[EM] Why do voters vote?

[Terry Bouricius]

Michael, Frank, Fred, et. al.

I have changed the subject line for this epicyclical discussion on why 
voters vote.

There has been some interesting writing about disputes over the value of 
"rational choice" theory, especially as applied to voting. Since a single 
voter's vote has almost no chance of having any impact, it is rational to 
avoid the burden of learning about candidates, and of course rational to 
not vote if it takes any effort at all.  However, most voters who do vote 
do undertake at least a little effort to learn about some candidates, and 
bother to vote. Either they are deluded and irrational (which is certainly 
a reasonable conclusion), or they participate for other reasons.

Perhaps most voters are fundamentally not behaving AS INDIVIDUALS, but as 
a part of a collective ...in solidarity with a team of fellow citizens (or 
party members, members of an ethnic group, or whatever). Analysis that 
focuses on the choices of individuals can miss the social aspect of 
voting, which may be more fundamental.

Some voters may, however, participate as individuals simply because it 
gives them a feeling of satisfaction. In Bryan Caplan's book, _The Myth of 
the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies_, he presents a 
theory of "rational irrationality." He argues that voters rationally 
choose to vote irrationally (in terms of policy), because the 
psychological satisfaction of voting in line with one's (erroneous) 
beliefs outweighs the risk of negative outcomes from that action (since 
each vote has virtually zero impact on the outcome.)

This is a fascinating topic, that makes the debates about methods, or 
ordinal vs. cardinal voting seem a bit lacking.

Terry Bouricius

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Allan" <mike at zelea.com>
To: <election-methods at electorama.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 3:27 AM
Subject: Re: [EM] How to fix the flawed "Nash equilibrium" concept for 
voting-theory purposes


> > ... Consider these two facts:
> >
> >  1. Current voting methods lack the Nash-redeeming addition.  In a
> >     typical election, no individual vote has any effect on the
> >     result.  The effect is exactly zero.
> >
> >  2. Voters nevertheless turn out in large numbers.
> >
> > It follows that the individual voter is *not* attempting to affect
> > the results...

Raph Frank wrote:
> Another way of phrasing it would be that people see value in
> increasing their side's total number of votes... Thus, each vote
> does in fact count.

You may say that, but it does not follow from the facts.  The fact of
a particular effect does not reveal the purpose of the act.  A vote
may have any number of particular and general effects, including the
shifting of a digit or two in a register somewhere (as you suggest),
but no single one of them (nor even the sum) need be of importance to
the voter.

What does follow is a conclusion from the counterfact.  Where a given
effect is *not* present, and where no rational actor could expect it,
we may safely conclude that it was *not* the purpose of the act.
Therefore the facts *do* support this conclusion:

  The individual voter is *not* attempting to affect the results of
  the election.

> Also, each person's vote might make a difference.

In actuality, however, it makes no difference to the election.  Do you
not agree?  Time and time again the voter casts her vote, and never
once does it have an effect on the results.  Yet, come the next
election, there she is, once again, casting her vote.

Negative implications of this: Nash's theorem (with or without fuzzy
logic) is inapplicable.  More generally, purposive-rational models of
ego-centric behaviour are unlikely to be made serviceable for voting
theory.

Positive implications: We could look at the real reasons for voting.
(Why do people keep doing it?  What do they hope for?)  We could
re-build our theories and re-design our voting methods accordingly.

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/

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