Should dogs be citizens?

ZB: What about rights like voting and free speech?

WK: I would back up a bit. We need to think about what the purpose of these rights are.

In the case of the right to vote, the idea is twofold. Voting is, first of all, a way of making sure that our interests get counted in the public good. Because we’re members of society, we have a right for our interests to be included in the common good, the national interest, whatever you call it. Secondly, it’s a way for individuals to be active in shaping the common rules that we live under. Habermas calls this “coauthoring the laws that govern us.”

We need to see voting as a mechanism to fulfill these deeper ideas. The right to vote doesn’t apply to animals, but the deeper ideas behind them do. So we need to find mechanisms that ensure their interests are counted in determining the public good. And we need a way for them to have a say in matters that affect them. It won’t be through voting, so we need to find other ways of soliciting and responding to their preferences.