Are you more likely to cast the deciding vote or die on your way to the polls? | Hacker News Reader

Are you more likely to cast the deciding vote or die on your way to the polls?

jeremyscheff.com

25 pointsyummyfajitas61 comments

This is one of those things I wish I had a good answer for. People try to make that point, "my vote will never be the swing vote". Yet it is intuitively obvious that if nobody votes, or if only the really motivated people vote, results will not reflect the constituency. Unfortunately I don't know how to argue it on an individual basis.

People would probably vote if they felt less disenfranchised by our plurality voting, the electoral college, and our two party system.

Perhaps this points towards a larger scale failure in modern forms of "representative" democracy. Since opting out is the only alternative to arbitrarily picking between unsatisfying options - there's no "none of the above" box on a ballot sheet - it makes sense that voting becomes skewed towards those special interest groups irrationally motivated enough to actually vote. Notice that based on this evidence not voting is actually an entirely rational decision.

there's no "none of the above" box on a ballot sheet

I find myself wondering if you've voted before. You can write in anyone you like.

In many states, if you write in a candidate for President that is not registered as a candidate in that state, your vote will be invalid, as if you hadn't filled it out at all or spilled ink across the entire thing.

Apparently that's true in California, but I don't see many such invalidation exceptions listed here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write-in_candidate

I can't find a plain old list, but this Google search is a start: https://www.google.com/search?q=Intent+to+be+a+Write-in+Cand....

Legitimate thing to wonder I suppose, also a decent ad hominem. I'll elaborate on my point:

You are always forced to make a choice - you can write in whomever you want, but you cannot opt to suspend the process and await alternatives. Your expression must always be in the positive, and never in the negative. The implicit attitude is "either offer an alternative or don't vote at all" - so many people opt not to vote.

For myself my attitude is something like: There seems to be a root problem within the political process. I don't know what it is. It seems to be rarely talked about. The options presented seem to be within a very narrow and oversimplified spectrum that ignores ambiguity and complexity of any kind. Rather than pick between a bunch of things I don't want or agree with I'll just not vote. Some people choose to vote under these circumstances citing the cynical position of "choosing between the lesser of two evils". I don't.

you can write in whomever you want, but you cannot opt to suspend the process and await alternatives

Ah, it was not clear you meant, an option to reject the candidates and hold another election.

also a decent ad hominem

Aww, shucks :)

How would the "none of the above" option solve anything? An eligible voter not voting is essentially a "none of the above" vote anyway. You can bet that the perceived legitimacy of a government would start to dwindle if the number of voters dropped below some threshold.

In many organizations with a "NOTA" option in their elections, if NOTA wins then the election is held over again with none of the previous candidates eligible to run.

That's not quite equivalent. An eligible voter not voting might be one who didn't have time to get their drivers licence address updated, or who didn't have time between work and looking after kids to go to the polls, or who was unexpectedly sick, or who didn't care enough to know what was being voted on, or who didn't like any of the options. A voter who voted and said 'None of you' has provably made an affirmative choice to say they don't like any of the options.

Well, for any of those people, they simply chose to not prioritize voting over whatever else they do (with the obvious rare exception of people who had emergencies or circumstances entirely out of their control), so it's really not all that different. The guy who chooses to vote "none of the above" might just have more free time than another guy who doesn't consent to any candidate but didn't make it to the polling location.

>>Unfortunately I don't know how to argue it on an individual basis.

That's because you can't.

If your goal is to feel like you were part of the process and feel good about doing your civic duty or whatever, go vote. It might take you a few hours.

If you actually want to have an impact, though, you should use those few hours to instead create a short video explaining your stance, upload it to YouTube and share it on Facebook. If you get 100 views and 5 people change their mind as a result, you made a five times bigger impact than you would have if you had spent that time casting your own vote.

In other words, among all the possible ways of making a difference, voting is the second worst (the absolute worst being not doing anything).

If you get 100 views and 5 people change their mind as a result, you made a five times bigger impact than you would have if you had spent that time casting your own vote

... well, assuming those five people vote. ;)

That's the problem, you can't make a convincing argument on an individual basis without invoking altruism, because this seems like an example of tragedy of the commons.

Relative vote totals count. A legislator elected 80-20% will act in a certain way, a legislator elected 50.1-49.9% will act in quite a different way. Today, you can see this written into news stories about Obamacare affecting "vulnerable Democrats", but it's always something; the 50.1%-er is always looking behind their back.

Mind you, this still doesn't mean that "your vote counts" in a huge way or anything, but it is false that the only vote that counts is the one that swings the election. Votes do not merely choose whether Person A or Person B "wins"... it also imbues the winner with more or less power and flexibility.

Your individual vote doesn't change the noticeable relative vote totals any more than they change the overall result of the election.

An individual raindrop doesn't noticeably change the rainfall totals but we still have flash floods.

How much effort would you be willing to invest in diverting a single raindrop? None of course. You wouldn't get yourself out of your chair to go divert a raindrop unless you thought you had a plan to divert lots of raindrops.

