Is voting a moral duty? The Ethics of Voting in the Face of Democratic Malaise

Abstract

Is voting in an election a moral duty? Philosophical reasons for the existence of a duty to vote are still largely taken for granted in public debates, despite the popularity of this belief and its use to publicly condemn electoral abstentionism. This situation seems hardly tenable in a context of prevailing democratic malaise, where more and more citizens seem to doubt the value of their own democracy. Fortunately, the literature on the ethics of voting has seen a surge of work examining the idea of a duty to vote, giving rise to a plurality of defenses of this thesis, as well as its share of objections. The aim of this article is to summarize these debates, highlighting the main points of disagreement between the various contributors and drawing up the main lessons for the renewal of citizens' attitudes towards contemporary democracies.