I think that this is a great public forum topic: it relates to a current event that will educate students on some of the nuanc

13NFL1-Compulsory Voting
Page 151 of 163
www.victorybriefs.com
IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY FOLLOW THAT ALL POLITICAL INEQUALITIES NEED TO BE
LEVELED
Ben Saunders Temporary Lecturer in Philosophy, Increasing Turnout A Compelling Case
Politics
: 2010 Vol. 30(1), 70
–77 While democrats have traditionally believed in the maxim one person, one vote (e.g. Birch, 2009, pit is unclear whether this is a necessary commitment. Small inequalities, as caused by differences in district size, are generally tolerated, simply because they would be difficult to eliminate and each individual vote is almost inconsequential to begin with (Rehfeld, 2005, pp.
193
–197). Often, we think that the less of something people have, the more important it is that what they have is distributed fairly hence we are more concerned about inequalities at low levels of material wealth than those between millionaires and billionaires. When it comes to political power, however, each person’s share is so small that to insist on strict equality would be more like arguing over the crumbs of a cake than insisting on equal slices. Were you to discover that your neighbour had two votes in an upcoming election, this might offend your sense of equal worth, and this symbolic value is reason to adhere to the general principle one person, one vote. It would hardly give him or her anymore power over the outcome, though, since from an instrumental point of view each vote is practically worthless and twice nothing is still nothing. This suggests that we need not be too obsessive about ironing out minor inequalities, such as in district size. Similarly, unequal voting rates between different groups do not obviously threaten to undermine the equal status of all involved, provided that all have the right to an equal vote, whether or not they exercise it.

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