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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 10
Lesson 13: Do you have a duty to vote?Do you have a duty to vote?
In this Wireless Philosophy video, Geoff Pynn (Elgin Community College) examines some arguments around the question of whether democratic citizens have a duty to vote. As the odds of a single citizen casting the determining vote are so low, and your resources could be better spent elsewhere, why should you even bother voting at all? Are there ethical reasons to vote, even if your vote alone almost certainly won’t make a difference?
View our Democracy learning module and other videos in this series here: https://www.wi-phi.com. Created by Gaurav Vazirani.
Video transcript
Hi. I’m Geoff Pynn. I teach
philosophy at Elgin Community College. In this video, I’m going to talk
about whether, in a democracy, citizens have not just the
right to vote, but a duty to vote. Around election season, we receive
many reminders of the importance of voting. Leaders from all walks
of life remind us to vote. Voters wear stickers
declaring “I voted!” as a sign of civic pride. Political activists, schoolteachers,
business leaders, clergy and celebrities, however much they disagree, all seem united in their
view that you should vote. Some democracies
legally require voting. But such laws are usually thought
to reflect a pre-existing civic duty. Where does that duty come from? A common estimate of the
chance of an American voter casting the determining
vote in a Presidential election is around one in 100 million. That’s similar to the odds of
winning the jackpot in a large lottery. But playing the lottery isn’t a
rational money-making scheme. Given that you’re as unlikely to
sway the outcome of an election as you are to win the jackpot, why is voting even worth your time, let alone something
you ought to do? Well, for one thing, the reason
it’s irrational to buy a lottery ticket isn’t just the bad odds -- it’s also that the
payout isn’t big enough. “Expected value” is a concept used to make rational
decisions under conditions of uncertainty. If an action’s expected
value is positive, it’s reasonable to
perform that action, even if the odds things
will go your way are small. If a lottery ticket has a one in
100 million chance of winning, and the jackpot is $50 million, the expected value of a $1 ticket is
negative 50 cents — a waste of money. But if the jackpot is $300 million, the same ticket’s expected
value is positive $2. Now consider a high
stakes presidential election. Suppose that it costs $25 of
your time and energy to vote, but that the net benefit to the country, if
your candidate wins, would be $10 billion. Then the expected value
of your vote would be $75. Of course, the expected value to
you personally is still very small. But when you’re voting, you’re
not just looking to benefit yourself. You’re trying to
benefit everybody. One problem with this argument is that
it implies that it’s irrational to vote when your side’s victory wouldn’t
make a large enough difference. The duty to vote is not usually thought
to depend upon the choices you’re given. Another problem is that there seem to
be many other uses of your resources that would benefit society
even more than voting. For example, you could
volunteer at a soup kitchen. Why should you vote, instead of doing something else
that benefits society in a different way? Well, imagine if everybody
followed the same line of reasoning, and decided that they could
skip voting with a clear conscience. Wouldn’t the whole
system collapse? “What if everybody did that?”
arguments are tricky. The fact that something bad would
follow if everybody did something doesn’t mean nobody should do it. If everybody tried to visit the
Grand Canyon next weekend, disaster would ensue —
imagine the crowds! But that’s no reason to cancel
your trip to the Grand Canyon. After all, you know
that’s not going to happen. The fact is, the system won’t
collapse if you don’t vote. Things will almost certainly
go on as usual. So why should you? Well by not voting, you’d be relying on the people who
do vote to keep the system running. In other words, you’d be a freeloader. You’d be like a team member who sleeps in,
skips practice, and slacks off, but still basks in the
glory when their team wins. Your duty to vote would be
like your duty to do your part in keeping democracy afloat. Another rationale has
to do with complicity in injustice. If you’re part of a group that you
know is doing something wrong, you’re complicit
in that wrongdoing. Even if you can’t do
anything to prevent the wrong, it’s still better not
to be complicit. Separating from a group doing
wrong is a way of showing respect: respect for the victims of
the group’s wrong doing, respect for the moral
principles you believe in, and respect for yourself as a
person who endorses those principles. As a citizen of a democracy,
you’re part of the group that collectively decides what
your government is going to do. If you know your government
is doing something unjust, but you don’t vote against the injustice, aren’t you complicit? And isn’t this true even if your vote almost certainly
wouldn’t make a difference? Perhaps your duty
to vote comes not just from your obligation
not to be a freeloader, but from your duty not
to be complicit in injustice. What do you think?