Thread: The voter's dilemma

It's a simple question which doesn't need much introduction from me: As an individual (i.e., not as a society), ought I to exercise my right to vote in political elections?

Here is my own, very simple position. The way that I see it, the cost of voting in terms of time and effort outweighs the expected payoff, which is approximately nothing since the probability that my vote will be a deciding vote is negligible. I have never voted and I do not plan to.

Perhaps the most common rebuttal to this reasoning is to point out that if everyone shared this attitude, no one would vote, and democracy would grind to a halt. In other words, if we lived in an alternate, fictional reality in which everyone shared my views, voting would be rational. Needless to say, I do not find this rebuttal very compelling.

In America, the electoral college renders the individual vote useless in a very real sense. Three American presidents have been "elected" without receiving a majority of the votes. However, I don't want to limit this discussion to voting in America, so while you should feel free to comment on this peculiar state of affairs, it will also be useful to consider the many cases in which elections actually are decided by majorities.

Please share your views on voting and comment on mine.

Edit: The apparent paradox of gathering opinions on this matter through a vote is not lost on me. Keep in mind that this discussion is about political elections.

Originally Posted by DuB

It's a simple question which doesn't need much introduction from me: As an individual (i.e., not as a society), ought I to exercise my right to vote in political elections?

Here is my own, very simple position. The way that I see it, the cost of voting in terms of time and effort outweighs the expected payoff, which is approximately nothing since the probability that my vote will be a deciding vote is negligible. I have never voted and I do not plan to.

Perhaps the most common rebuttal to this reasoning is to point out that if everyone shared this attitude, no one would vote, and democracy would grind to a halt. In other words, if we lived in an alternate, fictional reality in which everyone shared my views, voting would be rational. Needless to say, I do not find this rebuttal very compelling.

In America, the electoral college renders the individual vote useless in a very real sense. Three American presidents have been "elected" without receiving a majority of the votes. However, I don't want to limit this discussion to voting in America, so while you should feel free to comment on this peculiar state of affairs, it will also be useful to consider the many cases in which elections actually are decided by majorities.

Please share your views on voting and comment on mine.

Edit: The apparent paradox of gathering opinions on this matter through a vote is not lost on me. Keep in mind that this discussion is about political elections.

I find voting useless mainly because it changes nothing (or so far it hasn't). And the failure-of-democracy rebuttal isn't really a rebuttal, to me, because I don't support democracy anyway.

But I suppose that since voting can't really be considered "consent" or "endorsement" of the State or its cronies, it may be useful from time to time in key areas. For example, voting is probably a lot more useful in local elections than national elections.

I am much more in favor of intellectual change than political change, however.

I'm not old enough to vote, and I don plan to. What's already been said is pretty much how I feel.

Originally Posted by DuB

Here is my own, very simple position. The way that I see it, the cost of voting in terms of time and effort outweighs the expected payoff, which is approximately nothing since the probability that my vote will be a deciding vote is negligible. I have never voted and I do not plan to.

Perhaps the most common rebuttal to this reasoning is to point out that if everyone shared this attitude, no one would vote, and democracy would grind to a halt. In other words, if we lived in an alternate, fictional reality in which everyone shared my views, voting would be rational. Needless to say, I do not find this rebuttal very compelling.

In America, the electoral college renders the individual vote useless in a very real sense. Three American presidents have been "elected" without receiving a majority of the votes.

I'm not yet of age, but I do not plan on voting, DuB pretty much covered everything for me.

I'm not a very political person, I don't pay much attention when the candidates are talking about their platform, since presidents often don't do what they talk of doing if elected, and because my single vote isn't going to make a bit of difference.

Democracy should be practiced with every decision, how many times have you looked in the paper and seen "New bill here" and think wtf? It happens to me all the time, the public is never even aware about most of these bills until its voting time where obscurity and ignorance take charge. They represent us, we should know about everything.

No, I do not vote either, but my reason is altogether different. Voting may be the best form of government available today, however, the concept negates intelligence itself. In order to belive in voting, one has to deny what they are. One has to deny the fact that standards are the source of social structure, and that by voting one declares the inefficacy of standards.

I still believe that the greatest politician of any age is that person who can promote reason among men.

Do you want thoughts only regarding the idea you presented, or can we introduce other problems with voting as well? My choice to not vote has only ever been decided by the lack of favorable choices.

If option A bad, and option B is worse than option A, should I exercise my right to vote for the lesser of two evils? In so doing however I'd still be voting for the bad option, which I take issue with. Is that an understandable thing to have a problem with?

I just wanted to make it clear that my "no" vote in this pole was not based on the reason presented in the OP.

That's not true, DuB. The electoral college system does not render a single voter useless, it just changes what the voter is actually voting for.

