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
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Lesson 4.2 Day 3
| 13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 135 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com OVERINCLUSIVENESS OVERINCLUSIVENESS IS A PROBLEM FOR DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY Ben Saunders Temporary Lecturer in Philosophy, Increasing Turnout A Compelling Case Politics : 2010 Vol. 30(1), 70 –77 Appeal to the notion of a relevant constituency raises the much neglected question of who should constitute the demos of a democratic decision. Ina seminal article, arguing for more universal enfranchisement, Robert Goodin (2007, p. 58) suggests that over-inclusiveness is a less serious problem than under-inclusiveness. His reasoning is that unaffected voters are likely to vote randomly and thus be spread equally across all options, cancelling each other out. This is not obviously true. It maybe that voters are influenced by objectionable motives, external preferences or political advertising. It may also be that their random voting is not truly random – for instance, that there is a tendency simply to check the first box on the ballot paper – or that, particularly when the number of random voters is high relative to those actually affected, this random noise will change the overall outcome (Jakee and Sun, 2006, pp. 67–69). Moreover, it seems inherently objectionable to have many others – with nothing at stake in the decision – have some potential say over it, even if it is true that the outcomes are unaltered. This would suggest that the whole world should have a vote on British health and education policies – which seems undesirable, even if the results are unchanged While I cannot, here, settle the question of who should have a say in the making of a given decision, it is worth pointing out that the potential problems of overinclusiveness are greatly exacerbated by compulsory voting. Suppose that we do give everyone a vote, and then force them to vote, on some particular issue that only affects a subset of the electorate. This seems to wrong both those who are affected, because the decision is now potentially influenced by many others with no real interest in it, and those who are unaffected, because they are forced to turnout on an issue that does not affect them and on which, it is possible to argue, they actually have a duty not to vote (Brennan, 2009). |