Must We Vote, or At Least Stay Informed?

Intuitively, the reason we care so much about enfranchisement is that we want a say in how our society is run. We want the option to intervene when it looks like an incompetent candidate for office might be elected if we stand idly by. But often it may seem to us that all the candidates are equally competent, for all intents and purposes. Then there's no need to vote. So what matters is not so much actually voting as having the power to vote when necessary. I owe this point to the real MVP, Kane B.

But this is too superficial. A moment's reflection raises the question, what good is the power to vote when necessary if you don't know when voting is necessary? Simple. It's worth jack shit, unless you decide to vote anyway. So if we want our voting power to be worth something even though we only vote when it seems called for, we need to at least be aware of when a vote is called for—when it might well make an important difference.

Does this mean we're obligated to figure out when a vote is necessary, if not to vote all the time? To answer this question, I shall reflect on a couple examples from Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness. Foot uses these examples to illustrate how we can fail to be obligated to obtain available knowledge, the lack of which may have horrible consequences. Firstly, Foot points out that a doctor could excusably neglect to check whether a patient trapped halfway up a cliff is allergic to the standard treatment for their injury or infection, after having heroically climbed up the cliff to treat the patient. Under such frantic emergency conditions, the doctor can't be blamed for forgetting to check for a rare allergy. Secondly, Foot shares Anscombe's example of someone's excusably—indeed, permissibly—refraining from checking every hour whether a baby has been placed on their doorstep. Even if a baby ends up being left there overnight and starving or freezing to death, the homeowner can't be blamed for not knowing. The homeowner would only be blameworthy if someone indicated the baby's presence in a way the homeowner should've noticed.

Now, what about politics and current affairs? When our willful ignorance about these subjects has horrible consequences, such as the election of a despotic leader, can we be blamed? The conclusion I draw from the above hypothetical scenarios is that we can, but only if we should've noticed there was a non-negligible chance of horrible consequences—either for ourselves or for others.

What I mean by that is not simply that it would be easy to find out there was a non-negligible chance of disaster. It's always easy to check the news for shit to worry about. But it would likewise be easy to find out that a baby is freezing to death on your doorstep. Just open the door and take a look! That doesn't mean you should make a habit of checking. So really, even if there was a non-negligible chance of a baby's dying on your doorstep, it's not automatically the case that you should've noticed there was.

No, what I mean is, the fact that a disaster may result from our ignorance practically cries out for our attention. Note that, whenever there is potential for disastrous results, it's virtually certain the media, as well as people in our own social circles, will not let us ignore that. Take the 2016 and 2020 elections for example. I realize there are a lot of false alarms, but as long as we try to ignore the ones we can't feasibly do anything about, we shouldn't be overly overwhelmed.

And here is why we needn't follow the news otherwise. Just as we needn't check our doorstep for babies every hour—but only when, say, someone knocks on our door—because a) doing so would carry a steep opportunity cost and b) babies are rarely left on people's doorsteps, we needn't constantly follow the news and such because a) opportunity cost and b) ignorance of politics and current affairs rarely has truly horrible consequences. 

That said, we shouldn't assume that our voting or failing to vote—or our acting or failing to act on knowledge of politics and current events—made no significant difference just because our own lives barely appeared to change. Perhaps some people's lives were affected very negatively or very positively. So what we have the strongest moral reason to carefully consider when election time rolls around is what our vote means to others. Hence the italicized phrase "either for ourselves or for others" above. Unfortunately, we can't assume the media will always warn us if others—particularly those in foreign countries—may be seriously harmed by our political inaction, because the media are biased toward concerns similar to ours. Thus, this is one matter on which we are best advised, morally speaking, to be extra diligent to seek out the pertinent information at the right time.¹

 

 

Endnotes

 

1. I would like to thank Amos Wollen for his comments which prompted me to reword this final paragraph for clarity.