Citizenship and Voting Rights: Should Resident Aliens Vote?

The disenfranchisement of non-citizens in democratic governments is close to universal. In this article this state of affairs is critically examined from the vantage point of the meaning of the democratic criterion of inclusion. The major difficulty for any such endeavour is the apparent vagueness and ambiguity of that criterion. Two distinct interpretations are distinguished, the principle of membership and the all affected principle. The argument is made that only the all affected principle provides a coherent account of who should be included in the demos. More importantly, the observation is made that on any reasonable interpretation of the “all affected” the right to vote in national elections for resident aliens follows. Thus, the current practice of exclusion is found to be fundamentally at odds with the basic understanding of the democratic idea.