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 154 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com AT FREE-RIDING FREE- RIDING DOESN’T JUSTIFY COMPULSORY VOTING. Annabelle Lever 08, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific method, London School of Economics and Political Science, "Compulsory voting a critical perspective, British Journal of Political Science, 2008. The normative problems with the free-riding argument are serious, too. The most obvious, as we have seen, is that people are entitled and, even, morally obliged to abstain on occasion. Nonvoting on such grounds cannot be equated with unfairness or exploitation. However, even when people are morally wrong to abstain, and even when that wrong consists in harming others it is odd to think of voters as the primary victims of harm. Rather, it seems that when nonvoting harms others, it harms those who are unable to vote, because they are too young, too old, disabled, or simply because they are foreign. Democratic citizens do, I imagine, have duties to represent the interests of those who can be harmed by their decisions, even though they are unable to participate in them. This is compatible with the idea that morally wrongful nonvoting may also harm some voters, by letting them down, or making it harder for them to realise their legitimate ends. But, even where this is so, these harms seem much less serious than those suffered by the voiceless and the voteless, who may lack democratic rights in their own country, or enough people willing and able to act on their behalf. Nonvoting, then, can be morally wrong, although that wrong seems, rather, to be indifference or contempt for the weak and dependent, rather than unfairness to compatriots who vote. In either case, however, compulsory voting is unjustified. It maybe morally wrong to abstain, but morally wrongful abstention may not be especially harmful. Such harms as it causes, moreover, can be caused by careless, ignorant and prejudiced voting. Unfortunately, even when we do not intend to cause harm, and when we are acting morally, the effects of our actions can be disastrous for others. So, from the fact that nonvoting is sometimes immoral, we cannot conclude that people are morally obliged to vote, let alone that compulsory voting is justified as away to prevent, or to punish, immorality Download 2 Mb. Share with your friends:
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