No, voting isn't like being part of a firing squad

Another election year, another crop of posts about why people shouldn't vote. Among churchy bloggers, these often take the form of arguments about suspicion toward state power, questions about where our real citizenship lies, etc. Here's something different from libertarian philosopher Jason Brennan, who put out a book on the subject last year. At the Princeton UP blog, Brennan argues that people should only vote if they're well enough informed to "vote well":

The best available evidence indicates that most voters mean well, but are politically incompetent. . . . They owe it to the rest of us to abstain. Citizens have no duty to vote, but if they do vote, they must vote well, for what they justifiedly believe will promote good government.

There’s nothing morally wrong with being ignorant about politics, or with forming your political beliefs though an irrational thought processes—so long as you don’t vote.