Both Jim Lindgren and many commenters on our earlier posts on voting suggest that the real explanation for why people vote is that they they feel they have a duty to do so. This is the standard explanation for voting in the academic literature and it makes intuitive sense. If you ask people why they voted, most will indeed probably say that it was because they had a civic duty to do so.
However, the question remains, why would people think they have a duty to do something that makes no difference? We don't normally believe in a duty to do futile acts. The reason why people feel they have a duty to vote is because they tend to believe that voting makes a "difference," even if a very small one. If they thought otherwise, very few would still believe they had a duty to vote. To be sure, an alternative explanation is that they think they have a duty to vote because they have been indoctrinated into believing this by the government, particularly in the public schools. While that may be true to some extent, mass voting long predates large-scale indoctrination of this kind, and indeed long predates the existence of public schools (which were not established in most of the United States until the mid to late nineteenth century). Moreover, it would be hard to understand why this kind of indoctrination is so much more successful than other such efforts in relatively free societies.
The same point applies to arguments that people vote because they get "pleasure" from it. I highly doubt that many people enjoy the actual process of voting, which mainly consists of standing in line and then filling out a form. For that reason, I am skeptical about Jim's suggestion that the benefit voters get from casting a ballot is "like going to a movie or a football game." Movies and football games are entertaining and fun (at least to fans). Voting is not. Very few people regularly choose to stand in line or fill out forms as a leisure activity. The real "pleasure" that people get from voting (to the extent that they get any) is the sense that they have done their duty. But this in turn merely gets us back to the question of why they think they have such a duty in the first place.
UPDATE: In response to this post, Orin Kerr writes:
When an event is far away, we tend to ignore the practical consequences of it and instead latch on to a very incomplete vision of what the event may be like. So if a co-worker says, "do you want to go to Vegas with me 6 months from now?," you might be happy to accept because the abstract mental image of going to Vegas seems great. It's not until the trip is around the corner that you realize that the trip will be expensive, you have other things to do, you don't necessarily want to spend time with your co-worker, and the like.
Applying this idea to voting, it suggests to me that Jim may be right about why people vote even if Ilya is right that people don't like to wait in line and fill out forms. When people think about voting in the abstract, they focus on the rush of it; the feeling of participating, of taking responsibility, and the excitement of not knowing who is going to win. Sure, they don't like to wait in line and fill out forms. But when they decide to vote they aren't thinking about that, just like they aren't thinking about what a pain it is to go to Vegas when the trip is six months away
The problem with Orin's argument is that, unlike the trip to Vegas, the decision to vote can easily be reversed, even at the last minute. There are no nonrefundable airline tickets, hotel reservations, etc. Therefore, even if it is true that, in thinking about a decision months ahead of time, people don't focus on the costs (which I'm skeptical about), they surely do realize the costs by the time election day comes around. Moreover, I highly doubt that most people even think about the decision whether or not to vote many months in advance.
UPDATE #2: Frank Cross, one of the commenters to Orin's post writes:
I think the comparison to voting for all stars, or American Idol, or other polls is suggestive.
Ilya's theory doesn't apply well in these cases, I don't think the selection of a player to the all star game will yield benefit for many other Americans, and I don't think my single vote for the player will likely make a difference in the outcome.
On American Idol, people can vote simply by calling in on a toll-free line while watching the show. There is therefore virtually no cost to doing so; assuming you would be watching the show during that time period anyway, the only possible "cost" is the diversion of part of your attention way from the TV screen for 30 seconds or so. If you had to take an hour to go to a polling place to vote on AI, I think very few people would do so (even those who like the show). The fact that the producers have created a toll-free line for callers suggest that they realize that the voters are unwilling to pay even a very small cost to participate (a 1 minute long distance call probably costs no more than 10 or 15 cents).