You could go outside with pots and pans to collect all the raindrops that you could, so that the water could be slowly released at a safer dryer time, but even those thousands or millions of raindrops wouldn't be worth the effort. If you had a bulldozer and found a strategically located ravine, you might actually bother to construct an earthen damn. That might actually make a difference.

It's like a long-time smoker saying that they have no reason to not smoke that next cigarette because it's not like that one cigarette is going to kill them.

Well it probably won't, right? I too find this hard to reason about, whether regarding voting or cigarettes. Perhaps I'm just thick. Is there a concept in, say, game theory that deals with this?

timeless decision theory: if you decide to smoke a cigarette in this situation it is likely that you will decide to smoke a cigarette in all similar situations.

I think an argument can be made that smoking another cigarette today will increase the odds of you smoking another cigarette tomorrow (And the day after, and so on) - which could a large effect on your health.

Alas, the same cannot be said for voting.

It's not like that at all. Not smoking "that next cigarette," which we could define as not smoking any cigarette in the next 30 minutes, is a very important decision that has a very direct impact on whether they will quit long-term.

You can't argue it on an individual basis, because it might not be "rational" on an individual basis: that is, taking all things into account, the expected "goodness" of the world in which you go to vote might not be greater than the expected "goodness" of the world in which you don't -- even if you strongly prefer one of the candidates. That's a pretty self-centered way to view the world, though.

In this context, there's no real way to break out of what you call "self-centered." Even if you're voting on a referendum to provide aid to some group of impoverished people, the time spent and risk incurred by going to the polling center is almost certainly not worth the impact your vote will make.

You point out that moderates and independents not participating in primaries gives the extremes more say over the candidates everyone else gets to choose from.

For general elections you use the same style argument - the more normal people excuse themselves from the equation the larger the impact of the extremes.

But still, your individual impact is probably too small to justify the physical act of voting.

There's not really a "good answer" for it. It's pretty straightforward: voting is only rational if you derive utility directly from the act (and not just from the idea that you're influencing the election, since you're probably not).

And that doesn't even get into the analysis of whether time spent researching politicians, referenda, etc. to be an educated voter is worth it, given that your vote has such a tiny influence, and the positive influence on your life if your desired policies get implemented is probably very tiny. People often point to market failures like the failure to produce public goods as a key reason for the necessity of government, but governments themselves (at least, republics/democracies) are public goods, and I see no reason why adding another layer of public goods would actually help.

I have an unusual opinion about this, that I can only convince a tiny minority of :)

I see the brain here as a completely mechanical thing. Your brain is very similar to other people's brains, and their sets of inputs to their brain is also very similar to yours.

The decision you make is actually a physical process, the same physical process that happens in many brains all over the country.

Whatever this physical process yields in your case, it will yield in all the other cases that are similar enough.

So when you decide to vote, or not vote, you're not only deciding for yourself. You are also, in effect, making a collective decision with all those similar to you -- about what you will all do.

This is somewhat similar to someone who decides to skip the gym just "this one time". Of course, the next time he planned to go, he skips it again. His brain and inputs (sets of considerations) are almost identical in all cases -- so whatever he decides in one of those circumstances is also a decision for the rest of the cases too.

I definitely don't buy that interpretation. Unless you can point to some true mechanism by which my choices remotely affect the choices of other brains (beyond the obvious possibilities like verbally persuading people), I consider it to be pseudoscience.

Firstly, I don't claim this view of mine is in any way scientific. It cannot make predictions, be refuted, etc.

It's just an interpretation of a model, not a model.

Secondly, I am not claiming there is a causal effect going on remotely. I am claiming that the decision making process itself is a mechanism, and if it is identical to another, remote, decision making process, then whatever one decides, the other will decide too.

Another way to view it, is that whatever caused A to decide X, will also cause identical B to decide X. Each of A and B believe they are deciding X independently, but in fact, both are identical and therefore not independent.

Regardless of any other arguments against this idea, I think that the key implied proposition is false; that there are other brains 'similar enough' to your own to share the same physical processes is extremely unlikely.

There are more possible configurations of the neurons in your brain than there are atoms in the universe. Even worse, the future excited state of your brain depends on the current excited state of your brain.

In order for the decision you make to be correlated to the decision of someone else's brain you almost certainly need to work at quite a few abstractions above the physical one.

This comment is getting longer than I meant, but an interesting counter point to my previous statement would be that many brains will react in similar ways to the same stimulus, and this may be put down to a 'physical process'. An example might be reactions to attractive people.

I agree with most of what you are saying.

The similarity is definitely not a physical one at an atomic level, but indeed at a very high level of abstraction.

If we compare two computers running the same algorithm, one could be ARM, one could be using vacuum tubes. But if at a high-level of abstraction, they are running the same algorithm on the same inputs, they will yield identical results and not independent results.

Similarly, I think the "algorithms" in our brains are very similar (or even identical) at some high level of abstraction.

Tell them:

Your vote doesn't matter in exactly the same sense that nothing you do matters. You could die right now and the world would go on. Yet your actions do matter. If people in our society just went around punching strangers, that would suck. The fact that you don't go around punching strangers is a small and important part of that.

