In most democratic countries people with intellectual impairments are denied the right to vote in national elections. One important reason for this is that they are perceived as incapable of making independent political judgements and may thus fail to vote on the basis of their own preferences. Their exclusion is consequently defended by appeal to the need to protect the ‘integrity’ of democratic elections. In this article, this assertion is critically examined. The conclusion is that this argument does not hold sway once the connections between political equality and democratic elections have been clarified. Whilst political equality requires that elections are fair in the sense that everyone's preferences are given equal weight, fundamentally political equality also requires that everyone's opportunity to vote securely and without undue interference from others is recognised. Hence, as long as such opportunities have not been granted to people with intellectual impairments, they cannot consistently be excluded by appeal to the values of political equality.