Are you more likely to cast the deciding vote or die on your way to the polls?

http://www.jeremyscheff.com/2012/09/vote-and-die/

by yummyfajitas • 13 years ago

25 61 13 years ago

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

This is one of those things I wish I had a good answer for. People try to make that point, "my vote will never be the swing vote". Yet it is intuitively obvious that if nobody votes, or if only the really motivated people vote, results will not reflect the constituency. Unfortunately I don't know how to argue it on an individual basis.

rottencupcakes• 13 years ago

People would probably vote if they felt less disenfranchised by our plurality voting, the electoral college, and our two party system.

zenogais2• 13 years ago

Perhaps this points towards a larger scale failure in modern forms of "representative" democracy. Since opting out is the only alternative to arbitrarily picking between unsatisfying options - there's no "none of the above" box on a ballot sheet - it makes sense that voting becomes skewed towards those special interest groups irrationally motivated enough to actually vote. Notice that based on this evidence not voting is actually an entirely rational decision.

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

there's no "none of the above" box on a ballot sheet

I find myself wondering if you've voted before. You can write in anyone you like.

baddox16• 13 years ago

How would the "none of the above" option solve anything? An eligible voter not voting is essentially a "none of the above" vote anyway. You can bet that the perceived legitimacy of a government would start to dwindle if the number of voters dropped below some threshold.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

>Unfortunately I don't know how to argue it on an individual basis.

That's because you can't.

If your goal is to feel like you were part of the process and feel good about doing your civic duty or whatever, go vote. It might take you a few hours.

If you actually want to have an impact, though, you should use those few hours to instead create a short video explaining your stance, upload it to YouTube and share it on Facebook. If you get 100 views and 5 people change their mind as a result, you made a five times bigger impact than you would have if you had spent that time casting your own vote.

In other words, among all the possible ways of making a difference, voting is the second worst (the absolute worst being not doing anything).

sliverstorm5• 13 years ago

If you get 100 views and 5 people change their mind as a result, you made a five times bigger impact than you would have if you had spent that time casting your own vote

... well, assuming those five people vote. ;)

michael_fine• 13 years ago

That's the problem, you can't make a convincing argument on an individual basis without invoking altruism, because this seems like an example of tragedy of the commons.

jerf• 13 years ago

Relative vote totals count. A legislator elected 80-20% will act in a certain way, a legislator elected 50.1-49.9% will act in quite a different way. Today, you can see this written into news stories about Obamacare affecting "vulnerable Democrats", but it's always something; the 50.1%-er is always looking behind their back.

Mind you, this still doesn't mean that "your vote counts" in a huge way or anything, but it is false that the only vote that counts is the one that swings the election. Votes do not merely choose whether Person A or Person B "wins"... it also imbues the winner with more or less power and flexibility.

baddox16• 13 years ago

Your individual vote doesn't change the noticeable relative vote totals any more than they change the overall result of the election.

Hn111111• 13 years ago

It's like a long-time smoker saying that they have no reason to not smoke that next cigarette because it's not like that one cigarette is going to kill them.

Cederfjard• 13 years ago

Well it probably won't, right? I too find this hard to reason about, whether regarding voting or cigarettes. Perhaps I'm just thick. Is there a concept in, say, game theory that deals with this?

baddox16• 13 years ago

It's not like that at all. Not smoking "that next cigarette," which we could define as not smoking any cigarette in the next 30 minutes, is a very important decision that has a very direct impact on whether they will quit long-term.

justinpombrio• 13 years ago

You can't argue it on an individual basis, because it might not be "rational" on an individual basis: that is, taking all things into account, the expected "goodness" of the world in which you go to vote might not be greater than the expected "goodness" of the world in which you don't -- even if you strongly prefer one of the candidates. That's a pretty self-centered way to view the world, though.

baddox16• 13 years ago

In this context, there's no real way to break out of what you call "self-centered." Even if you're voting on a referendum to provide aid to some group of impoverished people, the time spent and risk incurred by going to the polling center is almost certainly not worth the impact your vote will make.

tshile• 13 years ago

You point out that moderates and independents not participating in primaries gives the extremes more say over the candidates everyone else gets to choose from.

For general elections you use the same style argument - the more normal people excuse themselves from the equation the larger the impact of the extremes.

baddox16• 13 years ago

But still, your individual impact is probably too small to justify the physical act of voting.

baddox16• 13 years ago

There's not really a "good answer" for it. It's pretty straightforward: voting is only rational if you derive utility directly from the act (and not just from the idea that you're influencing the election, since you're probably not).

And that doesn't even get into the analysis of whether time spent researching politicians, referenda, etc. to be an educated voter is worth it, given that your vote has such a tiny influence, and the positive influence on your life if your desired policies get implemented is probably very tiny. People often point to market failures like the failure to produce public goods as a key reason for the necessity of government, but governments themselves (at least, republics/democracies) are public goods, and I see no reason why adding another layer of public goods would actually help.

Peaker3• 13 years ago

I have an unusual opinion about this, that I can only convince a tiny minority of :)

I see the brain here as a completely mechanical thing. Your brain is very similar to other people's brains, and their sets of inputs to their brain is also very similar to yours.

The decision you make is actually a physical process, the same physical process that happens in many brains all over the country.

Whatever this physical process yields in your case, it will yield in all the other cases that are similar enough.

So when you decide to vote, or not vote, you're not only deciding for yourself. You are also, in effect, making a collective decision with all those similar to you -- about what you will all do.

