In elections, should the votes of more educated voters carry greater weight than those of the less educated?

In the early 21st Century, democracies have been plagued by populist ideology - Brexit and Bolsonaro’s election being
just two examples. With misinformed voters driving such movements, an alternative to democracy - ‘liberal
republican epistocracy’ (LRE henceforth) - which next to maintaining democratic checks and balances, makes voting
rights proportional to political and economic knowledge, has become increasingly prominent (Brennan, 2016a;
Brennan, 2016b). This paper argues that ‘LRE’ is preferable over democracy, as it combines fair political procedures
with better and more just political outcomes and thus has greater political legitimacy. In order to do this, the paper
will begin by setting out the political legitimacy argument for epistocracy, before refuting objections based on the
propositions that fair political procedures require equal voting rights or that epistocracy’s demographically skewed
electorate results in more unjust policy outcomes than democracy.

In order to analyse epistocracy in greater depth, some concepts must be clarified beforehand. Individuals have two
types of political preferences - ‘outcome preferences’ (about political outcomes) and ‘policy preferences’ (about
policies) (Brennan, 2017, p.64). This paper assumes that individuals generally have “reasonable” outcome
preferences (peace, economic growth, etc), and that these do not vary greatly across the population (Brennan, 2017,
p.64). Therefore, ‘good’ political outcomes occur when voters’ policy preferences (and the policies voters vote for)
match their outcome preferences and ‘just’ political outcomes occur when the (limited) variety of outcome
preferences in the population are realised.

Concerns about the limitations of democracy - a system where each adult citizen has an equal right to vote - due to
misinformed voters, already emerged among political philosophers including Aristotle, Rousseau and Montesquieu
(Bell & Ziliotti, 2014). More recently, Brennan (2016a) has argued that democracy has a systematic shortfall - by
dispersing political power across almost the entire adult population, it reduces the importance of each individual
vote and thus also the incentives for voters to become informed.

Conversely, epistocracy - a system that aims to avoid the adverse consequences of misinformed voters by giving
knowledgeable voters greater voting power - was first advocated by J.S. Mill (Estlund, 2003). More recently, Jason
Brennan proposed ‘LRE’, which next to epistocratic voting rights, retains democratic checks and balances (e.g.
judicial review) (Brennan, 2016a; Brennan, 2016b). Despite LRE existing in various forms, this paper will focus on a
version of ‘plural voting’, where all voters receive one vote, but depending on their score on a basic political and
economic knowledge test (e.g. based on the objective US citizenship test) can have their vote count more highly
(Brennan, 2016a; Mulligan, 2017).

The political legitimacy argument for LRE that this paper presents is as follows:

P1: LRE produces better and more just political outcomes than democracy.

P2: LRE has a fair political process.

P3: Political systems that produce better and more just political outcomes, given fairness in the political process,
have greater political legitimacy.

P4: Political systems with greater political legitimacy should be preferred over systems with less political legitimacy.

C: LRE should be preferred over democracy.

Regarding premise one, we are unable to fully ascertain its truth due to a lack of empirical evidence on the policy
performances of epistocracies (Brennan, 2017). This further means that we cannot determine the argument’s
soundness. Nevertheless, given that the entire reasoning for epistocracy is based on its ability to produce better and
more just political outcomes, and given that this paper rejects even the strongest objection to this claim, we can
assume its truth at the current point in time. Premise two is supported by the fact that ‘LRE’ retains democratic
checks and balances (Brennan, 2016a). Looking at premise three, it formulates the ‘epistemic procedural’ viewpoint
of political legitimacy that I agree with, i.e. that political legitimacy originates both in a fair political procedure and in
good and just policy outcomes (Freeman, 2000, p.388). Moreover, I believe premise four to be self-evident - all
things considered, a political system which is more legitimate and has a stronger right to political power should be
preferred.

The first objection to the argument attacks premise two, arguing that LRE does not have a fair political procedure it
neglects a basic right of citizens - the right to an equal vote (Brennan, 2016a). Indeed, many supporters of
democracy see equal voting rights as necessary for a fair political process (Brennan, 2017; Freeman, 2000).

