ABSTRACT
A duty to vote may be nothing more than a minimal obligation to show up at the ballot box, or it may also prescribe rules about how to choose among competing political parties or candidates for office. This chapter is a defence of the narrower interpretation. The claim is that what citizens see – and ought to see – as a duty to vote is the minimal obligation alone. As long as one does not vote frivolously or cruelly, a duty to vote contains no prescription for choosing among candidates or political parties. A duty to vote is not primarily to procure the socially preferred outcome in today’s election. It is to protect government by majority rule voting.
