A Defense of Poll Taxes

• In Event: Democracy in the Post-Truth, Post-Knowledge Era

Abstract

Recent criticisms of democracy have come from two opposite directions. Both concern voting. On the one hand, democracy has been criticized for failing to be sufficiently epistemic. That is, it simply does not produce good enough outcomes. The reasoning why proceeds as follows. Citizens are radically ignorant about most political issues. These very citizens are responsible for electing representatives who themselves are still quite ignorant about political issues. The result of ignorant citizens electing ignorant representatives is vastly sub-optimal policy decisions. Thus, the critic maintains that an epistocratic institutional alternative – one that places some sort of meritocratic prerequisite on enfranchisement – should be considered. The general worry about epistocracy, though, is that it excludes too many individuals from the electorate. On the other hand, democracy gets criticized for failing to be sufficiently representative of the citizenry. This is because democracy is subject to seizure by a dominant demographic group. In the most recent presidential election, one might think of white males in the rust belt as having disproportionate influence in the election of Donald Trump. Thus, the critic maintains that formal measures be taken to ensure that all perspectives receive an equal chance of being heard. The general worry about making democracy more representative and inclusive is that it potentially increases the number of uninformed and perhaps intolerant views in the voting body given the actual views of the citizenry. Notice that, in essence, the first criticism is that democracy is too egalitarian and the second criticism is that democracy is not egalitarian enough.

These criticisms can be reformulated as desiderata that a theory of collective decision-making should satisfy. Call the first desideratum the epistemic desideratum which holds that allowing citizens to participate in elections should tend towards the production of substantively good or correct outcomes. If a collective decision-making mechanism (say, an election) tends to produce bad or at least worse than random outcomes, then that type of collective decision-making mechanism would fail to satisfy the epistemic desideratum. Call the second desideratum the egalitarian desideratum which holds that any citizen subject to the authority of a governing body should have a fair say in determining the particular governing structure over her. If a collective decision-making mechanism prevents some subset of the citizenry from having a fair say in the collective decision-making process, then that type of collective decision-making mechanism would fail to satisfy the egalitarian desideratum.

Interestingly, most contemporary theorists – be they epistocrats or democrats – propose collective-decision-making mechanisms that satisfy only one of the two desiderata. This essay presents a way of satisfying both. The way of doing so, I argue, is through instituting a poll tax – a tax paid at the poll in order to be allowed to vote. Though poll taxes have a very sordid history, it is crucial to distinguish between how they have been versus how they could be instituted. This paper is a project in the latter.

A poll tax can satisfy the epistemic desideratum by altering the incentive structure for the electorate. If a poll tax were instituted, then there is reason to think that the number of voters would decrease, thereby increasing the influence each individual voter has. The key to satisfying the epistemic desideratum, then, is to show how a poll tax would increase the likelihood of the resulting subset of voters being correct. One reason the epistemic ability of the voting public is likely to improve is that a poll tax dis-incentivizes ambivalent, uninformed voters from participating. Even if those willing to pay the poll tax are not universally epistemically better than the average member of the current electorate, there is reason to think that the median ability will raise with a poll tax because the very bottom epistemic tier will no longer participate as a result of the increased cost. In short, a poll tax would not turn water into wine, but rather trim the fat (and there is a lot of fat for the trimming).

A poll tax can also satisfy the egalitarian desideratum by remaining democratic and allowing any individual that is willing to pay the poll tax to vote. The details of how to set the poll tax will depend on a host of empirical contingencies. Theoretically, what is important is that the poll tax not be so high that low income earners are entirely excluded and not be so low that it is trivial such that the incentive structure of prospective voters do not change. This points in favor of some sort of poll tax that is proportional to income earned.

Thus, a poll tax on voting in a democracy offers a compelling and underexplored alternative as it can satisfy both the epistocratic and egalitarian desiderata.

Author

• Jeff Carroll, University of Virginia