One

• Who should be allowed to vote?
• Does it matter to your answer that most of the Framers thought women could be citizens without being able to vote?
• Does it matter to your answer that most the authors of the Fifteenth Amendment thought that blacks should be able to vote, but not otherwise be fully equal to whites?
• At what age should children be able to vote?
• Should seniors be able to vote?
• The senile?
• Others with severe mental dysfunctions?
• Convicted felons?
• Should you be able to renounce the right to vote?
• How long should recent immigrants have to wait before being able to vote?
• Does it bother you that residents of Washington, D.C. aren't represented in Congress?
• People out of the country on Election Day -- yes or no?

Two

• How hard should it be to vote?
• Is it good enough to have a polling place every ten square blocks?
• Every hundred?
• Every thousand?
• How long a line is acceptable?
• Should we keep the polls open for a week to give people more chances?
• Should you be able to vote online, or is it better to have to make some effort, so that decisions are more deliberate?
• Do you think the butterfly ballots?
• If you think there is something wrong with the butterly ballot, what should we do about it now?
• Should hanging chads have been counted as votes?
• Dimpled chads?
• If it came to light that the ballot boxes from a particular city had been stolen, what should be done about it?
• Is it enough to have an intention to cast a particular vote, or do you have to succeed in some sort of arts and crafts task, too?
• How would you feel if you voted by folding a paper airplane and throwing it into one bin or another?

Three

• How strong is the obligation to vote??
• Should we pay people to vote.
• Should we punish them if they don�t?
• Should people who are involuntarily hospitalized on their way to the polling place be given a second chance?
• Is it their fault for not voting?
• Should people save the life of a child caught on the railroad tracks if it would take up so much time that they wouldn�t be able to make it to the polls before they closed?
• What if it were a puppy dog instead?
• A snail?
• Should you vote if it means taking off early from work?
• If it means losing your job because you took off early from work?
• Is it better to vote yourself or to drive two stuck-at-home seniors to the polls?

Four

• On what principles should you vote?
• How should you weight various issues in making your choice?
• Should those issues be different for different people?
• Is it morally acceptable to vote your pocketbook?
• If you think that people should (or should not) be allowed to hit their parents with planks, is it okay to cast your vote based soleley on a politician�s stance on the issue?
• Is it possible to vote irresponsibly?
• If so, what would voting "irresponsibly" mean?
• Is it irresponsible to vote for the candidate with better teeth?
• To vote by flipping a coin?
• Is it okay to vote for a candidate who has no hope of winning, to "send a signal"?
• Is it okay to vote for a ficus tree?
• To vote without watching the debates or reading up on the candidates?
• Was it ethical for Democrats to vote for McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries?
• What if they really wanted him to win the overall election?

Five

• Is voting enough?
• What about all those other things political theorists are always jabbering about?
• Is there an obligation to tell other people what you think?
• How loudly?
• Are you a bad person if you don�t submit op-eds to your town newspaper?
• If your answer to the previous question was "no," what if nobody did?
• Bob Putnam says that if you were a real citizen, you�d go join a bowling league; should you?
• Is it okay to brainwash people?
• What about bribing them?
• Cornering them in an airport until they run away?

Six

• Is it okay to spend money to influence an election?
• Is it right that Mike Bloomberg could spend millions and millions of dollars of his own money to become mayor?
• That Mark Green could spend millions and millions of other rich people�s money to not become mayor?
• Are you doing something bad when you send ten dollars to your cousin who�s running for dog-catcher?
• Ten thousand dollars?
• Would it make a difference if you sent in the money anonymously?
• Does it matter how the money is spent?
• Are attack ads better or worse than overnight polls?

Seven

• If you could subvert the political process, would you?
• If lobbyist friend offers to make any bill you want die in committee, is it wrong to take him up on the offer?
• What if it�s a leprechaun instead of a lobbyist?
• What if he offered to do it for ten thousand dollars? Does it make a difference if it�s a spending bill or a bill about family planning policy?
• Your local beat police chief offers not to enforce the no-hitting-your-parents-with-planks law if you slip him a twenty -- should you?
• Conversely, if he doesn't want to enforce the planks ordinance, do you have an obligation to make him enforce it?
• Is it ever right to take the law into your own hands?
• What if he and everyone else in your town � even the parents � agree that a little plank action is good now and then, but the feds just seem to disagree?
• Would your answer change if it were polygamy instead of hitting parents with planks?
• Assisted suicide?
• Abortion?
• Child pornography?
• Is it wrong to vote for a local dog-catcher candidate who promises to subvert the wrongheaded federal dog-catching statute?
• Is "subvert" even the right term to describe these interactions with the political process?

Eight

• What counts as fair play?
• If you surround Congress with tanks and it passes your bill, does it count?
• In what sense(s)?
• What if you surrounded their families with tanks?
• Is that different from surrounding some random people in some other country with tanks?
• What if you�re just fighting for independence from the warlords who control your country and you won�t stop fighting until the US government extends you diplomatic recognition?
• Was it wrong for Roosevelt to try to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court?
• Does it matter to your answer that the Supreme Court's size fluctuated in the nineteenth century?
• Was the Supreme Court on okay ground deciding Bush v. Gore?
• What if they decided to unseat Bush now and put Gore in instead?
• Was it okay for them to order Congress to seat Adam Clayton Powell?
• What if they decided to order Congress to unseat Fritz Hollings because they don�t like the cut of his jib?
• Would your answer change if Hollings were convicted of mail fraud?
• Second-degree murder?
• What, precisely do you think �high crimes and misdemeanors� are?
• Who should get to decide what they are?
• Is this the sort of thing you could put to a vote?
• What, if anything, would be wrong with a constitutional amendment saying that Joe Lieberman should be drawn and quartered and his children declared anathema unto the seventh generation, assuming it was passed and ratified according to Hoyle?

Nine

• When is it ethically defensible to break a democratically-decided law?
• If the state legislature says it�s illegal to teach slaves to read, what do you do?
• Would it matter if it were a voter initiative that enacted the law?
• If you think that slaves should be literate and choose to break the law, would you teach them to read publicly, or in secret?
• Should you fight those who attempt to enforce the law?
• What about trying to get them in trouble by tricking them into overstepping their boundaries as they enforce it?
• Hunger strikes?
• How about paying your taxes?
• What�s the difference between good respectable business expense deductions and bad evil offshore tax haven deductions?
• Is it okay to avoid taxes if your money is being spent on orbital mind-control lasers?
• What if it�s only a tiny fraction of your money?
• What if you object to your tax money being used to fund an expensive new stadium for the football team you don�t even like, anyway?

Ten

• How far do our obligations go in respecting other people�s systems of government?
• What if they don�t let women vote?
• If they board American ships on the high seas and press sailors into their navy?
• If they harbor terrorists?
• Which of these things would justify interfering with their system in any of the ways listed above?
• In which ways?
• Is it okay to rig elections?
• To tell them that the bombing will continue until they pass the laws we want?
• Is it more important to promote democracy or other interests?
• Should you pardon human rights criminals if it�ll mean they�ll give up their undemocratic hold on power?
• Can a population lose the right to self-determination?
• What would it take?
• How could they get it back?
• What do you do when Germany elects a Hitler?
• When Algeria elects an Islamic fundamentalist party and the military steps in to keep them from taking power?
• What if the Islamists had promised to suspend democracy in their platform?
• And in any case where you said �yes, we can do that to them,� would you also be okay with them doing it to us?

Meta

• Aren't all of these questions really the same question, deep down?
• What are the ethical obligations of living in a democracy?