Rejuvenating democracy : age, knowledge, and the right to vote

Abstract

At the core of democracy is a simple idea: one person, one vote. However, all democracies
disenfranchise
citizens
below
a
certain
age.
What
justifies

this practice? The
answer seems obvious: voting isn’t a children’s game. When citizens head to the ballots,
a
lot
is
at
stake:
who
runs
the
government
and
what
policies
are
implemented

significantly
affects
the
lives
of
many
citizens.
According
to
a
widely
held
view,
voting
requires
a
certain
competence
that
children
lack.
If
we
take
this
idea
a
little
further,

we may conclude that adult citizens ought to demonstrate a certain level of
competence before receiving the right to vote, too. However, most contemporary
political philosophers reject this “epistocratic” line of thought. Either for epistemic,
moral, or pragmatic reasons, they endorse enfranchising every adult. This raises the
central question of this dissertation: can we justify giving the right to vote to all and
only citizens above a certain age? I argue that we cannot. To establish this claim, I
assess three different voting schemes: Standard Democracy, which gives exactly one
vote to all and only citizens above a certain age; Epistocratic Democracy, which gives
more voting power to “politically knowledgeable” citizens; and Ageless Democracy,
which gives all citizens, regardless of age, the right to cast exactly one vote in democratic
procedures.
First,
I
defend
Standard
Democracy
against
Epistocratic
Democracy.
This
amounts
to
an
argument
that
all
citizens
above
a
certain
age
should
have

equal
voting
rights.
I
then
evaluate
potential
justifications
for
conceding
these
rights

only
to
citizens
above
a
certain
age,
and
reject
them.
This
amounts
to
a
case
for
Ageless
Democracy.
Abandoning
the
voting
age
is
both
a
theoretically
consistent
implication
of
rejecting
Epistocratic
Democracy
and
a
practically
desirable
approach
to

reinvigorating
democratic
procedures.

Date of Award	28 Jun 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Jessica Anne Brown (Supervisor) & Adam Daniel Etinson (Supervisor)