The module centers on voter ignorance because worries about voter ignorance have been a driving force in recent developments in political philosophy, especially Brennan (2018) and Guerrero (MS). Moreover, students are already familiar with thinking about democratic decision-making as aiming at accuracy, since students encounter Condorcet’s Jury Theorem and modern versions of it in class.

A different module could explore in greater detail the technical aspects of the course by drawing from discussions of Condorcet’s Jury Theorem in political philosophy. List and Goodin’s “Epistemic Democracy: Generalizing the Condorcet Jury Theorem” (2001, The Journal of Political Philosophy) is a useful resource in this vein.

Another possible in-depth connection with the course content concerns the fairness of sortition selection processes, and whether random selection is sufficient for it.

Finally, yet another possible topic of interest is liquid democracy, on which there exists some philosophical work (Blum and Zuber (2015), “Liquid Democracy: Potentials, Problems and Perspectives”, The Journal of Political Philosophy).

The three views are: (i) everyone has a duty to vote; (ii) everyone has a conditional duty to vote responsibly if they vote; (iii) any individual voting decision (including abstention) is permissible.

The first set of questions raised an ethical challenge for the principle of reducing cognitive load. The second set of questions introduced evaluative questions head on through a critical discussion of the value of neutrality. The third set of questions attempts to organize the ethical discussion around principles.

Question (1) is sharpened by thinking about whether it is wrong to cast a vote without any knowledge about the relevant issues, or whether it would at least be better to abstain in these conditions.

Question (2) is the central focus of discussion regarding Jason Brennan’s claim that democratic decision-making enables groups to wield power over others incompetently and to that extent is unjust.

Question (3) arises in response to Brennan’s alternative proposal that the right to vote should be restricted to those who demonstrate some sufficient level of political knowledge.

Question (4) arises in discussing another alternative proposal to universal suffrage, namely sortition or ‘lottocracy’ wherein a governing body is selected at random from a larger pool of candidates.

The notion of political ignorance (or voter ignorance, or the ignorance of voters regarding political matters) serves to raise worries about democratic decision- making. Focusing first on the case of individual duties regarding voting, some students find that voting without any knowledge of the relevant issues is risky, and that one might be better off abstaining. The second step is then to generalize from an individual case and think about the conditions under which it is acceptable for a group of people to hold power over others. There is at least a case to be made, drawing on Brennan (2017), that a group should be allowed to exercise power over another only if they exercise that power competently. This raises a challenge for democratic decision-making, at least under current conditions of widespread political ignorance. The epistocratic alternative to democracy disenfranchises voters who can’t demonstrate sufficient political knowledge. This makes the electorate more competent as a group but violates a basic commitment to political equality.
Sortition-based decision-making tries to preserve a commitment to political equality by giving everyone an equal chance of serving on a single-issue governing body.

Both Aeon pieces are short, clear and provide a good summary of political ignorance and how these two philosophers think we should respond to it. Brennan’s Ethics of Voting and Against Democracy are useful resources for the instructor. At the time this module ran, Guerrero’s manuscript on Lottocracy was not yet published, but should be by the end of 2021.

When running this module, live student responses to the poll have been split almost in a dead heat. This reflects that this case is genuinely hard. Part of what makes this case hard is the role that political ignorance seems to have played in deciding the outcome: (i) ‘Leave’ won by a slim margin; (ii) a third of Leave voters cited concerns about immigration and border control as their main reason for voting ‘Leave’; (iii) these voters overestimated by a proportion of 4 to 1 how many EU immigrants live in the UK (at 20% of the population, rather than 5%). So, there is a strong motivation for a better informed, sortition-based decision-making in this case. At the same time, putting the decision in the hands of just three hundred people (as Guerrero’s model suggests) seems to result in a decision that lacks legitimacy. One follow-up question to raise here is whether there is some number of participants in the sortition that would be small enough to reach the epistemic benefits of sortition, but large enough to have legitimacy.

Since the two Aeon pieces are very accessible, another option would be to have a pre-module assignment. For instance, students might discuss, on the online discussion forum in the days before lecture, Jason Brennan’s proposal that the right to vote should be restricted to those who can pass some ideologically neutral political knowledge test. Students might discuss whether this policy is feasible, and whether, even if feasible, it could be wrong.