Why Vote
Naturally on election day, I’m seeing a lot of talk on econ and political science blogs about the question of should people vote — either as a measure of self-interested rationality or else as a measure of rational altruism. I think there’s a lot to be said for the second account, but it’s worth saying that I’m not even sure voting is really even a costly activity. I had to stand on a relatively long line this morning and wait about 75 minutes. I think that’s an unusually long amount of time. But how costly was it? Well, the time cost has mostly been deducted from time I would have spent at the gym and from time I would have spent at work. Going to the gym and going to work are good things for me to do, in the long run, but they’re not especially awesome and I’m not sorry to have given them up for a day. The alternative, standing in line while reading the paper, saying “hi” to neighbors I know as they join the line, chatting with the people next to me about the election, etc. was perfectly pleasant.
I wouldn’t want to do that every morning by any means. But as a once-in-a-while activity, it’s social, neighborly, and totally fun.
60 Responses to “Why Vote”
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November 4th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
And its a great way to meet chicks.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
And its a great way to meet chicks.
Hell, meet ‘em? We were in line so long we could have started a family. If Obama wants a big turnout, he’s getting it. Today dwarfed all of our previous wait times.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Yet another reason why economists are bozos.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
You’re making me feel bad about my two minute voting experience. Why didn’t I get to wait in a cool line?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Jayhawk Max is right! Though as I learned this year in Texas, caucusing is even better for that.
I like Derek Parfit’s explanation of why you should vote. Even if the chance of your vote deciding the election is 1 in 100 million, the difference between the candidates is often worth $1 trillion to your country. A 1 in 100 million chance of $1 trillion is worth $10K to everyone. If you make the effort to learn about the issues and vote the right way, you’re bestowing a $10K benefit on your fellow citizens.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Most of the times I’ve patiently listened to some econgeek explain why voting isn’t rational from a cost-benefit perspective, we’ve been waiting in line for coffee or a movie or something equally overpriced and socially overvalued.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I think Rachel Maddow had a really good point on this. It isn’t especially costly to you (or me) to stand in line, but for some it is. Particularly for hourly workers, those working 12 hour shifts (including salaried employs), and anyone else for whom 1-2 hours of lost time is extremely costly. Sure, you could argue that anyone can find time, but I can tell you that with two kids & even a flexible job, I had to plan things out accordingly to make it to the polls (complicated by the fact I wanted to make sure my kids could go with me).
November 4th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Particularly for hourly workers, those working 12 hour shifts (including salaried employs), and anyone else for whom 1-2 hours of lost time is extremely costly.
Isn’t two hours time off to vote customary/required by law?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
the difference between the candidates is often worth $1 trillion to your country
That may be true, but there is no reason to think that the candidate you favor is the candidate with the positive value.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I took me 1.5 hours to vote, mainly because two of the four voting machines were hors de combat. However, the aurhorities eventually sent over 3 more machines and things moved faster. I have to say that I have never seen anything like this. I suspect the eventual turnout in our little precinct will approach 100%, assuming patience on the part of potential voters. If it’s like this everywhere else, the country may top the 61% seen in the 1960 election, which was also a watershed (first Roman Catholic to be elected).
November 4th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
That may be true, but there is no reason to think that the candidate you favor is the candidate with the positive value.
O RLY?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
And it would be all the more pleasent to wait in a fun line and then not have to go back to work because election day is a national holiday. I had to wake up extra early today in order to vote and get to work on time, which i did not mind because i was really excited to vote. But I would have rather woken up at a normal time, went to vote at my leisure, and then gone back home to read this blog (instead of reading it at work).
November 4th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Gee, and I was getting impatient with the old folks checking off the names/issuing the ballots (yes, paper ballots!) towards the end of my 15-minute voting experience.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
duBois (#2), that was the comment of the day. Until the next one
November 4th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I think there’s a lot to be said for the second account, but it’s worth saying that I’m not even sure voting is really even a costly activity. I had to stand on a relatively long line this morning and wait about 75 minutes.
75 minutes seems like a significant time cost to me. How much would you want to be paid for that amount of your time?
