Later in the legislative session mentioned in exercise 9, you become disenchanted with your fellow citizens when you learn that only 28 percent of those eligible to vote actually did so in the last election. Consequently, you pass a law requiring that everyone vote in every election. What arguments can you make in support of such a measure? Against?

Against:  According to an often heard argument, there’s no point voting because, in most elections, the chance that one vote will make a difference is close to zero. In the 2008 presidential election, for example, the average voter had just one chance in 60 million of deciding the race. This argument is based on a highly questionable assumption: that there’s no reason for me to vote if doing so won’t decide the election.

Favor:  But in a democracy voting is communal, not individual. Sovereign power is in the citizens as a whole, and my vote has weight as part of this political community. Even though it’s utterly unlikely that an individual vote will decide a large-scale election, the group of all voters will do so. Therefore, I have reason to vote insofar as I have a good reason to join this community. And there are many good reasons for getting in the voting line with my fellow citizens. I may want to express my solidarity with everyone who favors my candidates, to support the democratic process in general, to set an example that will encourage others to vote, or even just to feel the personal satisfaction of having voted.

Explanation:

A deeper worry is that even the will of a majority may have little or no influence on how the country is governed. There’s a widespread conviction that rich people and corporations determine government actions, and recent research by political scientists offers at least preliminary support for that conclusion. Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page looked at almost 1,800 cases of controversial policy issues in the United States and explained: “[T]he majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.”

They added, “Even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.”

a nurse can ask a member of congress to sponsor a bill that she/he finds important