> Your vote doesn't matter in exactly the same sense that nothing you do matters.

Except that the things you do tend to matter a lot in your own life and the lives of your friends, family, coworkers, etc., and since virtually everything you experience is related to these people and interactions between them, it's very rational to spend time deciding what to do. That said, it's perfectly rational to vote if you derive direct utility from the act of voting.

if you decide to distance yourself from the government election process, you can't complain later about it

That's not at all true. I decide to distance myself from it, and I complain about it.

But then you're just an outside observer and not a participant. It doesn't carry the same weight.

I assure you that everyone's political arguments carry the same weight.

Voting is not a magical salve to make people give a shit about what you're talking about.

Nobody cares what anybody thinks about politics.

The fact that so many people participate is one of the things I complain about.

what's your goal with it?

No one cell in your body is keeping you alive. Why do you need any cells?

Username checks out.

How far out of your way do you go to protect a single randomly chosen cell?

You may be made of cells, but no one cell is worth your attention. Only in situations where you have the opportunity to save or destroy a very large number of cells is it worth your time to do so.

Maybe your analogy is shitty and doesn't say anything about voting, or maybe the point here is that voting is pointless unless you actually enjoy doing it, though campaigning might be worth your time if you find a candidate you actually believe in.

Tell them:

    Personal commitment to democracy. 
    Symbolism is important.
    Not voting is the same as voting.
    Inspiring other people.
    Adding to the percentages.
    Understanding the system better.
    Good habits etc...

Or:

    Voting legitimizes whatever atrocities your government commits
    Symbolism is important: withdraw consent
    Voting is the same as not voting, but with more time wasted
    Dispiriting to other people, who have to tolerate the charade
    Not materially adding to any percentages
    Legitimizing the system by submitting to it's theatrical demands
    Thinking independently etc.

You can still derive usefulness from voting even if you think your individual vote is useless and the system is flawed. Understanding processes in general can be useful, understanding the emotions of the people at the polling station can be useful, understanding how voting makes you feel is useful.

It's not just about trying to get someone elected, it's about being part of a community and part of a participating body even if the majority of them are sheep.

If not voting is the same as voting, then why not choose the option that doesn't require me to take time off from work and/or drive somewhere out of my way?

Tragedy of the Commons?

A more rational explanation could be: this vote will significantly and directly impact your local elections (school board president, Sheriff, alderman, whatever) which does actually impact you whether you believe it or not.

When you go to the polls, then just happen to vote for national candidate or your state candidates because they're there. If that fails, I always fall back to: it is your duty as a citizen to make your voice heard, and if you don't vote you are abdicating your right to complain later or engage in any sort of civic discussion.

The best analogy I have ever heard goes something like:

    Everybody knows that one piece of trash won't make
    the streets dirty. So what does it matter if I litter?
    On the other hand,  if everyone littered, the streets
    would certainly be dirty.

If I recall correctly, I heard this in a discussion on the role of social stigma in optimising game theory situations for the common good.

Practically every time you cast a vote, you're voting on multiple races, propositions, etc. The chance of casting a tie-breaking vote in a local election (say for City Council) is probably better than 1 in 10k. If you have several such questions, then there are some tangible odds that your vote may make a difference.

Keep in mind that in those rare cases where a race is one by one vote, _everyone_ who voted for the winning side cast a deciding vote.

Rebuttal via recent news [1]. The key here is down ticket races, especially off-cycle, your vote has a big impact.

"The razor-thin margin between Herring and Obenshain, which has fluctuated consistently since Election Day, stood Wednesday morning with Herring carrying a 106-vote lead on his opponent."

Given VA's election turnout (for this seat) of 2M voters (only 25% of the population of 8.7M), this is a hairline-thin vote split. Electoral history in the USA is rife with these kinds of very small splits. See MN: Coleman vs. Franken, for example.

[1] http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/11/va-attorney-general-rac...

106 votes is still enough that your vote wouldn't have changed the outcome. Even a 2 vote spread means it wouldn't have been worth your time.

The electoral college is the crappiest form of democracy I know. (I find ironic that the US presents itself as "the champion of democracy" with that system) but if you don't vote you relinquish your right to decide. (and your right to complain too)

That's kind of an extreme leap. I read this back in 2005 and it impacted my thinking a lot. After delving deeply into anarcho-capitalism and the whole "Mises" thing however it's very much a long shot political philosophy that doesn't seem to understand how humans work - typical then of Economists (Full disclosure my BS was in Economics).

I would instead recommend Bryan Caplan's "The myth of the rational voter."

I'd say that the anarcho-capitalists have a better conception of how individual humans work than any of the current economic schools. At least they don't pretend to understand how humans value things: value is subjective.

I agree, however, that anarcho-capitalism is a long shot politically, and I'm not particularly satisfied with how they address externalities like pollution or common services like law enforcement.

I've settled on parvumianism (to coin a neologisim): in favor of small political units in which the appropriate political mechanism can be chosen and meaningfully consented to.

Buy a lottery ticket on your way back from the polls.

That way you have a higher chance of changing your life.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com