Voting

The argument

Voting in a republic works to the public's benefit because of what it connects. Citizens do not vote directly on each law; they vote for a representative, and in choosing that representative they are choosing a set of ideas and laws they want carried forward. The vote is therefore a mechanism of transmission: preferences held across a population are gathered into a choice of person, and that person then argues and votes for those preferences where laws are actually made. Two features of the arrangement matter to the argument. The first is that it makes governing feasible. A population cannot deliberate on every measure a modern state must pass, but it can judge a candidate's positions and record, and delegation through election allows ordinary people's priorities to reach legislation they could not draft themselves. The second is that the delegation is conditional. A representative who ignores the people who elected them can be replaced at the next election, which gives officials a standing reason to keep faith with the views they were chosen to advance. The public consequences follow from that link. With the right leaders in place — leaders whose policies suit the country's circumstances, and who remain answerable for them — the economy grows and people's lives become more prosperous. Good government produces those results, and voting is what makes good government reachable, because it gives citizens both the means to install competent representatives and the means to remove poor ones before the damage compounds. That is the case for the republic as the best system of government. It neither asks the public to legislate directly nor leaves power in the hands of rulers the public cannot remove, and it channels ordinary preferences into law through a vote that keeps the two connected.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Using a representative is not the best way to vote. Representatives are people elected to represent certain political groups in a country. There could be aggression between the groups that cause a stalemate during the final voting process. On top of separation between groups in the public population, there’s a separation between people and the main government. This creates limits on personal interaction and makes the people think the government doesn’t care for them.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] If the representatives aren’t as qualified as they seem, the country will not grow, and the public will not benefit from their position.