Who gets to decide? — Little Thinker

Voting is a way of deciding things together - but it can also be a way of letting a majority walk over a minority. Every ‘we decided’ hides the question: who counts as part of we?

Hannah Arendt looked at how something like this gets out of hand. A crowd does not need evil people. It needs people who stop asking questions and hand their judgement over to someone else’s words.

So a fair system needs two things at once: a way to decide, and a limit on what the deciders may do. Both halves are needed. Take away the limit and voting becomes a way of formalising a robbery.

Try it

Hold a fair election about something with real stakes and a real minority - what game to play, what to cook. Before voting, write down two things the majority is not allowed to do to the losing side. See if the vote feels different afterwards.

What do you think?

Do you think there is a right answer to this question?

Talk about it

Should a majority be able to decide everything?
Is it fair to give some people more say because they know more?
Who should be allowed to vote?

Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make

Voting settles it. Most people agreed.
Then ask who counted as most people. Every vote has a boundary; the interesting politics is in where it is drawn.
Someone has to decide. That's just how groups work.
True. The question is not whether there is a decider but what limits the deciding — and whether the ones being decided about have any way to object.
If a majority can't do everything, the minority rules.
Limits on a majority are not the same as a minority ruling. The majority still decides almost everything; it just cannot take certain things from people.

What other philosophers think

Hannah ArendtPower is not one person's strength; it belongs to a group acting together. Which is why it disappears the moment people stop agreeing to it.
John Stuart MillFeared the tyranny of the majority — a vote can be a way of letting most people walk over the rest.
PlatoWould rather the people who understand the good were in charge. The obvious reply is: how do you choose them, and how do you remove them?
Mary WollstonecraftPointed out that half the population were excluded from deciding anything, and that calling that arrangement free is a misuse of the word.

If you want to go further

On Liberty — John Stuart Mill1859. The argument against the tyranny of the majority, from a man who was also a majority-rule liberal.
On Violence — Hannah ArendtShort and bracing: power, strength and violence are three different things.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman — Mary Wollstonecraft1792. The first sustained argument that excluding women from deciding empties the word freedom.

Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.