Should People Who Know More Get More Votes?

Political decisions require knowledge, so one proposal is tempting: people who pass a test of public affairs should receive extra votes. In Considerations on Representative Government, John Stuart Mill defended “plural voting”, hoping to give more votes to the better educated while still leaving every group with a voice. Modern arguments for epistocracy pose the same difficulty more directly: if incompetent decisions can harm everyone, why not give greater influence to those who know more?

The problem is that a knowledge test does not merely measure competence; someone must decide what counts as knowledge. The ability to explain a budget is not the same as understanding the lived burdens of care, housing or disability. A single test also struggles to measure honesty in judgement, conflicts of interest or willingness to hear counter-evidence. More importantly, voting is not only a device for finding technical answers. It also distributes the standing to help decide common rules. Giving fewer votes to people who fail a test changes their political status.

My view is that expertise should carry epistemic weight without automatically becoming extra political rank. Climate models, bridge safety and public-health evidence should be explained and tested by qualified experts. Choices about values, the distribution of risk and the boundaries of rights must still be justified publicly to all citizens. A better institution does not pretend that every opinion is equally reliable; it combines expert evidence, disclosure of interests, public deliberation and equal votes within one process.

Sources: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5669
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democracy/