Ethical Voting in Heterogenous Groups

Voting in large elections appears to be both ethically motivated and influenced by strategic considerations. One way to capture this interplay postulates a rule-utilitarian calculus, which abstracts away from voters' heterogeneity in the intensity of support (Feddersen and Sandroni 2006, Coate and Conlin 2004). I argue that this approach is limited when such heterogeneity is considered, because it implies that the intensity of preferences is irrelevant for participation, in contrast to the empirical evidence. I compare the rule-utilitarian framework with a different model of ethical voting, in which agents maximize their individual utility under a moral constraint given by a universalization principle. Such a model predicts instead higher turnout rates among voters with higher intensity of support, thus linking ethical motivation to the spatial theory of voting.