optic: someone had a big rant yesterday about people who dont vote. i was tempted to point out what a waste of time voting is and suggest she give money instead, by why get into it
optic: giving money is the new voting imho
rich: voting matters in local politics
rich: imho
rich: and in tight races
optic: sure, the smaller the pool of voters the more likely your vote will count
optic: but even in a local race thats tight the probability that your 1 vote will make a difference is miniscule
optic: if you can magnify your vote by convincing others or getting them to turn out, a bit more. or magnify it by donating money for ads and gotv
optic: but 1 vote is pretty unlikely to matter
rich: that's a defeatist attitude
optic: nothing defeatist about the truth
chaircrusher: i think you're losing sight of the fact that if enough people decide their one vote doesn't matter, it starts really mattering?
optic: sure
optic: and if that happens i would make sure to vote
chaircrusher: like for anyone's vote to matter, everyone has to act as though their vote matters, even if statistically, in isolation, it demonstrably does not.
rich: the past few elections in my local neighborhood, the winner won by less than 1k votes
chaircrusher: out of how many
rich: like 25k
luna: what if that happens and hitler gets elected and were all dead and cant vote again
optic: well if everyone decided their vote mattered and voted, then the probability of your vote mattering would be even smaller. if everyone gave up and figured whats the point, then if you voted you might actually make a diff
chaircrusher: when i think of my neighborhood, i think of about 500 people tops
optic: 1k sounds like a tiny difference but still, without you it'd still be 999, or 1001. so still fairly unlikely you'll make a diff
chaircrusher: but hey i don't live in N to the Y to the C
rich: i said less than that
optic: but like i said, the smaller the pool, the more weight your vote has and the more likely you should be to vote
rich: i'd have to look up the exact numbers
chaircrusher: perkowitz you should form the 'can't win won't try' party
optic: even if its 100 vote differnce it's still unlikely you'll make a diff
optic: but if it makes you feel better, knock yerself out
optic: rationally deciding not to vote has nothing to do with whether or not you are interested or involved in politics kent
optic: you guys sure have very little grasp of basic math imho
optic: if i really wanted to get involved id give $100 to my chosen candidate(s), or work the phones or something
rich: so rationally, you would only deem it necessary to vote if you knew the outcome of the election beforehand and that your vote made the difference in an even election?
optic: no rich, i'm evaluating the probabilities
chaircrusher: i've given money to my guy
chaircrusher: repeatedly
optic: you can't know the outcome beforehand
rich: so given the probabilities, it is never worth voting in your view
optic: depends on the probabilities
chaircrusher: but you are also confusing statistical significance of an individual with the process as a whole.
rich: in what instance would it be worth voting
chaircrusher: the message is 'everybody should vote'
optic: but in most elections, the probability that you'd influence the result are tiny. so then you have to weigh, is it worth my tiny chance of making a difference to go to the trouble of voting? depends on how much trouble, how tiny the probability, and what its worth to you to have 1 result or the other
chaircrusher: voting is so easy it's stupid not to
chaircrusher: imho
rich: my opinion is that people who don't bother voting shouldn't complain about whoever gets elected
optic: the smaller the pool, the more influence you have, the more likely you should be to vote. also arguably, the most local elections are the ones that make the biggest diff to your day-to-day life
chaircrusher: sure
rich: i think i mentioned local elections are where they matter most
optic: im not arguing about who should or shouldn't complain. im just arguing about the tradeoff involved in voting, and pointing out that the cost/reward is usually crazy. people vote either because they dont understand the math or for other reasons, eg that it makes them feel good
optic: yes rich and i agreed with you. though even in your tiny local elections, the probabilities are low
chaircrusher: local elections are so poorly attended where i am that anyone who can motivate a few of their friends to call everyone they know and get them to vote they can win an election.
optic: now on to kent's argument
rich: i think given that you don't know the outcome of the local vote prior to the result, you can't assume that your vote doesn't matter
rich: unless you don't care about the outcome
optic: kent, i agree, it would be silly to, say, convince a large block of voters who think like you do to not vote. since that large block could possibly make a diff. eg if you convinced all those young obama voters to stay home, you might well sway an election. but that fact has zero to do with whether it's rational for you to vote personally. unless of course your not voting might cause other people to not do so.
optic: rich do you know what probabilities mean, or about cost/benefit analysis
optic: i assume at this point you are just acting dumb to annoy me
rich: i think you don't actually calculate the probabilities of a local election when you decide whether or not to vote
optic: christ
chaircrusher: so really what you're saying is that when candidates spend time and money to convince people to vote for them in order to win the election, they should add "of course in the individual case of each of you, it won't matter"
chaircrusher: vote for me but don't make the mistake of thinking your vote actually matters.
