Do you have a right to complain on things you didn't or hadn't taken action on that directly affects you?

Question

This question came from the Politics SE but I was told it didn't fit their format, so I'm bringing this here because I want to hear answers based on morality.

So this always comes up when I'm talking to people I know. I complain about this politician getting elected but because I missed voting because the voting precinct wasn't there on the day of the elections, thus I failed to vote. Their response is "you have no right to complain because you didn't vote".

Do people that didn't vote have a right to complain about who got elected and the way they run things? Is there something in philosophy that is an example of this, which is complaining about the things you did not partake in but directly influences you?

Answer 1

i take you to mean that if you complain in this instance your complaint is in some sense invalid, not that you have no right to express the complaint. of course logically speaking this is a form of ad hominem.

so perhaps you are asking if no-one has a duty to act on your complaint, because you didn't vote. likewise perhaps no-one has a duty to treat my cancer because i didn't stop smoking, even-though i will die painfully without treatment that is available.

but IMHO even if it is accepted that a democratic vote can and does define our actual moral rights, you must have the same rights however you voted [or didn't]. how wrong would it be e.g. to say that anyone who votes for the winning party has extra rights or privileges?

i'm aware i didn't completely answer your question but HTH a little.

Answer 2

You are not obligated to cast a vote if don't believe in supporting any of the candidates. You commonly hear people refer to choosing the lesser of two evils. In the democracy I know everyone has the right to government, so if you don't agree with any of the decision makers that are running for government you don't have to vote for them. You have every right to complain about the lot of them, and even establish your own political party that promotes your views, write your own policy, and run for government. You should look at how many political parties there are in Canada, some of them are hilarious. Last year some of the parties that were recognized in the provincial elections in my home province included; the Communist, Excalibur, Marijuana, Platinum, Unparty, Vision, & Work Less parties.

Next time your friends tell you that you don't have the right to complain, tell them that they don't have the right to silence or censor your opinions.

Answer 3

Of course you have a right to complain! The real question, I think, is if you have a right to complain on things you willingly refrained from taking action on. If you hadn't voted at all willingly (excluding not voting because of equal preference for all candidates), then I would agree that you have no real right to complain, but to say that you have no right to complain where you didn't even have a chance to vote is like saying that the Russian people under Stalin had no right to complain about the government because they didn't elect Stalin as their leader.

Answer 4

Do people that didn't vote have a right to complain about who got elected and the way they run things? Is there something in philosophy that is an example of this, which is complaining about the things you did not partake in but directly influences you?

The meaning of "you don't have the right to complain because you didn't vote" is unclear but on just about any reading it is wrong.

You have the right to free speech in the sense that nobody should stop you from saying or writing stuff by force. This is not conditional on voting.

If you think the government is doing bad things and that voters chose a bad candidate, then you are either right or wrong. In either case, whether your opinion is any good has nothing at all to do with whether you voted. So your vote or lack thereof has nothing at all to do with how your opinion should be assessed.

Answer 5

You might have not voted under the assumption that all available candidates are reasonably decent human beings, and electing any of them would lead to a reasonably good outcome. When that assumption is wrong and the candidate that the majority voted for turns out to be Hitler jr. , you have the right to complain. So does everyone who voted against him, and everybody who voted for him and didn't realise what the person would be like once elected.

Of course it might turn out that all of you just lost their right to complain...

Answer 6

Someone could have not voted because both politicians were equally bad in his/her prespective. Therefore they have the right tocomplain.

You could have even voted for a politican but later disagreed with some of their policies and want to complain about it.

In the more general case in philosphy I am not sure what is the answer.