Response to Umbers: An Instability of the Duty and Right to Vote

Abstract

Lachlan Umbers (Res Publica. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-018-9395-4, 2018a) defends democracy against Jason’s Brennan’s (Philos Q 61:700–724, 2011) competence objection, by showing that voting even incompetently does not violate the rights of others, as the risk imposed is negligible, and furthermore lower than other permissible actions, e.g. driving. I show there are costs in taking this line of argument. Accepting it would make arguing for the duty to vote more difficult in two ways: since voting incompetently is permissible, and not voting imposes less risk than not voting, then not voting is permissible; in terms of fairness, voting incompetently is worse than not voting, if voting incompetently is permissible, then there cannot be a fairness-based duty to vote.