chaircrusher: i guess that's the starting point for politicians always lying -- their first lie is your vote matters.
optic: lets suppose your elections are so close, generally within 100 votes, that your probability of making a difference is 1/100. lets suppose that if your guy wins, you will pay $100 less in taxes this year, but otherwise it's the same. and lets suppose that, to vote, you have to walk 8 blocks and wait in line for 30 minutes. so the question is, is it worth a 1/100 chance of saving $100 to walk 8 blocks and wait in line for 30 minutes? thats an expected value outcome of $1. would you walk 8 blocks for $1?
optic: i wouldnt. now just take that stupid example and increase the complexity a bunch and thats the basic decision matrix for voting
optic: now i assume you, kent, are acting dumb to annoy me
rich: ok so a local 2006 election was decided by 18 votes for a state senator in my local district
rich: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/nyreg
optic: the candidate wants everyone to vote, and for him. but the individual voter's rational interest would often be to not bother. hence the candidate's difficult job of making people think their votes count a lot and it really really matters
optic: see, if a lot of the votes differ by 18, then it's probably rational to vote
optic: but in most places for most elections it's more like 18 thousand or a million
rich: you're pulling this hypothetical say 100 votes and say saves $100 in taxes out your butt imho
optic: its an illustrative example rich
optic: if you dont get the argument and cant generalize then theres nothing more i can say
optic: so how about those oscars
rich: when you consider voting do you decide it based on quantitative numbers like that
optic: no, i usually am irrational and just vote
optic: unless it's a really big pain like i have no time that day
rich: so where does this probability come from
optic: well
optic: your 1 vote will make a difference if the interval not counting your vote is basically 0 or 1. so look at the past elections and compute the vote distribution and calculate the area of the distribution in which the difference between totals is 0 or 1. that's the probability
optic: and it is very very very very very low, even in small pools with few votes
optic: thats the probability of making a difference. then ask yourself if that probability is worth whatever you go through to vote, for the potential outcome. if yes, have at it
optic: like in a presidential election, if you even live in a swing state, the margin is usually in the hundreds of thousands. the likelihood your vote will change things is miniscule
optic: and if you live in a state like NY or WA that is unlikely to even be competitive, even smaller
optic: of course, someone might argue that it's irrational going around doing that kind of math all the time, and you should just choose some reasonable threshold of likely influence and vote then. though i think really what people do is they vote in important-seeming elections, even when in fact those are the ones with the largest pool and hence where they'd have the least influence
optic: if people thought about it they'd probably vote a lot less often for president and a lot more often for city council or whatever
optic: like rich
rich: i just vote every time, because it's not like they don't have local politics happen when national elections occur
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Comments
I hate HATE all these Rock-The-Vote, Get-Out-The-Vote things convincing all these people to go cast a vote. Thinking they're involving themselves in the process. Casting a vote is the very tiniest, last step in the process. Someone who needs to be convinced by MTV or a PSA to go and vote is not involved enough to make an informed decision and should not be voting.
The less people that vote the better, I think. Your average stiff on the street knows absolutely zilch about how govt works, about who's in what office, about anything.
Please, people, don't vote.
apathy doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of intelligence, though. i know plenty of people who i consider intelligent and informed who choose not to vote.
The irony here is that a person like yourself who has obviously thought about this is the type of person that should be voting because you're more likely to examine the substance of an issue, yet that cerebral pattern is what makes you less likely to vote in the first place. It's the election version of the breeding problem in 'Idiocracy'.
actually I don't think being cerebral makes one less likely to vote. lots of people who think hard and smartly about the issues still vote; in fact, on the whole they're probably more likely to vote.
also, the breeding analogy doesn't really hold. the birth of one Einstein or Gandhi (or Hitler) can have far more impact than the births of thousands of everyday schlubs. in voting, it's one vote apiece.
still, I take your point - if lots of people concluded voting was a waste, and those people happened to be, say, disproportionately liberal, than liberal policies would suffer. but if a million other people are going to do it anyway, what difference does it make if I have an attack of civic pride and vote after all?
Your argument seems to be predicated on the notion that losing an election means your vote didn't change anything. I disagree with that premise.
There are reasons to vote other than deciding which candidate or issue 'wins'. Merely using your vote to narrow or enlarge a margin of victory or defeat can have longer-term consequences in how candidates and proponents of issues go on to conduct their business. Narrowing margins can indicate social trends which call into question the certainty of future elections, and which can have a tempering effect. Widening margins can encourage the opposite. And ongoing democracy, at least when combined with a free press and the freedom to protest, is about more than just reaching decisions, it's about people with different interests being forced to acknowledge each other's existence and reach 'compromises' of some sort, even if sometimes that means just a degree of temperance. So voting, even if it doesn't affect the immediate outcome of the election, can still affect how policies and issues are crafted.
