A Moral Defense of the ‘Moral Values’ Voter
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00888.x |
| Author | Ryan W. Davis |
| Published date | 01 December 2011 |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
A Moral Defense of the ‘Moral Values’ Voterpost_888996..1016
Ryan W. Davis
Harvard University
How should citizens in a democracy decide for whom to vote? Liberal political philosophers,following Rawls, have
held that voters should think of the candidate as a proxy for the policies he or she will predictably help put in place,
and then vote according to which policies are best supported by the balance of public reasons.Call this the proxy
model. I rejectthe proxy model as too restrictive a moral requirement on voting,but accept that citizens are obligated
to use some reasons rather than others. In particular,voters should only weigh considerations that are morally relevant.
These may include factors like the character of the candidate.I argue that this alter native to the proxy model is more
faithful to liberal theory and places a more reasonable set of demands on voters,g iven what political science has taught
us about voting behavior.
Keywords: Rawls; public reason; political liberalism; voting; respect
How should citizens of a liberal democracy decide which candidate to vote for? While
liberal philosophers and democratically minded political scientists have long been interested
in voting, this question has not received much attention.1This is not to say that the privacy
of the voting booth has prevented us from learning anything about how citizens deliberate,
or how they should, when they enter its confines.Political science has begun to illuminate
what considerations different types of citizen take to be important, and liberal theory has
given us at least one answer to the question of what considerations they ought to take as
relevant. This answer, articulated almost as an aside by John Rawls, but since defended by
several others, holds that citizens should think about voting as though they were members
of the legislature that will be enacting laws (Rawls, 1999).In other words, they should vote
for representatives as a kind of proxy for the legislation that they predict the representatives,
if elected, would enact. I will call this the proxy model of voting. Because political liberals,
following Rawls’ lead,believe that there are moral norms on the types of consideration that
can legitimately support coercive legislation, the proxy model offers an appealing elegance.
By extending the same norms that govern legitimate (that is, morally permissible) coercion
to the act of deciding for whom to vote, political liberalism can give an account of voting
with a moral theory already developed for other questions. The political liberal solves an
important moral question on the cheap.
The proxy model demands much of voters. Coercing others is morally serious, and we
accordingly treat legislators as charged with a weighty moral task. If citizens must shoulder
the exact same responsibility in voting, then we are asking much of them – indeed, much
more than merely going to the polls, a demand already so great that there is a puzzle why
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00888.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011 VOL 59, 996–1016
© 2011The Author.Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
anyone would fulfill it.2Voters, in general, are thought by some scholars to be mostly
self-interested and, by others,to be str ikingly ignorant (Bartels, 2008;Campbell et al., 1960;
Caplan, 2007; but see also Lau and Redlawsk, 2006). In other words, there is a deep
disconnect between what liberal theorists morally expect of voters, and what political
scientists empirically expect of them.While this cer tainly poses no immediate problem for
either, it does open up space for at least investigating alternatives to the proxy model.
In this article, I will deny that the proxy model is a moral requirement of voting. It is
morally permissible for voters to include considerations in their deliberation besides those
pertaining to expected policy outcomes. The reason is that the liberal argument supporting
the proxy model does not actually show that only the proxy model provides reasons
appropriate for deciding how to vote. However, it does rule out what might be called the
permissive model of voting. The permissive model holds that citizens ought to vote for
candidates based on whatever considerations they happen to prefer. It declines to impose
any moral requirement on how persons decide to vote. An intermediate thesis, which I will
defend, holds that citizens ought to vote based on considerations that are morally important,
rather than on considerations that are morally irrelevant.On my view,which considerations
are morally important depends on the individual voter’s aims and intentions in voting. This
more modest thesis offers the dual advantages of being better supported by the liberal
arguments deployed in favor of the proxy model and placing a more reasonable set of moral
demands on real-world voters.
To make the difference between the standard view and my alter native as sharp as possible,
I will defend one class of voters that political liberals are usually apt to criticize: those who
vote on ‘moral values’or on aspects of the candidate’s character rather than on what policy
measures the candidate will enact. This model of voting, which I call the character model,is
set in stark relief against the proxy model.On the typical liberal view,the citizen who votes
on the character model is failing in his or her civic duty. On my view, the character model
and the proxy model merely represent different types of potentially morally relevant
considerations. I will not claim that it is always permissible to vote on the character model,
but I will maintain that it is sometimes permissible.
In this article, I will first explain a politically liberal argument for the proxy model. Second,
I will draw from literature in political science to illuminate different kinds of reasons why
people vote for particular candidates. Liberals require that the proxy model be used, but
many voters make their decisions based on the character model. This raises a normative
question about whether some reasons are better than others. Third, I will defend an
expanded view of the ethics of voting. This view, I argue, offers the best of both worlds: it
is more tolerant of citizens with values that differ from liberal norms, and it is theoretically
more faithful to political liberalism.
From Liberalism to Voting
Persons, according to John Rawls, are self-authenticating sources of valid claims (Rawls,
2001, p. 23). The duty of civility is a moral obligation designed to ensure that persons always
DEFENSE OF THE ‘MORAL VALUES’ VOTER 997
© 2011The Author.Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011, 59(4)
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