An alien resident might not have the necessary knowledge

The argument

The case rests on what voting is for rather than on who deserves it. A vote is a judgment about how a country should be governed, and a judgment of that kind depends on knowing the country: its institutions, its political traditions, the issues in contention and what the parties actually propose. Someone who has recently arrived has not had time to acquire that knowledge, however intelligent or well-intentioned they may be. Proponents of this position argue that extending the franchise to a person in that situation does not enlarge democracy so much as dilute it, because it adds votes that are not informed by the thing being voted on. The point is sharpened, on this view, by patterns of settlement. Some residents live largely within their own communities, conducting daily life in a familiar language among people from the same place of origin, with limited contact with the wider society around them. That is not in itself a fault, but it does mean that exposure to the national conversation — its media, its arguments, its civic life — can remain thin for a long time after arrival. Where that is the case, residence by itself does not deliver the familiarity the vote presupposes, and it does not demonstrate a willingness to integrate either. What follows is a requirement rather than a permanent exclusion. The position is not that foreign residents can never vote, but that the vote belongs with citizenship, and citizenship is the point at which a person has demonstrated both the knowledge and the commitment the franchise assumes. The right cannot be handed to someone who has just arrived; it marks the completion of a process rather than the beginning of one. On this reasoning, residence alone is the wrong qualification, and foreign residents should not be eligible to vote.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The right to vote is automatically given to all adults nationals, except for very limited exceptions (major criminals) without any check of their kmnowledge of the political environment. So the argument of not being integrated can not stand. Also to mitigate the objection the law might impose limits to foreing people eligiblity to vote: some swiss cantons (like Neuchatel) gives right to vote only to permanent residents: this status can be obtained only after 5 years of residence and with some background checks by Immigration Office.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The counter-argument on record makes the decisive objection: citizens are enfranchised at adulthood with no test of their knowledge of the political system, so a knowledge requirement applied only to foreign residents is not a standard the electorate as a whole is held to. Historically, tests of this kind have been used to exclude rather than to inform. [Rejecting P2] Living within a close community is asserted of 'some' and then treated as characteristic. It is also not a measure of political knowledge, and no evidence connects residential pattern to understanding of local issues. [Rejecting P3] The premise assumes the proposal concerns people who have just arrived, which none of the positions in this debate propose. The counter points to the arrangement actually in use in cantons such as Neuchâtel, where the vote is extended only to permanent residents — a status reached after several years of residence and administrative checks — which meets the objection without excluding foreign residents as a class. [Rejecting C] The conclusion also does not follow from a premise about what someone 'might' lack. That some members of a group may be poorly informed is true of every group, and would justify excluding any of them on the same reasoning.