And choosing not to vote is no different than being involuntarily disenfranchised, the consequences of which can be an erosion of policies in your interest.
all the arguments you make are for mass voting, not individual voting. you, like kent, seem unable to separate the two. as long as millions of other people are voting, my individual vote has very little impact. if the pool becomes smaller, or if I take actions that affect many votes (e.g. organizing GOTV efforts), then I can have greater influence.
the reason it is not a sensible policy position to go about arguing "don't vote!" is that if you make it a mass movement, then it DOES make a difference. but none of this changes the fact that in an election of millions of voters, your one vote is very very very unlikely to make a difference. it's a paradox!
I guess the most rational thing would be to not vote and lie about it, using the time you save to convince as many like-minded people as possible that voting is totally awesome and rad.
but who walks and waits in line? i vote absentee and don't know anyone who votes in person. coloring in a box, shoving something into an envelope and sticking a stamp on it is unlikely to take 30 minutes unless you're a very artistic colorstamper.
not everyone has a significant amount of money to give, so although i agree that financial support is good too, it isn't always a viable option. voting is free.
i do agree that a single vote is unlikely to sway the tide, but part of the point of discussing voting on a blog is the theory that it could inspire multiple votes.
isn't the most workable answer to the tragedy of the commons privatization + free market? not sure how that applies to voting.
I'm not sure what you mean by privatization + free market being the answer to the tragedy of the commons. How would that encourage people to invest back into common resources? It seems like the opposite would be more likely true. One would have more incentive to take all one could, even though the ultimate result is not optimal for anybody, since in unregulated markets the impulse seems to be towards short-term profits as opposed to long-term sustainability. Anyway, how it applies is that we enjoy the benefits of our system of government but if too many people took the 'selfish' economic view and failed to vote, then everybody would suffer.
(Edited to fix agreement error and tie in that last point)
Edited at 2008-02-27 05:33 am (UTC)
well, in the literal tragedy of the commons, the usual solution is to give people private ownership in the commons and let them trade, rent, least etc. that way someone has an interest in protecting the good. the other choice is to have the government protect it, though that sets up an antagonistic system between govt and citizens/businesses which often doesn't work (or doesn't work great). but anyway, the voting thing is more like a free rider issue than tragedy of the commons.
how do you figure everyone would suffer if many people stopped voting? what if the people who had bad ideas stopped voting? there's an irony in the voting question in that, if you and i disagree on policy, i manifestly do not benefit from you voting. the public good doesn't increase if two people of opposite opinions both participate; it makes no difference (except that their increased feeling of involvement might be nice, but I'm not talking about secondary emotional effects right now).
no, the free rider problem comes up if you and I agree that policy X is a good idea, and I basically free-ride on your willingness to vote for X and I stay home on the couch.
the reason we make it into a civic virtue is because it doesn't motivate itself. we have to indoctrinate people to vote, because self-interest probably won't do it -- since it makes very little difference.
and I don't believe not voting inherently breaks the system. it's self correcting -- if people stop voting wholesale and see the other guys winning elections as a result, they'll have strong incentive to vote next time. I think what everyone doesn't understand is that I'm not saying "don't vote" I'm saying it's a cost/benefit tradeoff.
now, in the case where X has plenty of support and is very likely to pass, B's abstention has no ill effect (in terms of the wikipedia article, there's no market failure), and so isn't that big of a problem. yes, it's "unfair" that A and B benefit equally from policy X, but only A puts in the effort to vote for it. not that B voting would have relieved A of any burden of voting (unlike in paying taxes, where every dollar one person doesn't pay has to be paid by someone else).
of course, the case where X has nowhere near enough support to have much chance of passing is pretty much the mirror image and the same logic applies, basically. B's non-vote doesn't cause any market failure because X wasn't going to happen anyway.
the interesting case is when the pro-X and anti-X camps are evenly split and it's all up in the air. but this is exactly the case in which B's vote is more likely to be significant and, if he's following my logic, he'd vote. so, no problem.
so I think there's a free rider issue, but it's minor. yes there's some unfairness, but it essentially doesn't harm society (or the pro-X movement) in the way you describe.
Plus, what
Beyond that, though, I'd guess that most encouragement of voting isn't targeted at random individuals but happens to get better turnout in a larger populations whose voting pattern favors one party or the other. You know, at colleges or in churches, respectively.
Oh, and I'm in awe of your kitchen DIY.
of course the realization that competing self-interest can turn basic human nature into a larger structure for truth more or less works in our court system
believe me, I'm in awe too. Nick gets the credit for making it all possible