Like Invader said, if I dislike all the options, I may not vote. However, that probably won't happen as my options go beyond the two largest parties. I choose to vote because I don't want to be like the people who don't vote without exploring all their options and then turn around and complain about the president.

The problem I have with American elections aside from the electoral college system, is the issue of the two-party dichotomy. If there are two bad candidates, one who has every marking of being profoundly retarded and the other who seems only half as bad, the voter, thinking that nearly half of the country is also profoundly retarded and will put the worst candidate in office, will be compelled to vote for the lesser of two evils in spite of the fact that there may have been a third party candidate whom they perceived as the perfect candidate.

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

That's not true, DuB. The electoral college system does not render a single voter useless, it just changes what the voter is actually voting for.

Amazing how many ways one can say that something is different from itself. A vote that is not a vote. Wow. I should have thought of that.

Invader, I am interested in all views on voting, not just my own. Also, I tried to word the poll so that it had nothing to do with my own personal reasons and was rather a simple survey of voting behavior in general.

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

That's not true, DuB. The electoral college system does not render a single voter useless, it just changes what the voter is actually voting for.

Changes what my vote is actually voting for? Jeez, sounds like we have a budding politician in the house. If I am voting in a presidential election, the fair and reasonable expectation would be that my vote is, in principle, capable of electing a president; not that my vote is going to be "changed" to "actually" be part of a glorified opinion poll for some representative to take into consideration before he ultimately comes to his own conclusions on the matter. That is useless to me.

But as I mentioned in the OP, this thread is not about the electoral college per se--I mainly meant to mention that issue in passing. I planned on the discussion being more generally about voting in large political elections, including and perhaps especially truly democratic ones.

I can't vote unless I can actually support a candidate. Politics upsets me so much there are very few politicians that can motivate me to vote for them.

I vote because it makes my favorite candidates get one extra vote. It is worth the time and the gasoline because I can feel like I made my moral contribution. The fact that my moral contribution is not a deciding contribution is beside the point as far as I am concerned. It takes thousands and thousands to make a diference, and I feel like I am cheating them if I don't give them my spec of help. Although the role I play is small, I still have a role to play.

However, I am not somebody who thinks everybody has a moral obligation to vote. I think people who are not clear on the issues involved have a moral obligation to NOT vote, though they should still have a legal right to vote. I don't like those commercials that have the general message of "Vote!" WTF? Vote if you know what's going on and truly believe you are in support of the best candidates. Otherwise, please... don't vote!

Lol at most biased poll ever.

I vote because I feel obliged to. People who don't vote because it probably won't make an appreciable difference are analogous to the people who litter... or the people who break communism.

Basically you're not really in a position to either praise or criticise it.

Also from a more pragmatic perspective... it doesn't take five minutes, so whatever the worth it's certainly in good proportion to the effort. Also, in UK elections at least, a single vote can hold sway. In each election there will be a few constituencies marginal by less than 10 votes, and every constituency was very important in the last election. Also, unlike the comically simplified politics of the US, there are a large number of parties with a real prospect of winning their constituencies, and in close elections this gives them quite a large say in parliament.

Originally Posted by Xei

Basically you're not really in a position to either praise or criticise it.

Why not? Why can't someone disagree with all the candidates?

People who do not vote are the second leading cause of us having a bad government, right behind people who vote for bad politicians.

I find what you are saying to be pretty arrogant. That if you do not directly get to choose who wins, you refuse to even take part in the discussion. The entire point is that no one person gets to choose, and you are opposed to voting because you alone do not decide? Your opinion comes down to the belief, that voting is only worth it, if your the only one voting.

Also I just have to point out to people, that there are elections every two years. Not just every four years. Some people seem to think the presidential election is the only one that matters. When its actually the one you have the least say in. Why are you not voting on local election, which have a larger and more direct impact on you?

As for people who just stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is going on around them, that is stupid. People don't seem to realize the serious ramification of what goes on in the government. You can end up dead. I am serious. A major crash in the dollar and the destruction of the US economy could lead to wide spread starvation in the country. A raise in totalitarian style governments, could lead to executions. The first one we are actually on the path to right now, and if something isn't done within the next 5-10 years, our country is doomed. The second one is less likely, but other countries around the world have had dictators who executed people all the time. Its possible our country could become more like them, and that is one of the reasons we need to be careful.

Voting is the bare minimum you can do. There are tons and tons of other things you can do, most are far more effective. I doubt most of you do any of them though. So if you don't do any thing else, you should at least do the minimum. If you can't even spend 5 minutes to vote, then you are directly to blame for all our problems. I mean wake the fuck up. People in our government are abusing their power and you can't spend 5 minutes to vote? Seriously polling places are set up where you live. 95% of you probably live within 5 minutes of your voting place, and if you go at the right time, there is no line. 5 minutes is all it takes. It never took me longer than 10 minutes, tops. To drive there, vote, and drive back. Less than 10 minutes, normally takes like 5 minutes. You can't spare that?

