Democrats, Epistocrats, and the Enfranchisement Lottery

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020

Democrats, Epistocrats, and the Enfranchisement

Lottery

CLAUDIO LÓPEZ-GUERRA*

ABSTRACT

This article defends the enfranchisement lottery—a novel alternative to uni-

versal suffrage—against two types of challenges. Some political theorists have

recently advanced arguments for traditional democratic institutions that suggest

the impermissibility of the enfranchisement lottery as a method for constituting

the electorate. On the other hand, epistocrats sympathetic to the idea of creat-

ing a more competent electorate have argued that the enfranchisement lottery

might not be the best device to that end. Against both of these positions, the arti-

cle contents that the enfranchisement lottery currently stands as an undefeated

option to allocate the legal right to vote.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774

II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774

III. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 775

A. Social Equality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 776

B. Epistemic Equality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777

C. Mass Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 778

1. Mass Elections and Democracy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779

2. Civic Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779

IV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 781

CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786

* Associate Professor of Political Science and PPEL (Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Law) at

the University of Richmond. © 2021, Claudio López-Guerra. I am grateful to Sahar Akhtar, Jason

Brennan, and the participants in the Symposium on the Ethics of Democracy at Georgetown University

(November, 2019) for their valuable comments.

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