A hard case for the ethics of supported voting: Cognitive and communicative disabilities, and incommunicability

In this article, I explore the implications of three moral grounds for the justification of supported voting – respect as opacity, respect as equal status, and respect as political care. For each ground, I ask whether it justifies surrogate voting for voters unable to either communicate or give effect to their electoral judgments, due to some cognitive or communicative disability. (Henceforth: incommunicability cases.) I argue that respect as opacity does not permit surrogate voting, and equal status does not justify such support – although the latter account can make sense of the value loss involved in the persistent non-participation of individuals with cognitive and communicative disabilities. Finally, I argue that an account of supported voting based on the ethics of political care can accommodate a pro tanto moral permission to provide surrogate voting as a form of support in incommunicability cases, and it can account for the inclusive approach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to supported decision-making. However, I show that in incommunicability cases, what the political community and individual caretakers ultimately owe to adult fellow citizens as equal members of the political community is some adequate form of political care – but not necessarily surrogate voting.