However, this objection can be refuted as indeed equal voting power is not a basic right. As Brennan (2016a) argues,
what distinguishes voting rights from basic rights - the right to freedom of thought, the right to basic education, etc.
- is that while the latter primarily impact an individual’s own liberty, the former primarily impacts others. As such,
the right to vote is accompanied by some further responsibility - the need to exercise it competently (Illing, 2018).
The existence of such a responsibility is intuitive - for instance, given that the decisions of a jury influence the liberty
of the accused, almost anyone would agree that the jurors have a responsibility to act competently and informedly,
and if they neglected this responsibility, that they should lose their right to judge (Brennan, 2016a; Illing, 2018). The
same holds for voting rights, as political decisions, determined by voting, have a significant impact on the wellbeing
of members of society (Brennan, 2016a). Thus, it follows that voting power cannot be a basic right - something given
to citizens equally, independent of any other circumstances - but rather should depend on individuals’ ability to
meet the accompanied responsibility of making informed decisions (Illing, 2018). Therefore, with equal voting rights
not being a basic right, they are not required for a fair political process, and thus the above objection fails.

The second objection - the demographic objection - attacks premise one, arguing that epistocracy may lead to more
unjust policy outcomes than democracy (Estlund, 2003; Brennan, 2017). However, the objection works only if we
relax our assumption that outcome preferences are similar across the population, which we shall do arguendo. It is
argued that as some ‘advantaged groups’ are on average more knowledgeable than ‘disadvantaged groups’, under
plural voting, ‘advantaged groups’ will be overrepresented and ‘disadvantaged groups’ will be underrepresented in
terms of voting power1 (Brennan, 2017, p.54). Thus, as advantaged groups are self-interested, policy outcomes will
only reflect advantaged groups’ outcome preferences and will be unjust (Brennan, 2017). Conversely, as
democracy’s electorate accurately reflects society, policy outcomes will meet society’s outcome preferences more
strongly and will be more just.

This objection can however be refuted, as disadvantaged groups are indeed more strongly underrepresented in
democracy, meaning that epistocracy achieves more just political outcomes (Brennan, 2017). Low information
voters, which tend to comprise society’s disadvantaged groups, generally do not have policy preferences matching
their outcome preferences (Brennan, 2017). Given that this does not hold for high information voters, which tend to
be the advantaged groups, and given that voting in democracy is based on policy, disadvantaged groups’ outcome
preferences are also underrepresented in democracy (Brennan, 2017).

Conversely, the underrepresentation of disadvantaged groups’ outcome preferences in epistocracy is less severe.
Several empirical studies in political science (Funk, 2000; Markus, 1988; Miller, 1999; Rhodebeck, 1993, as cited in
Brennan, 2017, p.66) have repeatedly found the surprising result that voters are not fully self-interested, implying
that advantaged group voters to some extent internalise the outcome preferences of disadvantaged groups. Thus, in
both epistocracy and democracy the advantaged group voters want to help achieve disadvantaged group outcome
preferences, but only under epistocracy are the knowledgeable advantaged and disadvantaged group voters (i.e.
those that know which policies achieve disadvantaged group outcome preferences) powerful enough to realise the
outcome preferences of disadvantaged groups (Brennan, 2017). Consequently, epistocracy will have more just
outcomes than democracy (Brennan, 2017). An alternative way of refuting this objection - by using demographic
controls under epistocracy (Brennan, 2017) - cannot be considered further due to the word constraint.

In conclusion, this essay has argued that LRE’s combination of a fair political process with better and more just
political outcomes makes it have higher levels of political legitimacy and thus should be preferred over democracy.
Moreover, it has demonstrated how objections based on the need for equal voting rights for a fair political
procedure and unjust political outcomes due to demographic distortions under epistocracy can be refuted.

1
Note that this does not undermine the fairness of epistocracy’s political procedure (i.e. premise two), as
equal voting rights and thus equal representation are not required for such fairness.
However, it is important to note that we do not have any empirical evidence on epistocracies’ political performance
and thus currently we cannot determine whether a system with higher levels of voting power for more
knowledgeable voters would indeed be more politically legitimate and thus favourable. Nonetheless, as the
arguments in favour of better and more just performance under epistocracy outweigh the arguments against (i.e.
this essay has refuted the strongest of these objections - the ‘demographic objection’), assuming the truth of this
claim at the current point in time remains reasonable.

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