Enfranchising Minors and the Mentally Impaired (Report‪)‬

I. Introduction The disenfranchisement of children and mentally impaired persons continues to be a matter of controversy in many countries around the world. Yet this is often thought to be a narrow policy issue of little interest for political philosophy. The exclusion of these classes of persons from the electorate strikes many as being philosophically settled at the core, though politically open at the margins. The growing literature on this subject, however, suggests that this conventional picture is controversial. Martha Nussbaum's recent call for a serious debate on the matter was long due, particularly given the standing of the franchise as the most emblematic of all political rights in a representative democracy. (1)