From the Archives: Writings by Hans Riess at Merion West

The writings of Hans Riess at Merion West.

Are We Doing Voting Incorrectly?

Only 9% of United States citizens voted for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the presidential primary, and only approximately 30% of residents of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. The remarkable thing about these numbers is that both of these decisions are incredibly impactful to virtually every single citizen of the nation, yet a shockingly small fraction of the nation participated in making these decisions. This troubles me deeply. And it should trouble you too.

With decisions like Brexit or the 2016 U.S. presidential primary, Democratic theory tells us that for such a decision to pass, it must be held to the strictest standard of consent possible. This means that the level of consent to make a decision should correspond to the number of people impacted by the decision. Put another way, any decision that, by and large, only affects one person should be made by that one person, while a decision that affects everyone should be made by as many people as possible.

The takeaway from both the primary and Brexit is that proxy voting, that is to say, representative democracy, does not meet a sufficiently high standard of consent. Imagine for a minute that, say, Congress, were responsible for nominating a presidential candidate, or that Parliament decided Brexit, rather than leaving the decision to referendum. I do not think it would be unreasonable to predict that there would be complete and utter outrage. I might even go so far as to say that many people would begin to question whether they live in a democracy even at all.