Being a Good Samaritan Requires You to Vote
| Author | Julia Maskivker |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717723513 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2017
Article
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(2) 409 –424
Being a Good Samaritan
© The Author(s) 2017
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Requires You to Vote
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717723513
DOI: 10.1177/0032321717723513
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Julia Maskivker
Abstract
Do citizens have a moral duty to vote, or is the franchise just a right they are free to exercise or
to abstain from, at will? The prevalent position in voting ethics is that citizens should be free to
choose whether or not to exercise their right to vote. This article situates itself in opposition to
the prevalent account and develops an argument supporting (1) a moral duty to vote and (2) a
moral duty to vote well. I argue that a duty of Samaritan justice can require us to vote with care
for the sake of the well-being of society. Samaritan duties of aid bind us when an intervention
would not be unduly costly—not when it would be costless. I argue that voting with care is a cost
that society can reasonably expect citizens to assume given what elections have the potential to
achieve: minimally just governments.
Keywords
democracy, voting, rational choice, duty of justice, collective rationality
Accepted: 24 May 2017
Do citizens have a moral duty to vote, or is the franchise just a right they are free to exer-
cise or to abstain from, at will? The prevalent position in voting ethics—which I refer to
as the “minimalist position”—is that citizens should be free to choose whether or not to
exercise their right to vote. The minimalist theorist argues that citizens only have a moral
duty not to vote carelessly. They are free to vote thoughtfully but they are not morally
required to do so (Brennan, 2011). The minimalist position on voting ethics emphasizes
the idea that voting is only one way among many in which we can contribute to society,
but it is no more special than others. In short, there is nothing morally special about voting
that should render it morally obligatory.
This article is a contribution to this debate. It situates itself in opposition to the mini-
malist account and develops an argument supporting a moral duty to vote. This duty also
calls us to acquire enough information so as to make a voting choice that is better than
random.1 To my knowledge, no direct response to the (powerful) minimalist argument
against the duty to vote has been provided so far. Discussions about the effectiveness of
Political Science Department, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL, USA
Corresponding author:
Julia Maskivker, Political Science Department, Rollins College, 1000 Holt Avenue, Winter Park, FL 32789, USA.
Email: jmaskivker@rollins.edu
410
Political Studies 66(2)
compulsory voting, for example, abound in the political theory literature, and some of
these discussions perfunctorily touch on the minimalist argument against the duty to vote
(i.e. Hill and Brennan, 2014). However, hardly any democratic theory work that I know
of concentrates on the rather grueling effort of justifying a moral duty to vote, whether or
not such duty is legally enforceable. I intend to fill this gap and leave the question of
whether enforcement is justifiable and useful for another occasion.
This article proposes that citizens are bound by a moral duty of Samaritan justice to
aid society via the ballot. In other words, being a good Samaritan requires us to vote with
care, that is, with sufficient information and knowledge, for the sake of society. Samaritan
duties of aid bind us when an intervention would not be unduly costly—not when it
would be totally costless. I argue that voting with care is a cost that society can reason-
ably expect citizens to assume given what elections have the potential to achieve, namely,
the installment of acceptably just governments and the ousting of deficient or unrespon-
sive ones.2 This article proposes that failing to vote with minimal information can be
compared to failing to provide relatively noncostly assistance to those sufficiently
imperiled. This may strike some as an incorrect analogy, but the impression is ultimately
mistaken. The most likely image evoked by the notion of the good Samaritan is the one-
time calamitous situation such us the child drowning in the pond that could be easily
saved by a passerby wearing new shoes (Singer, 1972). One may wonder in what ways
society and democracy are imminently imperiled, and whether viewing the vote as a
Samaritan obligation is adequate. I think the analogy is sufficiently valid: We should not
judge emergencies as such because they happen one time; rather, we should judge them
as such because they are threatening enough. The widely accepted understanding of an
emergency is something that needs to be addressed immediately, not that it is nonhabit-
ual or unusual.
For example, it makes sense to think of dire poverty as an emergency because it causes
people to die from starvation. However, if poverty did not kill but kept the hungry at a
continual point of steep suffering, would we consider it less normatively apt to justify
help? We would be hard-pressed to think so.3 Bad governance is a question of degree, for
sure, but the worse it is and the longer it lasts, the more it can produce results that are
gravely harmful and permanent. Just as poverty may call for ready action, the results of
bad governance may also call for action despite not being the worst they could possibly
be, all the time. Bad governance may mean that children are denied opportunities for
healthy growth and a good-enough education. It can also mean that the elderly will be
denied opportunities to end their lives with dignity and in financial security. Bad govern-
ance can further translate into citizens losing (partially or wholly) benefits (such as acces-
sible health care, to name just one), which many may find necessary to keep on living or
to maintain a minimally decent standard of living. Bad governance can also ensue in
wrong-headed and expensive wars that cost human lives and deplete valuable resources.
These harms can be quite serious for present and future generations even if in some socie-
ties they are less acute than in others. In other words, the results of bad governance can
contravene basic interests that all rational individuals can be thought to want to further
such as an interest in good health, in a minimally good quality of life, in income security,
and in peace, among others.
I believe that we must not feel regret for devoting most of our time and energy to per-
sonal projects and relationships, but we should recognize that, sometimes, a Samaritan
duty of assistance will call us to act. There are many pressing social problems that could
be alleviated with better, fair-minded, morally responsible governance. Under the
Maskivker
411
assumption that the machinery of elections works transparently, voting to elect minimally
decent governments in episodic elections is one reasonably easy way to contribute to
relieving society from the evils of injustice and incompetence, although by no means the
only one or the most effective under all possible circumstances (i.e. if injustice is so ram-
pant that rebellion is the only alternative, or if elections are a mere façade to disguise a de
facto authoritarian regime, for example, voting as a collective act turns futile, dangerous,
and possibly nonobligatory, ethically).
Section “Against the Minimalist Grain” develops the argument of political
Samaritanism. It proposes that even though our individual vote is unlikely to determine
the result of elections—because it will get lost in a proverbial ocean of votes—we still
have a duty to participate in elections since their result can be valuable from the stand-
point of justice. Section “Why Is Voting Special?” addresses the objection that voting is
not the only way to further the common good. I suggest that despite the fact that we can
obviously contribute to aiding society in many ways besides voting, voting with care
constitutes a special kind of contribution that would be morally wrong to ignore given
that citizens are, normally, extra-ordinarily well situated to help, thanks to the existence
of elections as enabling mechanisms of collective action.
Against the Minimalist Grain
In the last decade, political theory has witnessed the potent revival of the minimalist argu-
ment against the duty to vote.4 Minimalists offer the intuitive idea that voting badly—
with no information and based on prejudices—is immoral because it harms society by
leading to bad governance and the emergence of unfair policies (Brennan, 2011).
Underlying the minimalist argument against the duty to vote is a more basic understand-
ing of commonsense morality. This is the idea that our duties to others require us to
refrain from hurting them (a negative duty) but not to actively help them (a positive duty).
When many people vote carelessly, that can result in the selection of bad governments,
which is a high price to pay for ignorance. However, nobody should be required to make
an effort to vote responsibly, only to refrain from voting if unable or unwilling to do so
carefully (Brennan, 2011).
I do not think that voting with care is beyond the call of moral duty. This is so because
positive duties should not ipso facto demand much of the individual. For example, if we
come across a fire on our way to work, we are not expected...
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