Involuntary Voting

With the election swiftly approaching, each of the front-running candidates will likely be discussing and debating their stances on tax rates. Each candidate’s plan clearly differs on a number of issues, including individual income taxes, investment income tax rates, and tax breaks (Here’s a link to a fairly recent, straight-forward layout of each candidate’s policies: http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/07/news/economy/tax-obama-romney/ ).  In my mind, this issue seems to be at a crossroads  with Artistotle’s Distributive Justice.  The fact that citizens in different salary brackets pay different salary tax percentages suggests that we’ve agreed that an equitable system of taxation is better than an equal one.  I’ll start with the assumption that neither plan attains a perfectly equitable system of taxation. Though both strategies may be imperfect, the fact that their tax plans differ at all suggests that one plan should be more just than the other (unless you think perfect equitability would come from an exact mean of the two plans).  It might help if you think of justice in this case as being a point on a number line, where either extreme represents a violation of distributive justice in some way.  If you place a point on the number line for each candidate and allow that point to represent the sum effect of all of their tax stances, one of the candidates must necessarily be closer to perfect equity (again, unless the two points are equidistant on opposite sides of the most just position).

When viewing this in the light of Distributive Justice, the situation is almost disturbing. One candidate must necessarily have an objectively more just plan for taxation, and since the other candidate’s constituents wouldn’t voluntarily do an injustice to themselves, why are they voting for that person?  Assuming that a whole legion of voters aren’t maliciously attempting to benefit from an unfair tax system, why wouldn’t we hold the other candidate’s voters responsible for an injustice? What is the issue that allows them to escape from such responsibility? It’s clearly the agent’s decision who to vote for. Are they not armed with enough knowledge to realize that their candidate’s tax plan is less just? Perhaps they are being coerced into accepting a less just tax strategy through the candidates’ stances on other issues (I‘m thinking something along the lines of a religious person not being able to accept the ideas of abortion and homosexual marriage or a low-income family not being able to accept the repeal of the Healthcare Reform Act.)? Regardless of the specific cause, it would seem that a population of voters are involuntarily voting for a less just system of taxes. Should such a situation be allowed to arise in politics?

I think in some cases, a voter realizes that one tax system would have a greater benefit to them, regardless of how equitable it is. These people may actually be committing an injustice.  I don't believe this is the case with the majority of people, however.  I think many people are simply coerced into a particular vote due to other issues at stake, or they don't have an intimate knowledge of what an equitable system would look like.

What do you think? It's not hard to imagine this general idea being applied to other political issues, which could mean that "involuntary voting" is a systematic occurrence in our political system.