The question of who ought to possess the legal right to vote, or who should form the electorate, warrants serious attention. I defend posthumous voting: the view that deceased persons should be permitted to vote. I argue that posthumous events, including state actions, can affect the well-being of persons who are dead. This fact, I argue, warrants the inclusion of the dead in the electorate, citing parallels between the dead and certain enfranchised segments of the population.
There is an apparent tension between the claim that nothing of a person survives his or her death and the claim that events occurring after a person’s death can affect how well their life is faring. How can your life be faring better or worse after you have lost your life? One may assume that in order to be made better or worse off by an event, it must register in experience. This assumption is problematic. Consider the following thought experiment adapted from the philosopher Shelly Kagan. Contrast a pair of businessmen on their deathbeds with qualitatively identical mental lives, husbands and fathers who are equally happy with their respective marriages and relationships with their children. Unbeknownst to one of the men, his wife is having an affair and his children loathe him, only putting up with him for the sake of their inheritance. The felt experiences of the businessmen over the course of their lives are the same, yet how well their lives have fared will be judged radically differently. It is clear whose position we would rather be in at the end of our lives.
A similar line of reasoning can be advanced in support of the existence of posthumous harms and benefits. Consider two deceased matriarchs, both of whom, while alive, lived equally happy and fulfilling lives. The family of one of the matriarchs is fortunate enough to live happily. The family of the other matriarch is not. They are plagued by misfortune—illness, death, abject poverty, unhappiness. Neither matriarch lives to see what comes of their respective families. But as with the earlier thought experiment, it is clear whose position we would rather be in after our deaths. One matriarch is not only better off than the other, but far better off.
Not all posthumous benefits and harms support the notion of posthumous voting. In a democracy, voting is a right, not a privilege, which citizens possess in virtue of the fact that state actions can affect their interests or well-being. This is an oversimplification, as a general theory of who ought to constitute the electorate is elusive. Nonetheless, the formulation is a plausible starting point for such a theory. At the minimum, if state action cannot affect the well-being of the dead, then there is not much of a case for posthumous voting.
There are at least two reasons to maintain that the actions of the state are a source of posthumous benefits and harms. For one, the satisfaction of core preferences contributes to an individual’s well-being, whether or not the individual has knowledge of their satisfaction. Similarly, their dissatisfaction diminishes their well-being, whether or not it is known that preferences have gone unfulfilled. Reconsider the deceived businessman thought experiment. The reason the life of the deceived businessman is judged to contain a lower amount of well-being than the non-deceived businessman is in large part due to the fact it is assumed he wants a faithful wife and loving children. If all he cared about were his subjective experiences, while we may still rate his life as containing less overall well-being, the disparity in the assessments of the well-being of the two men would be much smaller. The fact that such preferences, ones for fidelity and familial love, go unsatisfied results in him being worse off. He would be better off had his preferences been realized. People have future-oriented preferences: about the environment, healthcare, the treatment of others, poverty, equality, and so forth. Caring about the well-being of fellow sentient beings, both human and animal, matter deeply to many people and are often at the core of a person’s identity. State decisions affect whether or not these preferences go unsatisfied. State action, therefore, posthumously affects the well-being of the dead. Secondly, recall that what happens to one’s family can affect how well one fares, whether one is alive for it or not. It follows that because the actions of the state can affect the well-being of one’s family, it can affect one’s well-being beyond the grave.
If death does not end the state’s ability to affect how well one fares, then why should death mean a loss of one’s voting rights? There must be a sizeable, morally-relevant difference between the living and the dead to warrant such a significant reduction in status. The claim that nothing can affect a person’s interests after they have died is no longer a viable candidate for a morally-relevant difference. Perhaps the next most promising candidate for such a difference is that while the dead can influence the political decisions of the living, say, through extant writings for example, their political attitudes can no longer be influenced by the living. It is a one-way street. However, the diminished capacity of the dead to be influenced by the living or to engage in the political debates occupying presently-living people cannot account for the discrepancy in moral status, at least not without a radical overhaul of the electorate. For, in Canada, many persons with intellectual disabilities (though not all), expatriates, the obstinate, and those who remain significantly or completely ignorant of politics possess the right to vote despite the fact that their willingness or ability to engage in politics is diminished at varying degrees, which is perhaps comparable to that of the dead.
In addition, opponents to posthumous voting may cite practical considerations to oppose the right of the dead to franchise. Among them are epistemic considerations (e.g., knowing how someone dead would vote) and concerns over abuse (e.g., preventing illegitimate voting on behalf of dead people).
In response, practical considerations should not normally result in the deprivation of moral rights. It would have been morally unjustifiable to deprive women, minorities, and the poor the vote simply because they possessed inadequate education on account of the systemic societal barriers they faced, a practical consideration stemming from a concern for informed voting. Secondly, foreknowledge of the ability to vote posthumously allows for detailed directions to be left behind, mitigating both epistemic considerations and concerns over abuse.
In short, it is the right of the dead to vote. Like the living, the actions of the state affect how well the dead fare. In addition, the dead are analogous to certain segments of living voters in important ways, undermining arguments for the existence of a sufficiently strong morally-relevant difference between the dead and the living.