This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 21st, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Do you have a moral duty to vote and what makes a good voter versus a bad one and what are the reasons for

which it would be morally permissible for us to vote even if it is already

completely legal. Jason Brennan is author of the ethics of Voting. We spoke before a forum for the book held today.

You draw a distinction between the right to vote and the rightness of voting, most people don't draw that distinction.

Many people will claim that you can vote however you like because you have the right to vote.

But it's important to recognize what we mean by saying you have the right to do something.

When we say the other right to do something, we mean typically other people shouldn't interfere

with you doing it and other people shouldn't prevent you from doing it but it leaves open whether it's

morally permissible or not so there are things you have the right to do that you

shouldn't do I have the right to join a neo-Nazi political party but it would be

morally deplorable for me to do so I have have the right to write Mind Comp advocating the extermination of Jews,

but it would be morally deplorable for me to do so.

So it might be voting's like that too.

Maybe you have the right to do it.

People should allow you to vote, but you shouldn't.

You talk about people who it is morally permissible to have them vote and other people who morally shouldn't vote.

They should not involve themselves in the process.

Before you break down that category, how many, what share of the current voting eligible

population in the United States falls into one versus the other.

Yeah, if I don't really have hard and fast numbers but I would guess that it's going to

...