Ethical Voting

Assistant Professor Jason Brennan from Brown University wrote an interesting article in the Globe and Mail this morning on the responsibility of voters. I thought there would be value in repeating some of the points he made. The following is a paragraph from his article which I believe summarizes the points he makes about an ethical approach to voting.

“Voters face some choices. They can form their beliefs about politics in a self-indulgent way. They can ignore evidence and form policy preferences based on what they find emotionally appealing. They can treat voting as a form of self-expression and ignore what damage they do. Or they can be good citizens. They can form their policy preferences by studying social scientific evidence about how institutions and policies work, and by using reliable methods of reasoning to study the issues. They can work to overcome their personal and ideological biases and choose in a smart, thoughtful way.”

So as a first step for occupational therapists to make thoughtful decision in this current election, you may want to check out the various political parties political platforms.

Here are the URLs:
Conservative Party of Canada - http://www.conservative.ca/
Liberal Party of Canada- http://www.liberal.ca/issues/
New Democratic Party of Canada- http://www.ndp.ca/platform
Green Party of Canada- http://greenparty.ca/issues
Bloc Québécois- http://www.blocquebecois.org/dossiers/campagne-2011/documents/EnoncePolitique.pdf