[EM] A design flaw in the electoral system

[James Gilmour]

Michael Allan  > Sent: Monday, October 03, 2011 9:31 AM
> ABSTRACT
> --------
> An individual vote has no effect on the formal outcome of the 
> election; whether the vote is cast or not, the outcome is the 
> same regardless.

These statements worry me  -  surely they contain a logical flaw?  If these statements were true and every elector responded
rationally, no-one would ever vote.  Then the outcome would not be the same.

I am not "into logic", but I suspect the flaw is in some disconnection between the individual and the aggregate.  When A with 100
votes wins over B with 99 votes, we cannot say which of the 100 individual votes for A was "the winning vote", but it is clear that
is any one of those 100 votes had not been for A, then A would not have won.  At best, if one A-voter had stayed at home, there
would have been a tie.  If one of the A-voters had voted for B instead, the outcome would have been very different.

Or am I missing something?

I do appreciate that there can be a disconnection, large or small, between the outcome of an election and the consequences in
government (policy implementation  -  or not), but the statements quoted above were specifically about elections per se.  That's why
I'm puzzled.

James Gilmour