Social Theory and Practice

Volume 38, Issue 1, January 2012

Enfranchising Minors and the Mentally Impaired

This article advances three claims. The first is that the standard instrumentalist case for minimal age and sanity requirements for voting is weak and inconclusive in such a way that the evaluation of such requirements should be made exclusively on the basis of procedural fairness considerations. The second claim is that fairness requires the inclusion of all and only those persons who have the franchise capacity: the minimum necessary cognitive and moral powers to experience the benefits of enfranchisement. The third and final claim is that current age and sanity prerequisites for voting in most places fail to comply with the demands of fairness and ought to be revised.