 Despite these doubts about the working classes, Mill regarded himself as their friend (Autobiography 274; see Ten 1998). Mill did not blame the working classes for what he saw as their lesser competence, and he did not regard their backwardness as a natural or permanent condition. He thought that improved access to quality primary and secondary education and greater scope for civic participation would gradually improve normative competence in the working classes (PPE IV.vii.2). Insofar as this is true, the qualification to Mill’s commitment to political equality, represented by his scheme of weighted voting, is temporary and transitional. In this sense, weighted voting is not part of ideal political theory in the way that (near) universal suffrage and proportional representation are.