Compulsory Voting

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Edit: This started out to be a thread about voting.

Then let's stop discussing whether cats deserve to live, and let's continue discussing about whether voting in most elections (where you can't be an informed voter) is moral. So, what do you think is wrong with the Michael Huemer's analogy with a tourist looking for a restaurant? Or do you perhaps think it is not immoral to pretend to know where the restaurant is?

The topic isn’t whether voting is immoral, but whether it should be compulsory. No matter, I’ll play along.

Huemer’s analogy is fatally flawed. Guessing where a particular restaurant is isn’t immoral, as there is not a necessary immorality motivating the guess. Now, if someone deliberately misdirects the tourist to a place where he knows the tourist would be in danger, THAT would be immoral.

Huemer’s claim that all voting is immoral because the voter cannot possibly know all the details and outcomes of all the choices on a ballot isn’t merely flawed, it’s dead wrong. If someone were to cast a vote for a measure which, unbeknownst to the voter at the time of voting, causes the deaths of 10 000 people, the voter has not acted immorally - there is no morally culpability for unintended consequences.

As far as a voter not knowing all the issues, that’s immaterial. A voter can support, for example, lower taxes. If that is the only issue that concerns the voter, he is not committing an immoral act by voting for the candidate most likely to lower taxes.

Boru