In my post I suggested there are two separate motivations for voting:
1) Picking the winner. Essentially no one does this in big elections, but yes there is that tiny chance. I didn’t go into this motivation. Thinking about it now I suspect using a lottery-like mentality a lot of people do vote for this reason: they just might be the one.
2) Adding to voter turnout, thus making the election legitimate. Everyone who votes does this, but it’s only by a tiny amount. This I would equate to “not littering” in that you are unambiguously helping but only incrementally. This I think is in fact the stronger reason for voting, but still your contribution is very tiny.
In the end I’m down to “civic duty” and “it’s the right thing to do” and stuff like that as far as the best reason to vote. Maybe the lesson is it’s good large chunk of people are NOT rational, because I do maintain as turnout goes down, the results get worse, as far as what people “really” want.
Now I didn’t mention social pressure either. There was a swiss study where voter turnout didn’t go up when vote-by-mail was made an option. The supposition being people no longer felt the pressure to make an appearance at the polls to be a good citizen, they could just surreptitiously not vote in the privacy of their own home.
In my post I suggested there are two separate motivations for voting:
1) Picking the winner. Essentially no one does this in big elections, but yes there is that tiny chance. I didn’t go into this motivation. Thinking about it now I suspect using a lottery-like mentality a lot of people do vote for this reason: they just might be the one.
2) Adding to voter turnout, thus making the election legitimate. Everyone who votes does this, but it’s only by a tiny amount. This I would equate to “not littering” in that you are unambiguously helping but only incrementally. This I think is in fact the stronger reason for voting, but still your contribution is very tiny.
In the end I’m down to “civic duty” and “it’s the right thing to do” and stuff like that as far as the best reason to vote. Maybe the lesson is it’s good large chunk of people are NOT rational, because I do maintain as turnout goes down, the results get worse, as far as what people “really” want.
Now I didn’t mention social pressure either. There was a swiss study where voter turnout didn’t go up when vote-by-mail was made an option. The supposition being people no longer felt the pressure to make an appearance at the polls to be a good citizen, they could just surreptitiously not vote in the privacy of their own home.
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jeea_a_00015?journalCode=jeea