Why Vote? Voting is costly. If you vote in person, you have to find your polling place and often stand in line until you get to the voting booth to vote. If you vote by absentee ballot, you have to figure out how to get one and then be sure to mail it in. In both cases, you probably have to do some work figuring out who the candidates and what the issues are.
A: Many people purposefully choose not to vote—and they often give the following reason: "I don’t think it matters.” As we will see in this exercise, they might mean one of two things by this — and they appear to be right in at least one sense.
(a) First, suppose we take the median voter model really seriously and believe it accurately predicts the position of the two candidates from which we choose. How might this justify the excuse given by voters who don’t vote?
(b) In the real world, there are many frictions that keep the median voter model’s prediction from fully coming to fruition. For instance, candidates might have to win party nominations first, and then run in the general election— which means we tend to end up with right-of-center and left-of-center candidates. In light of this, is it reasonable to think that the excuse given in (a) is justified in the real world?
(c) Next, consider a different way in which the “it does not matter” statement might be meant: Perhaps a voter recognizes that it matters which candidate wins (in the sense that the world will change differently depending on which one wins), but she believes the candidate who will win will almost certainly win whether any individual voter goes to the polls or not. Do you think this is true in the real world?
(d) In light of your answer to (c), might it be rational form any people not to vote?
(e) In the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, Barack Obama won by close to 10 million votes. In what sense is the puzzle not so much why more people didn’t vote but rather why so many— about 60% of eligible voters—did?
(f) Suppose we believe that governments are more effective the more voters engage in elections. In what sense does this imply that voters have prisoners’ dilemma incentives that give rise to free-riding?
(g) In Chapter 27, we suggested that one way charitable organizations overcome free-rider problems among potential donors is to find ways of eliciting within donors a “warm glow” from giving. Can you think of an analogous explanation that can rationalize why so many people vote in large elections?
(h) Suppose that the voters who do not vote are those who are “disillusioned”. What positions might two candidates take on the Hotel ling interval [0, 1] if the disillusioned voters (that do not vote) are those that cannot find a candidate whose position is within 3/16ths of their ideal point? Could we have an equilibrium where the extreme ends of the political spectrum do not vote? Could we have one where the center does not vote?
B: In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes in the State of Florida—and with those 537 votes won the election.
(a) The close margin in the 2000 election is often cited by politicians as evidence that you should “not believe your vote does not matter”. I would argue that it shows the opposite: Even in close elections, it is almost never the case that one vote counts. What do you think?
(b) Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate, received nearly 100,000 votes in the State of Florida in the 2000 Presidential election. Many believe that, had Ralph Nader’s name not been on the ballot, Al Gore would have won the State of Florida — and with it the Presidency. If so, which one of Arrow’s axioms does this suggest is violated by the way the U.S. elects Presidents? Explain.
(c) Some election systems require the winning candidate to win with at least 50% plus 1 votes— and, if no candidate achieves this, require a run-off election between the top two candidates. Since this seems difficult to implement in the 50 state-wide elections that result in Electoral College votes that determine the winner of a U.S. Presidential election, some have proposed a system of instant run-off voting. In such a system, voters rank the candidates from most preferred to least preferred. In the first round of vote counting, each voter’s top ranked candidate is considered as having receive a vote from that voter, and if one candidate gets 50% plus 1 votes, he is declared the winner. If no candidate receives that many votes, the election authorities find which candidate received the lowest first round votes and then re-assigns that candidate’s votes to the candidates that were ranked second by these voters. If one candidate reaches 50% plus 1 votes, he wins—otherwise the election authorities repeat the exercise, this time re-assigning the votes of the candidate who initially received the second to last number of first place rankings. This continues until someone gets 50% plus 1 votes. Had the State of Florida used this system in 2000, do you think the Presidential election outcome might have been different?