Is It a Duty to Vote and to be Informed?
| Author | André Blais,Danielle Mayer,Carol Galais |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919865467 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919865467
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(4) 328 –339
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929919865467
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Is It a Duty to Vote and
to be Informed?
André Blais1, Carol Galais2
and Danielle Mayer1
Abstract
We know that many people feel that they have a duty to vote in elections, but we know little
about what other civic duties they believe they ought to fulfill. In this study, we address the
question of whether people feel that they have both a duty to vote and to be informed. We use
an original Canadian survey which includes questions about whether respondents construe voting
and keeping informed as duties or a matter of choice. We find that the duty to vote is more
widespread than the duty to be informed and that almost half of those who say that they have
a moral obligation to vote indicate that they do not have a duty to keep informed. The better
educated are more likely to feel that they have a moral obligation to both vote and keep informed
while younger respondents are more prone to reject both duties.
Keywords
civic duty, duty to vote, duty to be informed, choice
Accepted: 24 January 2019
Introduction
The belief that voting is a citizen’s duty is a powerful predictor of electoral participation
(Blais, 2000). The extent to which citizens feel this duty alone or along with other civic
duties is a question related to several normative and academic debates on citizenship, and
particularly to the literature on the “good enough” citizen (Dahl, 1992; Dekker, 1996).
Lomasky and Brennan (2000), for instance, do not find the claim that voting is a civic duty
compelling because, they argue, a non-informed vote is not morally superior to abstention.
From that perspective, it does not suffice to vote to be a “good” citizen, and one must cast
an informed vote. Clearly, this is a harder task for the citizen to accomplish and it is closer
to idealistic views of the “good citizen” than to the “realistic” perspective of the “good
enough” citizen. The empirical combination of these two duties (the duty to vote and the
duty to be informed) yields four possible combinations from which two stand out: an ideal
1Département de science politique, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada
2Department of Political Science and Public Law, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain
Corresponding author:
André Blais, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC H3T 1N8, Canada.
Email: andre.blais@umontreal.ca
865467PSW0010.1177/1478929919865467Political Studies ReviewBlais et al.
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