But the time spent waiting in line to vote (and the time/effort/cost of getting to and from the polling place) is only a small part of it anyway. The bigger cost by far is the time and effort spent in preparation. Deciding which candidates/ballot propositions to vote for.
Given that the effect of any one person’s vote is infinitesimal, why should they bother with all this? Why is voting rational?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
But standing in the cold, Nov. rain is horrible, especially if you’re frail. And what if you’re losing wages while standing in line, or are paying by the hour for someone to watch your senile parent while you slip out to vote? No, the long lines disenfranchise many, many people. Mingle with your neighbors at the market, or at mosque, synagogue, or church, or at the park.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Werewolf,
I like Derek Parfit’s explanation of why you should vote. Even if the chance of your vote deciding the election is 1 in 100 million, the difference between the candidates is often worth $1 trillion to your country. A 1 in 100 million chance of $1 trillion is worth $10K to everyone. If you make the effort to learn about the issues and vote the right way, you’re bestowing a $10K benefit on your fellow citizens.
The relevant benefit in the cost-benefit calculation is the benefit to you. $1 trillion divided by 300 million is $3,333. $3,333 divided by 100 million is $0.00003 dollars. You’re also making the absurd assumption that if your preferred candidate is elected, the probability of the $1 trillion aggregate benefit is 1 (i.e., certainty).
November 4th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I’m with Maddow here. Ultimately this ends up being a costly activity for at least some portion of the electorate. Whether or not your state requires your employer to give you time (or the entire day) off or not, that’s still time you have lost, and in many jobs you are only paid for time you work. Professionals (such as Matt here) have a great deal of flexibility and the ability to move personal time around; even if they are ostensibly paid hourly, they often have comp time or flex time options. Even though the cost per hour may be higher for these professionals, as with tax loopholes, they may end up paying no actual penalty for voting.
Consider, on the other hand, a single parent who not only has to leave work early to take two buses home to get to her polling place, losing an hour’s pay for argument, but also has to pay extra for child care. The dollar cost of this may not add up, but it certainly is a higher percentage bite into her budget. I think it’s easy to show that someone in this position is also more likely to consider that lost hour something that could in fact ultimately cost her job, because there would be a pattern of late buses, MIA child care, and so forth that would put someone on the edge. So the cost of voting could be astronomically high for some individuals.
Early voting helps some, and I took advantage of it this year. I would like to see more early voting and I’d also like to see more vote-by-mail the way Oregon does it. Maybe do the latter for all local, non-partisan elections, to save money for the bigger elections and early voting staffing.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Matt, you’re overlooking the significant externalities here. Your being gone 75 minutes was 75 minutes that you deprived us of blog posts! Surely, a monumental cost to your readers.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Mixner, you’re running the calculations for a self-interested person. I’m a utilitarian and I care about everybody. So there’s no dividing by 300M.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Waiting 75 minutes doesn’t seem like much at all; took me 4 hours–there were some in line worried about being late for work or having to leave without voting to go to work–and that seems unfair. Provisions were made for elderly with health problems. Unfortunately, the women I met were married.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
If you had young kids you might well feel differently. Someone’s got to be watching them. Unless you take them with you. And taking small kids along to the polls with a 20-minute wait is probably fun, but taking them along for a 60-minute wait would be very dodgy indeed, and taking them for a 3-hour wait would be just about impossible (or excruciating for everyone in earshot).
Voting ought to be free and painless in every way. Any kind of obstacle to voting ends up disenfranchising some proportion of some group at the margins. As a young single well-educated person with no dependents and extremely flexible working conditions, Matthew Yglesias comes out ahead. But for plenty of others it’s different.
Of course, if you *want* to hang around at the polling place for a while to chat to people, then that’s fine. But you shouldn’t *need* to do so.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I heard nobody’s voting today. The polls got too crowded.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
You’ve hit upon a core problem of the various narrowly-defined self-interest economic models of voter turnout. They generally assume things to be costs that may in fact be benefits. Their justification is that anything that takes time is costly. By this definition, watching a football game is costly. However, many people enjoy informing themselves about political contests, enjoy going to the polls, etc (see Riker and Ordeshook, “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting” American Political Science Review, 1968).
