VOTE [A] GRANDMA'S VOICE : MASTER GLOBAL LETTER

ANYONE MAY SEEK -and act on- advice about how to vote. That includes asking other people how they have voted and choosing to do likewise.

If your grandmother is still able to check the boxes and sign the ballot as an expression of her choices, she's just doing what anybody else does. Under those circumstances, she's entitled to vote with your assistance.

If she doesn't understand what she's doing, though, she isn't really voting; voting is the expression of political choice, and it would be wrong to record a vote that didn't reflect her actual choices.

What to do when it's simply unclear whether she's expressing a view? Various states in the US exclude citizens from voting when they are under guardianship or have been judged to be incompetent, but it won't do to shut out people with mild cognitive impairments.

After all there's a great distance between the ideal of civic responsibility [ in which you reflect carefully on how an electoral outcome would affect the district, the state, the country, the world] and what you're entitled to do when voting.

Political scientists can marvel at what so-called low information voters don't know without thinking such people should be disenfranchised.

When the situation is hazy, my inclination would be to err on the side of helping someone to vote, because voting is such a central form of civic participation.

And for your grandmother, as for so many people, the simple act of voting may have greater significance than whatever chances it conveys. 

The Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks Kwame Anthony Appiah, '' The Ethicist.''