The Role of Capacity in Democratic Elections: A Case for the Inclusion of People with Intellectual Disabilities

This paper presents a case against the practice of excluding people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) from the electorate based on justifications for democratic elections discussed in recent literature. It argues that typical arguments for excluding people with IDs from democratic elections are undermined by the different kinds of authority and capacity democratic elections demand from the electors and the elected. This proposed expansion of the demos can also bolster the democratic pedigree of elections, by allowing the participation of a group who would not be able to exercise more demanding political duties required by other forms of democracy. Recent literature on democratic elections argues that elections are superior to lottocracies on epistemic quality, power distribution and extent of citizen control over decisions (Rummens & Geenens, 2023), and that sortitions are not superior to elections on egalitarian grounds (Lever, 2023). These arguments in favour of democratic elections ultimately rely on democratic elections’ use of “representation as a substantive activity”, in opposition to descriptive representation that we might find in lottocracies and similar systems (Pitkin, 1967). Pitkin argues that substantive representation is superior to descriptive representation in accounting for “accountability, (…) leadership, initiative or creative action”. Pitkin’s account of substantive representation demands different degrees of capacity from the electors and the elected and confers different forms of authority to the two groups. The different demands for capacity between the electors and the elected in democratic elections undermine a common argument used to justify the exclusion of individuals with IDs from the demos. The capacity-based argument for exclusion assumes that individuals with IDs cannot assume complex political duties due to a lack of discernment (Vorhaus, 2005). This lack of capacity is perceived to be even more problematic when democratic duties involve active participation to deliberations such as jury duty, with some theorists like Nussbaum suggesting that guardians fulfil democratic duties in place of people with severe IDs (Nussbaum, 2010). The justification of democratic elections through the notion of substantive representation challenges the capacity argument for exclusion by setting a lower bar for prerequisite capacity: If the people exercise their will through substantive representatives who do not simply reflect them descriptively, but also assume a creative duty to best represent the interests of the people they represent, then the cognitive complexity that democratic elections require from electors is considerably lower than non-electoral forms of democracy, with the elected shouldering the burden. Democratic elections that extend participation to individuals with IDs have a clear advantage over non-electoral forms of democracy: While the latter cannot include such groups due to the cognitive complexity of the democratic duties they require, democratic elections can include these groups, and potentially benefit from an increase in collective intelligence due to higher variety among the electorate (Landemore, 2012). It can thus be said that the democratic pedigree of elections can be further bolstered by appealing to the relative non-complexity of electoral participation, but doing requires an enlargement of the demos to groups that have been traditionally excluded on capacity grounds.