At some point, clearly, these acts may go from benefits to costs (many pleasures become tortuous if they go on too long). With respect to voting, some reasonable amount of time spent can be free of cost, but at some point, many people begin losing income or even are threatened with the loss of the job itself. I believe the law in many places requires employers to allow 2 hours for voting, and this seems reasonable except for failing to provide travel time allowances.
Still, this is a different matter than the adequacy of support resources at polling places. Even though one may enjoy voting, chatting in line with fellow citizens, etc, there’s nothing supporting the notion that we should deliberately slow down the process or accept negligence in maintaining voting equipment and staff.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Given that the effect of any one person’s vote is infinitesimal, why should they bother with all this? Why is voting rational?
Mixner, that’s a great argument. You should go to the blogs where the conservatives are (because they’re the smart people, of course) and convince them of it.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I think election day should be a holiday, but even if it’s not, it’s only once every four years (two if you’re really into it), so just suck it up, quit whining and go vote.
And if it’s such a gigantic pain to be somewhere once every four years, vote absentee. Then you can fill the ballot out at your leisure, with the internet to help you make informed decisions on all the races, even non-partisan ones.
It’s really not that hard, people.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I hear both sides of this, but Maddow’s right. While the Hawaii caucus earlier this year was lots of fun for younger, unencumbered voters, my elderly neighbors had to wait in line for hours and struggle to read small print in the dwindling twilight: not good. And my husband wasn’t able to caucus because someone had to care for our 2-year-old, so he was disenfranchised. Oregon’s vote-by-mail system seems fair and civilized by comparison. Save the celebratory aspect of voting, fingers crossed, for tonight.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Werewolf,
Mixner, you’re running the calculations for a self-interested person. I’m a utilitarian and I care about everybody. So there’s no dividing by 300M.
Now you’re just being silly. If the benefit to you from a dollar is the same whether you get the dollar or someone else gets it, why aren’t you giving away most of your income? Your assumption that it is certain (probability = 1) that the election of your preferred candidate would produce a $1 trillion aggregate benefit (or whatever other invented-out-of-thin-air number you care to use) is also nonsensical.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
why aren’t you giving away most of your income?
Ever since I got a faculty job, I’ve come pretty close.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
You have to go beyond arguing that voting is a vaguely enjoyable social activity, and compare it to alternative ways you could spend the same time. Most people would apply the time to their work day, which has some slight economic value. But if you could skip voting and just spend more time reading the paper or whatever you like to do, that might have equal or greater direct benefit.
The reason most habitual voters would not pursue alternatives, is that they would feel bad about missing their chance to vote, and would not enjoy the free time or make effective use of it for their work. At that level, it amounts to some form of either altruism or ideological driven compulsive behavior. Until they start bringing in balloon twisters and handing out door prizes, the voting process is going to be at most a notch above a wash in terms of cost and benefit.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
By this definition, watching a football game is costly.
Watching a football game is costly. It obviously involves a time cost, as well as other costs. The time you spend watching the game is time you could otherwise be spending in some benefit-producing activity, like paid labor, or fixing things around the house.
However, many people enjoy informing themselves about political contests, enjoy going to the polls, etc (see Riker and Ordeshook, “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting” American Political Science Review, 1968).
How many people? How many people would invest the time and effort to choose between the candidates and other selections on the ballot simply as a recreational activity if they weren’t going to vote? Seems highly unlikely to me that this would be more than a tiny fraction of the population.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Wait — why would you divide by 100 million again? You’ve just divided by 300 million. You have the figure per capita.
Your vote, then, in this model would seem to represent 3 times the weight of each individual. There is only 1 voter for each 3 people, not 1 voter for 100 million people.
Therefore the analogy would seem to be that 1 voter controls the likely destination of either the total hypothesized $1 trillion or the per capita portion (excepting the cases of immediate family members).
November 4th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
No wait at all at the high school in my small town in southern Maine during lunch hour; there were dozens of people voting but they had at least 30 voting booths and the optical scanners were working today (not always the case).
Took me longer to fill out the survey from the kids in AP Government class afterward.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
El Cid,
Wait — why would you divide by 100 million again?
