Volume 29, Number 2
January 2025
DISCUSSION

Voting, Representation, and Institutions: A Critique of Elliott’s Duty to Vote

Volume 29, Number 2, January 2025, Pages 315–322
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v29i2.3481
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Abstract

Kevin J. Elliott has recently defended an institutional duty to vote. This duty is based on (1) the role obligation of citizens to do what is necessary for well-functioning representative institutions and (2) the claim that universal voting is ordinarily necessary for fair representation. This critical response takes issue with the second of these claims. I argue that neither the informational nor motivational problems that Elliott identifies require universal voting. Representatives have other ways of identifying citizens’ wants and interests and other incentives to respond to them. Indeed, some of Elliott’s own suggestions, for instance that representatives will respond to uncertain threats, seem to presuppose that these difficulties can be overcome. Thus, I argue that universal voting is not necessary for effective representation.
Copyright © 2025 Ben Saunders
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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