Voting Lotteries, Compulsory Voting and Negative Freedom

In this article I aim to counter Jason Brennan’s principled objection to the Representativeness Argument for compulsory voting, and to criticize the case in favour of voting lotteries, on which this challenge is predicated. In brief, Brennan claims that compulsory voting should be rejected because t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe journal of ethics Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 331 - 349
Main Author Volacu, Alexandru
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2024
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Education
Ethics
History of Philosophy
Lotteries
Metaphysics
Moral Philosophy
Philosophy
Political Philosophy
Political representation
Social classes
Social Philosophy
Voter behavior
Voters
Negative Freedom
Voting Lotteries
Compulsory Voting
Representativeness Argument
Coercion
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:In this article I aim to counter Jason Brennan’s principled objection to the Representativeness Argument for compulsory voting, and to criticize the case in favour of voting lotteries, on which this challenge is predicated. In brief, Brennan claims that compulsory voting should be rejected because there is an alternative system, i.e. a voting lottery, which is able to ensure demographic proportionality in electoral turnouts without diminishing the freedom of citizens. But even on the most favourable conception of freedom which the argument can employ, voting lotteries raise a number of serious concerns in respect to this value. Furthermore, while comparing voting lotteries and compulsory voting on the basis of freedom cannot provide any generalizable support for the former, a plausible case can instead be offered in support of the opposite idea, namely that compulsory voting outperforms voting lotteries with respect to freedom.
ISSN:1382-4554
1572-8609
DOI:10.1007/s10892-024-09471-y