Filosofen Jason Brennan argumenterar i ”Polluting the Polls: When Citizens Should Not Vote”, som är accepterad för publicering i Australasian Journal of Philosopy, för att vissa medborgare bör avstå från att rösta i allmänna val:

Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any vote is right. Citizens should not vote badly. This duty to avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of restraint is low. Good governance is a public good. Bad governance is a public bad. We should not be contributing to public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low. Many democratic theorists agree that we shouldn’t vote badly, but that’s because they think we should vote well. This demands too much of citizens.

Men är inte detta synsätt i grunden antidemokratiskt och elitistiskt? Brennan kommenterar:

Irresponsible individual voters ought to abstain rather than vote badly. This thesis may seem anti-democratic. Yet it is really a claim about voter responsibility and how voters can fail to meet this responsibility. On my view, voters are not obligated to vote, but if they do vote, they owe it to others and themselves to be adequately rational, unbiased, just, and informed about their political beliefs.

Se även Brennan diskutera sin syn på röstning med Will Wilkinson på Bloggingheads. Ett engagerande videosamtal!