Premium
A Duty Not to Vote
Author(s) -
Sheehy Paul
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9329.00175
Subject(s) - duty , argument (complex analysis) , democracy , ballot , law and economics , contingent vote , state (computer science) , political science , outcome (game theory) , spoilt vote , voting , law , sociology , economics , group voting ticket , computer science , mathematical economics , politics , medicine , algorithm
The view that there is a duty to vote in a fair and free democracy has been a source of philosophical debate. In this paper I turn from the question of whether there is a positive duty to vote to whether there can be a duty not to vote in a ‘decent’ democratic state. Considerations of fairness and of respect for one's peers underpin an argument that a voter who is indifferent about the outcome of an election has a duty not to cast her ballot. This is not an argument against a general duty to vote, other things being equal, but points to one of the ways in which such a duty can be undermined or outweighed by competing considerations.