Voting and the Franchise Voting as a Duty of Common Pursuit

VOTING AND THE FRANCHISE

Voting as a Duty of Common Pursuit

JULIA MASKIVKER*

ABSTRACT

This essay argues in favor of a moral duty to vote as an example of a duty of

aid toward our fellow citizens in society. I show that voting as an individual act

is perfectly rational because voting is a duty of common pursuit. Moreover, I

claim that said duty is not morally trivial simply because other ways of helping

others exist, which could conceivably be more effective from an individual

standpoint (in the sense that they do not require collective action, or much col-

lective action, to achieve an outcome). The essays also argues that voting is a

weighty duty (all else being equal) even if other forms of political participation

can, arguably, contribute to helping others and society by enabling fair govern-

ments to gain power.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. OPTIMIZING VERSUS SATISFICING DUTIES TO HELP OTHERS . . . . . . 735

II. THE VALUE OF THE ACT OF VOTING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 738

III. A DUTY OF COMMON PURSUIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 741

IV. OBJECTION: VOTING IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO HELP SOCIETY . . . 746

V. FINAL THOUGHTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 749

I think I do not speak in error when I say that common sense morality does not

require from individuals that they make signif‌icant sacrif‌ices to help others or

their communities. Common sense morality—one could say—does not demand

that we help others when doing so would require burdening ourselves in a

way that would impinge on important human interests that we all have, such as an

interest in enjoying good health, in f‌inancial security and comfort, or more gener-

ally, in personal freedom.

* Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Political Science Department of Rollins College and

author of THE DUTY TO VOTE (2019). © 2021, Julia Maskivker.

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But common-sense morality does not condemn—to my understanding of what

common sense morality is—duties of aid toward others insofar as fulf‌illing those

duties is not too costly for us. Philosophical accounts of “positive duties” support

this idea.

1

But other accounts, partly inspired by philosophical libertarianism,

question the moral weight of positive duties and claim that only negative duties

(i.e., duties not to harm) are the stuff of morality. In this paper, I do not aim to

examine in depth the validity of any of these two approaches to the nature of

duties toward others. However, I rely on the idea that, in tune with common-sense

morality, certain duties to act for the benef‌it of others make sense and that we have

reasons to see them as morally stringent, insofar as they do not demand undue sacri-

f‌ice from individuals performing them. Many of these duties, moreover, require

cooperation among many individuals—perhaps thousands of them—to bear fruit.

They are duties of common pursuit because they require collective action to be

effective. This collective action may vary in the degree of coordination required by

individuals (i.e., cooperation may be spontaneous or orchestrated), but without it, no

valuable outcome is likely to materialize because the desired result is too big to be

achieved by the action of a single or a few persons. Examples of duties of common

pursuit include, arguably, duties to assuage pollution, to f‌ight poverty, and to con-

serve depleting natural resources.

In this essay, I will argue in favor of a moral duty to vote as an example of a

duty of aid toward our fellow citizens in society. In so doing, I will show that vot-

ing as an individual act is perfectly rational because voting is a duty of common

pursuit. Moreover, I will claim that said duty is not morally trivial simply because

other ways of helping others exist, which could conceivably be more effective

from an individual standpoint (in the sense that they do not require collective

action, or much collective action, to achieve an outcome). I will also show why

voting is a weighty duty (all else being equal), even if other forms of political par-

ticipation can, arguably, contribute to helping others and society by enabling fair

governments to gain power.

But f‌irst, some clarif‌ication about the assumptions I make regarding the value

of voting as a form of collectively achieved assistance to society. I rely on an

instrumentalist approach to value in that I regard voting as valuable because of its

putative effects on justice and the wellbeing of citizens by enabling fair gover-

nance and unseating unfair governments. This form of valuation is not inconsis-

tent with valuing voting based on its power to give voice to the collective voice

of the citizenry—by articulating a general will that stands independently of the

effects of elections on the quality of government.

2

But we value popular choice,

1. See, inter alia, Judith Lichtenberg, Positive Duties, Negative Duties and the New Harms, 120

ETHICS 557 (2010). See also Reymond Belliotti, Negative Duties, Positive Duties, and Rights, 16 THE

SOUTHERN J. OF PHIL. 581 (1978).

2. Although one could question the notion of a general, monolithic popular will, given that public

opinion is diverse and disagreement is common, one could say that winning an electoral majority

(absolute or relative) ref‌lects a (sub) general will at least with respect to whom a high number of

individuals want to see win the election and their proposed ideas and promises.

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