Topics Justice

Question Is there a case to be made for plural voting? In other words, are governments ever justified in giving more votes to some people than others? For instance, I think a good case can be made that those with higher educational status (say, a bachelors degree) should be given more voting power than those of lower educational status assuming that certain conditions maintain (e.g. equal educational opportunity)? This dovetails with a follow up question: what is the current status of such plural voting arguments among philosophers today (are they frequently defended)?

Accepted:
June 27, 2010

Comments

There have been cases historically when persons had plural votes. I believe that at one point in the 18th century in Britain, it was possible for a person to purchase more than one parliamentary vote as well as to purchase actual votes in elections (one might openly offer bribes for votes), but this was not based on people with the most wisdom getting more votes, but people with the most money and craft being able to do so. There are many areas of society today when you have to have higher educational status to vote at all. I am on a committee with the American Philosophical Association in which we vote to award prizes and lectureships. Having a Ph.D. in philosophy is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for being able to vote. There have been some philosophers who have been quite critical of democracy (famously, Plato) and so, in a sense, some philosophers have developed arguments that there should not be widespread public voting at all but, instead, there should be governance by an elite. But I believe most philosophers who defend a democratic republic have resisted what you refer to as plural voting.

Because my reply may have been a tad disappointing let me throw in a "fun" paradox involving preferential voting that has vexed philosophers when it comes to voting. Let's say there is an election in which we have three candidates, and everyone is asked to rank them. Let's call them Obama, Palin, and Clinton. Imagine that one third of the people rank the candidates as follows:

1. Obama

2. Palin

3 Clinton

Another third of the country votes this ranking:

1. Palin

2. Clinton

3. Obama

And the last third of the country votes this way:

1. Clinton

2. Obama

3. Palin

We now have a problem: It looks as though Obama has won over Palin. In two out of three contests, Obama gets higher marks. And it looks like Palin has beaten Clinton as she, too, gets higher marks than Clinton. So, you would expect that Obama won, Palin came in second and Clinton last, but this is not what happens. Actually Clinton beats Obama! This is called Arrows Paradox. What should we do?