Really we should have more than two parties in our country. And we would, if everyone voted. However with huge chunks of people not voting, the two parties are able to grab most of the people up. If you don't like either two of the parties, vote for one of the others. Tell others to vote for the others, tell your friends and your family. Get all your lazy friends who never voted, to vote for a third party. If you all vote, one of them may actually come into power, and changes can occur.

I have to agree with universal mind though. If you are ignorant, and you are proud of the fact you are ignorant, and you refuse to learn the issues. Just don't vote. We don't need any more idiots voting. And by idiots I am not talking about people who believe a certain way. I am talking about people who can't recognize whats it front of their own face. If a politician say he is going to do something, and all his past history shows he will do the opposite, and its clearly known to be true, and you vote for him, because you believe him. You are an idiot.

Also people who vote on people because they look nice, are charismatic, look friendly or whatever other bullshit. You vote on the issues, not on how some one looks!

Originally Posted by Alric

I find what you are saying to be pretty arrogant. That if you do not directly get to choose who wins, you refuse to even take part in the discussion. The entire point is that no one person gets to choose, and you are opposed to voting because you alone do not decide? Your opinion comes down to the belief, that voting is only worth it, if your the only one voting.

That's not quite the correct characterization of my position. Obviously voting is a matter of probability no matter what--no one will ever get to "choose" the winner in the way you alluded to, and I'm not sure that I would want to in any case. My point is that the probability that my casting a vote will have any political effect of any kind whatsoever is negligibly small, and furthermore, that even if it does have an effect, it's unlikely to bring about a much more beneficial outcome than the alternative which would have obtained without my vote. As an illustration of this latter point, consider the relatively superficial differences between the two major political parties in our political system, both of which are pretty moderate at the end of the day. (And since voting for an independent party is effectively equivalent to not voting, it will suffice to think of our system as containing two parties.)

At least part of this view has been formally modeled and the result is known variously as the Downs paradox, the paradox of voting, and the paradox of rational abstention (the "paradox" arises from the observation that so many people vote anyway). But the basic idea is pretty intuitive; it goes a bit like this.

Elections result in discrete outcomes, and as I noted above, we can think of it as a binary outcome: candidate A wins, or candidate B wins. To what extent one candidate wins over or loses to the other is irrelevant; and it turns out that this fact makes all the difference. To illustrate this, let's consider a hypothetical world in which I have voted for candidate A, and at the end of the election the tally is 80 million votes for candidate A and 50 million votes for candidate B. Outcome: A wins. To assess the contribution of my individual vote, we simply delete one vote from candidate A's pool, making it 79,999,999 to 50,000,000. The outcome is unchanged. Now let's consider another hypothetical world in which I have voted for A, and the end tally is 55 million votes for A, and 75 million votes for B. Outcome: B wins. Deleting my vote, we are left with 54,999,999 for A and 75,000,000 for B. Once again, the outcome is unchanged. It should be clear that there are only two possible cases in which my vote could actually affect the outcome in any way whatsoever: if the outcome including my vote is a tie (so that deleting my vote would cause my candidate to lose), or if including my vote, my candidate wins by 1 vote (so that deleting my vote causes a tie). It should also be clear that for elections of this huge size, the probability of either of these two cases obtaining is negligibly small. In other words, the probability that my vote will have any political effect at all is negligible.

Consider finally that--and this part differs a bit from the account given by the aforementioned paradox--as I wrote above, even if my vote does have a positive effect, given the state of our current political system it is unlikely that the increased benefit brought about by this would be much greater than the alternative situation in which my candidate lost. This is because in general, candidates tend to disagree sharply only on superficial and inconsequential issues, while their actual policy records on important matters all look surprisingly moderate. (Consider our continued presence in Iraq under the presidency of Barack Obama.)

So it doesn't matter how small the cost of voting may be, it's still larger than the expected payoff. It's analogous to buying a lottery ticket: sure, the cost of a ticket is low, perhaps a dollar, but that doesn't matter because the expected payoff is still so much lower that it's a waste of resources. It's not a matter of whether I can spare the time and money to buy a lottery ticket, it's the fact that doing so makes no sense. In fact, it's worse than a lottery, because at least if you happen to win a lottery you're guaranteed a fantastic reward. The cost-benefit analysis associated with voting, on the other hand, reveals a similarly low probability of payoff and low cost, but the reward is not even that great.

It's not that I'm against the abstract idea of voting. I would love to be a part of a political system in which my vote actually did make a difference. Unfortunately, such a system would look very different from what we have now.

To prove your final point, you must prove that Al Gore would have steered us into not one, but two wars, or you must prove that the occurrence of these wars is inconsequential to the state of the United States today.