This is somewhat similar to someone who decides to skip the gym just "this one time". Of course, the next time he planned to go, he skips it again. His brain and inputs (sets of considerations) are almost identical in all cases -- so whatever he decides in one of those circumstances is also a decision for the rest of the cases too.

dmm• 13 years ago

Tell them:

Your vote doesn't matter in exactly the same sense that nothing you do matters. You could die right now and the world would go on. Yet your actions do matter. If people in our society just went around punching strangers, that would suck. The fact that you don't go around punching strangers is a small and important part of that.

baddox16• 13 years ago

Your vote doesn't matter in exactly the same sense that nothing you do matters.

Except that the things you do tend to matter a lot in your own life and the lives of your friends, family, coworkers, etc., and since virtually everything you experience is related to these people and interactions between them, it's very rational to spend time deciding what to do. That said, it's perfectly rational to vote if you derive direct utility from the act of voting.

shittyanalogy3• 13 years ago

No one cell in your body is keeping you alive. Why do you need any cells?

baddox16• 13 years ago

Username checks out.

jlgreco2• 13 years ago

How far out of your way do you go to protect a single randomly chosen cell?

You may be made of cells, but no one cell is worth your attention. Only in situations where you have the opportunity to save or destroy a very large number of cells is it worth your time to do so.

Maybe your analogy is shitty and doesn't say anything about voting, or maybe the point here is that voting is pointless unless you actually enjoy doing it, though campaigning might be worth your time if you find a candidate you actually believe in.

shittyanalogy3• 13 years ago

Tell them:

    Personal commitment to democracy. 
    Symbolism is important.
    Not voting is the same as voting.
    Inspiring other people.
    Adding to the percentages.
    Understanding the system better.
    Good habits etc...

carsongross3• 13 years ago

Or:

    Voting legitimizes whatever atrocities your government commits
    Symbolism is important: withdraw consent
    Voting is the same as not voting, but with more time wasted
    Dispiriting to other people, who have to tolerate the charade
    Not materially adding to any percentages
    Legitimizing the system by submitting to it's theatrical demands
    Thinking independently etc.

baddox16• 13 years ago

If not voting is the same as voting, then why not choose the option that doesn't require me to take time off from work and/or drive somewhere out of my way?

jacalata2• 13 years ago

Tragedy of the Commons?

sailfast• 13 years ago

A more rational explanation could be: this vote will significantly and directly impact your local elections (school board president, Sheriff, alderman, whatever) which does actually impact you whether you believe it or not.

When you go to the polls, then just happen to vote for national candidate or your state candidates because they're there. If that fails, I always fall back to: it is your duty as a citizen to make your voice heard, and if you don't vote you are abdicating your right to complain later or engage in any sort of civic discussion.

Cogito2• 13 years ago

The best analogy I have ever heard goes something like:

    Everybody knows that one piece of trash won't make
    the streets dirty. So what does it matter if I litter?
    On the other hand,  if everyone littered, the streets
    would certainly be dirty.

If I recall correctly, I heard this in a discussion on the role of social stigma in optimising game theory situations for the common good.

aamar• 13 years ago

Practically every time you cast a vote, you're voting on multiple races, propositions, etc. The chance of casting a tie-breaking vote in a local election (say for City Council) is probably better than 1 in 10k. If you have several such questions, then there are some tangible odds that your vote may make a difference.

Keep in mind that in those rare cases where a race is one by one vote, _everyone_ who voted for the winning side cast a deciding vote.

carsongross3• 13 years ago

AndrewKemendo• 13 years ago

That's kind of an extreme leap. I read this back in 2005 and it impacted my thinking a lot. After delving deeply into anarcho-capitalism and the whole "Mises" thing however it's very much a long shot political philosophy that doesn't seem to understand how humans work - typical then of Economists (Full disclosure my BS was in Economics).

I would instead recommend Bryan Caplan's "The myth of the rational voter."

carsongross3• 13 years ago

I'd say that the anarcho-capitalists have a better conception of how individual humans work than any of the current economic schools. At least they don't pretend to understand how humans value things: value is subjective.

I agree, however, that anarcho-capitalism is a long shot politically, and I'm not particularly satisfied with how they address externalities like pollution or common services like law enforcement.

I've settled on parvumianism (to coin a neologisim): in favor of small political units in which the appropriate political mechanism can be chosen and meaningfully consented to.

Thiz• 13 years ago

Buy a lottery ticket on your way back from the polls.

That way you have a higher chance of changing your life.

r00fus• 13 years ago

Rebuttal via recent news [1]. The key here is down ticket races, especially off-cycle, your vote has a big impact.

"The razor-thin margin between Herring and Obenshain, which has fluctuated consistently since Election Day, stood Wednesday morning with Herring carrying a 106-vote lead on his opponent."

Given VA's election turnout (for this seat) of 2M voters (only 25% of the population of 8.7M), this is a hairline-thin vote split. Electoral history in the USA is rife with these kinds of very small splits. See MN: Coleman vs. Franken, for example.

[1] http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/11/va-attorney-general-rac...

baddox16• 13 years ago

106 votes is still enough that your vote wouldn't have changed the outcome. Even a 2 vote spread means it wouldn't have been worth your time.

gclaramunt4• 13 years ago

The electoral college is the crappiest form of democracy I know. (I find ironic that the US presents itself as "the champion of democracy" with that system) but if you don't vote you relinquish your right to decide. (and your right to complain too)

Are you more likely to cast the deciding vote or die on your way to the polls?

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