I didn’t divide by 100 million “again.”
You’ve just divided by 300 million. You have the figure per capita.
The 300 million is for the per capita benefit. The 100 million is for the probability that your vote will decide the outcome.
Your vote, then, in this model would seem to represent 3 times the weight of each individual. There is only 1 voter for each 3 people, not 1 voter for 100 million people.
Therefore the analogy would seem to be that 1 voter controls the likely destination of either the total hypothesized $1 trillion or the per capita portion (excepting the cases of immediate family members).
November 4th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
El Cid,
Wait — why would you divide by 100 million again?
I didn’t divide by 100 million “again.”
You’ve just divided by 300 million. You have the figure per capita.
The 300 million is for the per capita benefit. The 100 million is for the probability that your vote will decide the outcome.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I had a pleasant wait like Matt. Just goes to show how evil ACORN is, trying to get people to go wait in line and do their civic duty. EVIL.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Considering the hours I’ve spent watching speeches and debates, reading articles, learning the candidates’ positions, and cursing at Joe Scarborough, the time spent in line to (hopefully) make history is nothing. If you consider 2-3 hours of your time to be so valuable, then by all means feel free to exercise your right to not vote. If you get your political advice from Joe the Plumber, then please exercise your right to not vote.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Altruism doesn’t buy you anything because the probability of being pivotal in a large population is vanishingly small. Much, much less than 1 in a million, or 1 in 100 million or even 1 in 100 trillion. If probability of supporting either candidate is precisely 0.5 and independent, the chance of being pivotal is (1/2)^(n/2) ; for n = 2000 that’s about 9.3 * 10^(-302). If people are more likely to vote for one candidate over the other it gets even worse. If people are correlated in their behavior you can construct contrived cases where you have a substantial chance to be pivotal, but many cases will leave you at precisely zero chance.
If you are a rational altruist who finds voting costly, facing a large population of voters (who are irrational or have a taste for voting, or are responding to social pressure), you’d be better off working at your normal job and donating the money, or working at a soup kitchen, etc.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Mixner: “I didn’t divide by 100 million “again.””
You’re being pedantic. El Cid’s intent was clearly to say “Tell me once again why you chose to divide by 100 million.” (i.e. “again” refers back to your exposition, not your division). You might make a tenuous case that the question in isolation is ambiguous, but in context, it is clear that nobody suggested you had performed the division more than once.
Such comments distract from your point, assuming you have one, and I wonder what goal you believe you accomplish by starting your reply in this way.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
People vote out of habit and social pressure. That’s pretty close to the complete explanation (or so I would bet). If their peer group does not vote, it is unlikely they will feel compelled to do so just to get the sticker. If their peer group does vote, then they will be embarrassed to admit that they used the time some other way.
In very significant elections, people might also vote for the more direct purpose of influencing the outcome. The reason they do so, is not because they have developed a very sophisticated altruistic model, but because they have not taken the effort to consider how insignificant their influence is likely to be–an effort that arguably exceeds that of simply taking the time out to vote.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
El Cid’s intent was clearly to say “Tell me once again why you chose to divide by 100 million.”
That certainly wasn’t clear to me. If that’s what he meant, that’s what he should have said.
Such comments distract from your point, assuming you have one
Tell me what part of my post you don’t understand, and I’ll try to explain it again for you.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
People vote out of habit and social pressure.
That just begs the question of what caused the habit and social pressure to arise in the first place.
I think a rational case can be made that voting is justified as an ethical obligation of citizenship in a democracy, and I think that is the fundamental reason why people do it.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Actually, I retract my comment. It does seem based on italics that El Cid had suggested you were dividing more than once. Sorry.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Just got a robocall from Scarlett Johanson urging me to vote for Obama; I’m ready to go back and stand in line a 2nd time!
November 4th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Yay, Peter Ordeshook!
I took two classes from him in college. Good teacher.
November 4th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Standard anarchist responses:
1) Don’t vote – it only encourages them.
2) If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.
3) No matter who you vote for, the State gets in power.
November 7th, 2008 at 1:31 am
it’s awesome that there has been this “problem” of long lines all over… people taking a greater interest in public issues is always a good thing
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