I’m writing a paper for an edited anthology on political ethics. I haven’t started writing it yet; I’ve just written an abstract for their proposal. But the paper will defend the thesis that politicians may lie to stupid voters. Here’s some very first-pass thoughts about this.

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Politicians routinely lie to voters. Some such politicians act badly and should be held accountable for their lies. But might lying be obligatory or praiseworthy in some circumstances?

The duty to tell the truth is not unconditional. Rather, it’s a presumptive duty, one that can be trumped or overridden in certain circumstances, or one that might not apply in special circumstances. Consider the following case:

Murderer at the Door: You are hiding some of your friends in your basement, who are fleeing an ax murderer. The ax murderer appears at your front door and asks, “Excuse me, but by any chance, might you be hiding your friends in your basement? I’d like to murder them, if you don’t mind.”

Clearly you may lie in the murderer at the door case. (Despite what you may have heard, even Kant might agree to that.) You don’t owe the murderer the truth, and you don’t owe it to him to assist him in his evil conduct. Etc.

Now consider some variations:

The Evil Wizard: An evil wizard has misplaced his magic wand. You happen to know where it is. He says, “Hey, do you happen to know where my wand is? I need it to cast a magic spell that will curse the land with famine and disease.”

The Evil Wizard, Part II: An evil wizard has misplaced his magic wand. You happen to know where it is. He says, “Hey, do you happen to know where my wand is? I need it to cast a magic spell that will cause the economy to collapse, causing widespread pain and suffering.”

The Slightly Less Evil Wizard: An evil wizard has misplaced his magic wand. You happen to know where it is. He says, “Hey, do you happen to know where my wand is? I need it to cast a magic spell that will cause a number of stupid economic and political policies to be implemented, causing harm of various sorts to a great number of people.”

Lie, lie, lie!

The Sightly Less Evil Wizard Consortium: A group of evil wizards have magic wands. They plan to cast the “Implement bad policies that harm people” spell. However, they can’t remember what the words are. You can either tells them the magic word are “Thrak  burzum, thrak mokum, thrak ufum!”–the correct words to the spell that causes suffering–0r you can lie and tell them the magic words are “Gellon ned i gelir i chent gin ned i lelig”–which will cause happiness and joy, and also dupe the wizards into thinking they cast the evil spell.

Again, lying seems admirable, or, in fact, obligatory.

Now, suppose we replace the evil wizards consortium with voters, and rather than having magic spells, they have votes. Does anything change?

You might say, well, sure, obviously. After all, it’s permissible for voters to do as they please. But that claim doesn’t stand up to scrunity. Most citizens of most democratic countries have a moral obligation not to vote. Not only that, but there’s a good case to be made in favor of legally forbidding them from voting. (It also turns out one of the strongest objections to that claim fails, as I argue in my chapter in this book.)

Of course there are lots of objections that I’ll consider in the actual paper, but this is enough for now. My point here is just to say that if there is a duty not to lie to voters, it must be because voters are in some way entitled to act like murderers at the door or evil wizards, when murderers at the door and evil wizards are not. (And, not only that, but you are forbidden from stopping them from acting badly.)

UPDATE: In fact, I’m making the case against lying to voters harder than it seems. The problem is that the above thought experiments present voters as intentionally malicious. But while some voters are intentionally malicious, most aren’t. Instead, consider a final case:

The Well-Meaning but Stupid Wizard Consortium: A group of stupid but nice wizards want to cast the “Implement good policies that help people” spell. To cast this spell, they write the words to the spell on a scroll, and then need to scroll to be placed in the fires of Mount Doom. Being nice but stupid, the mistakenly write down the words “Thrak  burzum, thrak mokum, thrak ufum!” But these are actually the words to a spell that causes suffering. You could try to explain to them that these are the wrong words, but you know they’re too stupid to ever realize their mistake. They ask you to deliver the spell to Mount Doom. However, your have the opportunity to promise to deliver their spell, but then lie, and in fact switch out the spell with the correct words, which are “Gellon ned i gelir i chent gin ned i lelig.”

Lie, lie, lie!