On Voting

Via The Daily Dish comes an interesting argument regarding voting.

The gist of the argument is that there is not a moral or civic duty to vote. It's a good thing to do sure, but not a duty. However, there is a moral and civic duty to abstain when the possibility of voting well does not exist. In effect, voting for the lesser of two evils isn't just a terrible choice but is in fact an immoral act.

How citizens vote is morally significant. When citizens vote, they can make government better or worse, and in turn, make people’s lives go better or worse. Bad choices at the polls can destroy economic opportunities, produce crises that lower everyone’s standards of living, lead to unjust and unnecessary wars (and thus to millions of deaths), lead to sexist, racist, and homophobic legislation, help reinforce poverty, produce overly punitive criminal legislation, and worse.

I argue that while citizens have no duty to vote, if they do vote, they must vote well—on the basis of sound moral and empirical beliefs in order to promote the common good—or otherwise they are morally obligated to abstain. Though individual votes make no significant difference to political outcomes, bad voting violates either a duty not to participate in collectively harmful activities or a duty not to participate in collective activities that impose undue risk upon innocent people.

As citizens, we have no general duty to vote as opposed to abstain. Even if we grant that citizens owe a debt to society or have a general duty of beneficence, there are many ways besides voting well to pay off this debt or serve the common good. Voting is not special or privileged as a means of promoting the common good or paying back a debt to society. In fact, political participation more generally is not privileged as a way of exercising civic virtue or public-spiritedness. While it is might be disastrous if hardly anyone voted, it does not follow that the optimal amount of political participation (even if it were informed, rational participation) is one hundred percent.

I agree completely.

This actually goes back to a conversation I had recently with the roommate. Both of us are Libertarians generally. She's a bit more absolute on it than me but largely, we share the same political philosophies.

We were arguing about casting votes for candidates for the Presidency backed by the 'official' Libertarian party. Her argument was that voting for them would give the Libertarians enough support to permanently get on the ballot. My argument is that their candidates are routinely awful. Just totally terrible and frankly, possessed of instincts that seem diametrically opposed to liberties that I consider tremendously important.

So I can't vote for these people. I can't. I won't. The last thing I want to do is provide justification for policies I find loathsome and encourage a political group to make them into a platform.