Originally Posted by DuB

It's not that I'm against the abstract idea of voting. I would love to be a part of a political system in which my vote actually did make a difference. Unfortunately, such a system would look very different from what we have now.

Indeed, voting is a gigantic coordination game. In this system it is not the single vote that matters, but the entire collective vote. If the attitude you espouse is allowed to fester, the system fails.

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

To prove your final point, you must prove that Al Gore would have steered us into not one, but two wars, or you must prove that the occurrence of these wars is inconsequential to the state of the United States today.

I don't need to "prove" this any more than you need to "prove" that he wouldn't have. Speculating about counterfactual realities is not going to get us far at all here. Factual history is far more informative.

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

Indeed, voting is a gigantic coordination game. In this system it is not the single vote that matters, but the entire collective vote. If the attitude you espouse is allowed to fester, the system fails.

Originally Posted by DuB

Perhaps the most common rebuttal to this reasoning is to point out that if everyone shared this attitude, no one would vote, and democracy would grind to a halt. In other words, if we lived in an alternate, fictional reality in which everyone shared my views, voting would be rational. Needless to say, I do not find this rebuttal very compelling.

Originally Posted by DuB

I don't need to "prove" this any more than you need to "prove" that he wouldn't have. Speculating about counterfactual realities is not going to get us far at all here. Factual history is far more informative.

When it comes to politics, we have to speculate about what reality might be like. Your argument is founded on the idea that voting is useless because the candidates are similar to the point that there wouldn't be much of a difference today regardless of who actually took office. In order to make this argument with any degree of conviction, you must imagine, speculate, that any given administration would not have been much different from an opposing administration.

Even if two opposing candidates are essentially moderate, the one way, no matter how small, in which they potentially diverge could have such large consequences that it is worth choosing between them.

Perhaps the most common rebuttal to this reasoning is to point out that if everyone shared this attitude, no one would vote, and democracy would grind to a halt. In other words, if we lived in an alternate, fictional reality in which everyone shared my views, voting would be rational. Needless to say, I do not find this rebuttal very compelling.

And why isn't it a good argument? Being apathetic is a very common problem. It doesn't take a genius to conclude that voting isn't worth the effort because there are so many voters. In America, only about half of the 200 million eligible voters actually voted. Obama only won the popular vote by ten million. I say with confidence that most of those 100 million or so people who didn't vote were not disabled or otherwise had some other reason they couldn't vote. If only one-tenth of those people hold the same attitude as you, the outcome of the popular vote could have easily swung in McCain's favor. Food for thought: Survey Shows Why Many Americans Fail to Vote in Elections.

The payoffs of the voting game are not entirely objective. The expected payoff increases when you factor in the emotional boon or toll folks feel when they actually participate in democracy.

Originally Posted by Black_Eagle

To prove your final point, you must prove that Al Gore would have steered us into not one, but two wars, or you must prove that the occurrence of these wars is inconsequential to the state of the United States today.

Check out these Democrats, starting with Al Gore...









Democrats supported the war in Afghanistan also, but that was never swept under the rug. Plus, Democrats have dominated Congress for three years, and a Democrat has been president for a year and a half. What has happened with the two wars as a result? The Iraq war has continued without even the beginning of a withdrawal process, and the war in Afghanistan has been expanded, because that is what the Democrats in power want.

My opinion on systems of government is that they don't matter, since they are just preferences adopted by a populace.

People vote with the expectation they will select someone that will be good for them or the country as a whole. The reality is that typically even though they do vote for someone with this intent, they end up with someone not good. The result is essentially the same as if they didn't vote, which is why some people are apathetic and have given up on voting.

Voting is good, but it isn't the cure all. It is seen that you are participating to make a difference so to speak, but in reality you aren't really participating. You can't just go vote and expect to make a difference, that would be like donating money to a charity organization and expecting to make a difference. How you make a difference is active participation on a daily basis, which voting is in actuality inactive participation that been perverted by society into being viewed as active participation.

Should you vote? Yes, it is positive. Does just voting make a difference? Absolutely not, which to make a difference by only doing that one deed is almost impossible to make an impact to the point that is pretty much unnecessary.

I think Alric makes good points.

Something I'd like to add; as roughly the same proportions of people bother to vote for their party, it isn't really that much of an issue anyway. And the people who vote will tend to be the people with greatest concern and social responsibility, which is a good thing.

Become a candidate.

Why do I want to be a part of something I hate? Is it too hard to understand how politics disgusts people? I believe in social change. Not political change. And I will damn complain about idiot politicians all I want whether or not I vote. The emperor has no clothes on

You're seriously saying that governments do not influence society?

How do you plan on effecting social change if not through government? What have you already done to this end?

The only alternative to politics is anarchy. Are you an anarchist?

Sorry, no, you can't complain about politics and politicians if you refuse to be involved in the system which produces them. If the system is so disturbingly broken then migrate to another country.