty of justice to aid society. It dispels the possible objection that only physical emergencies can count as the object of Samaritan assistance, and it explains why a natural duty of justice to help others can be discharged via elections—as elections are the only method to install governments, which affect the quality of governance nontrivially. The chapter proceeds to explain why justice and the erection of governments are uniquely related, which makes voting morally special, and morally mandated if not unduly burdensome for the citizen. The chapter elaborates on the idea that the duty to aid society via the vote is a duty to engage in cooperation with others, by participating in elections. Voting is, then, an instance of collectively rational Samaritanism.

Self-Standing Arguments against a Duty to Vote and Why They Fail

This chapter addresses two popular criticisms against the duty to vote. They are enlisted separately from the main argument in the book because they are self-standing. The first criticism holds that voting is irrational because it is individually ineffective, therefore not the stuff of a moral duty. The second criticism sustains that seeing voting as a moral duty is an affront to freedom because it means that the political life is superior to other human pursuits. The chapter shows that rationality in voting does not have to mean the capacity to determine the electoral outcome individually. It also argues that the moral duty to vote enhances freedom as non-domination because it has the capacity to increase political accountability and political responsiveness. We can justify a moral duty to vote on instrumental grounds without passing moral judgment on the value of politics vis-à-vis other human pursuits.

Why Is Voting Special?

This chapter concentrates on the argument that voting is a moral duty even if it is true that other ways of helping society exist, many of which are discharged in non-political ways. The chapter shows that voting is morally special in its own right regardless of the fact that citizens may also be bound to discharge other duties of aid. Because governments are powerful entities that distribute and shape access to basic social goods as no other organization does, the mechanism to install them is unique and deserves moral attention separately. Other political, non-electoral ways of influencing government matter, but they lose all relevance if elections are absent.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the basic argument of the book and explains how considered voting can be viewed as an act of Samaritan aid toward our fellow citizens. The chapter delineates the general claim that we should see voting as an individual contribution to a collective endeavor that is valuable and instrumentally effective in bringing about justice. Importantly, the chapter highlights that our common sense understanding of duties to improve the world does not necessarily entail the rule that individual acts have to be discernibly efficacious alone, in isolation from other similar acts.

What Does It Take to Vote with Care?

This chapter offers an account of what it means to vote with care. It argues that there are two requisites for rendering a vote judicious: an epistemic one and a moral one. The former entails that citizens should evince a minimal degree of rationality and that they should possess enough information before casting their ballot. The latter entails that citizens should follow a test of fair-mindedness when deciding how to vote. This means that they should ponder on how their individual views will affect others, and whether other citizens may have legitimate justice reasons to reject those views. The chapter addresses political science and voter behavior research that suggests that minimal epistemic competence is not impossible for the average citizen despite the fact that voter ignorance is an actual problem.