Tomorrow is a big election as potentially control of both houses is on the line. But why vote? There is something known as the “paradox of voting,” which questions why a rational voter would bother voting at all. The reasoning is that any particular voter is incredibly unlikely to influence the outcome of the election. So the marginal benefit from voting would seem to be much lower than the cost of taking time off from work, driving to the polling place, etc.
There are quite a few things wrong with this logic. For starters, voters are of course not rational (that’s both the good news and the bad news) – after all, if they were, lotteries wouldn’t exist either. But even for a rational voter, there are good arguments for voting.
First, there are some calculations that show that the chances to influence the vote may actually be significantly higher than simplistic calculations suggest.
Second, the voting paradox is really a type of prisoners’ dilemma situation. If all the members of one’s party made the same “optimal” choice then no one would show up and the candidate wouldn’t get elected. So in game theory terms going to vote supports an alternative equilibrium – and seeing how elections are not a one-shot game but a repeated game, the benefits from maintaining the “everyone votes” equilibrium are quite high.
Third, and this comes back to lotteries, there is an emotional component to voting. In lotteries there is an emotional gain from participating in the potential of winning a great fortune. In voting the emotional gain will be different for different people. For me it is the knowledge that voting is central to the process of a representative democracy and I feel good about participating.
In the current election there is a special reason to go vote. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which permitted corporations to spend on political advertising, an unprecedented amount of money has been spent to influence this election. I believe that the Supreme Court’s decision was misguided (it did overturn significant precedent) and the more sane people go to vote, the less this spending will matter.
