Voting Matters: A Critical Examination and Defense of Democracy's Central Practice

Abstract

This dissertation provides an account of the democratic value of popular voting that is sensitive both to existing beliefs about the importance of voting and to the conceptual and practical limitations of voting as a method of political influence. Elections cannot bear all of the normative weight of democracy. Nevertheless, popular voting in elections plays a distinctive, valuable, and central role in contemporary democratic practice. Structuring the public life of a community around moments of highly visible, formally equal mass participation underscores the democratic maxim that all of the members of the community are equal agents in the project of collective self-rule and contributes a number of benefits to a healthy democratic practice.

Democracy is not just a set of ideal principles; it is also a collective activity. Appreciating the demands of collective agency should lead democratic theorists to value a range of existing democratic practices, even when they deviate from the ideal. Moreover, I argue, actual beliefs about and practices of democracy in existing communities should play an important role in shaping normative claims about the ethics of citizenship and democratic reform. In particular, democratic theorists and would-be reformers should recognize how common understandings of democratic citizenship sustain shared plans that coordinate citizens’ various individual contributions toward the shared aim of democratic self-rule.

This account of democracy as a collective activity provides a framework for evaluating particular aspects of the practice of popular voting in contemporary democracy. In this dissertation, I use the method of constructive interpretation to develop an account of voting that makes the most sense of existing beliefs, principles, and practices when they are understood as part of a shared plan for democracy. I then articulate a set of standards that must be met if popular voting is to effectively fulfill its distinctively valuable role in the plan for democracy. Finally, I apply these standards to gain critical purchase in several debates about designing and reforming electoral institutions, including the value of partisanship and political parties, the administration of the Election Day experience, and mandatory voting.