Non-Voting and the Right to Complain

This paper discusses the commonplace idea that if voting eligible citizens do not turn out in elections, they have no right to subsequently complain about politics. The paper demonstrates that existing critical discussions in the academic blogosphere fail to rebut the No-Vote-No-Complaints notion. It further shows that the notion is open to several distinct interpretations, and argues that for a variety of reasons, no interpretation is philosophically sound. Altogether, this suggests that if people do not vote, they still have every right to complain. By developing this argument, the paper originally contributes to scholarship on the ethics of voting, opening up a novel line of inquiry on the moral consequences that potentially issue from citizens’ non-participation in political elections.