Voting for sports all-stars is a very different phenomenon from political voting. The people who fill out all star ballots generally have a strong interest in the sport in question and actually enjoy the process of thinking about which players should get in and which ones shouldn't. All-Star ballot voters are a small minority of the public, probably even of sports fans. Moreover, all star game voters can legally "stuff the ballot" by voting many times, which greatly increases the chance of affecting the outcome. Casting several hundred or even several thousand votes for your favorite player is a much stronger incentive to vote than being able to cast just one. Major League Baseball deliberately encourages ballot-stuffing because they know it increases "turnout" and interest in All Star game elections.
A small minority of people are "political fans" and feel the same way about politics as sports fans do about sports. But the vast majority of people who vote do not in fact have this kind of strong interest in politics, and of course stuffing the ballot in a political election can land you in jail!
Related Posts (on one page):
- Civic duty and "pleasure" as explanations for voting:
- More on the Rationality of Voting - Reply to Jim Lindgren:
- The Possible Rationality of Voting; Another View.--
- Voting and the Wisdom of Crowds:
- Why it's (often) rational to vote:
I don't know about their doing "lots" of such things. The unwillingness of most people to do individually futile acts is the main reason we have collective action problems and tragedies of the commons, such as air pollution. As a general rule, people don't do things they know to be futile.
Of course, another possibility is that rational choice theory doesn't accurately explain human behavior. I'm all in favor of this theory.
Plus, consider the opportunity cost. If you want to fulfill your civic duty, the time you waste voting could be used doing something more effective. Work in a soup kitchen. Teach a gun safety class. Pass out copies of "Atlas Shrugged" to the homeless. Whatever.
That's my approach. I don't vote, but I complain about politics a lot so I can influence how others vote, thus magnifying my electoral power to a level that might make a difference.
(Yes, this is a joke, mostly I just wanted to say "decidedly non-zero)
I haven't seen the stats, but I don't know that the chance of getting killed in a car accident from a short drive is as high as the chance of casting a decisive vote. Moreover, people regularly take such chances in order get a small amount of utility. For example, many people will drive 1 or 2 miles to get a candy bar at CVS. The utility of eating it is probably similar to that which you get from voting (given the very small chance that your vote will be decisive).
Well that's kind of silly, isn't it? As Elliot says, it's all about the categorical imperative. This is the heart of duty: doing something because everyone should do it, even if your little part is relatively insignificant. It's the same as recycling. "Think globally, act locally." This is what allows us to survive as a society.
The logic of the civic duty is obvious: you're rejecting a way of thinking that may be convenient for the individual, but that is self-destructive on a societal level. What better reason do you need?
When Ann Richards was elected governor, she had to first survive a Democratic party run-off. Some people remarked upon having the distinct pleasure of getting to vote against her three times in one election.
I find it is usually more fun to vote against something than for something. There have been races, however, where I couldn't bring myself to vote for either candidate.
No one is under the illusion that his altruistic actions will, e.g., end homelessness or hunger. But people do want to do their part.
Most voters haven't thought about the issue in as much depth as most of the contributors here -- and many do subscribe to the "every vote matters" rationale. But the idea of "civic duty," of doing one's part, is also compelling.
Note that although no one's vote matters, if everyone acted as if his vote didn't matter, then any individual's vote would in fact be outcome determinative.
But that doesn't make it really rational to vote, given that one knows some 50 percent of all other people will. I'd imagine that your extensive work on voters' rational ignorance makes it that much more irrational to vote: how can you assign a lot of weight to your value of a winning side, when you don't even know what the winning side offers?
The problem with the rationality argument is precisely what the 2000 election made clear: in any large election, the margin for error will exceed the margin of victory before any individual's vote could be outcome-determinative. We must look to other factors upon which to rest the choice to vote, and "civic duty" is as good a place as any.
(In the alternative, people could just be afraid that if they don't vote, P. Diddy will kill them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_and_Turd
No one is under the illusion that his altruistic actions will, e.g., end homelessness or hunger. But people do want to do their part.
Donating to charity will not "end homelessness or hunger." But it can feed one hungry person or house one homeless one. That is a tangible (and highly likely) effect of the donor's individual action that doesn't have a parallel in voting.
There is a big difference between "relatively insignificant" and completely ineffective. Even more to the point, there is a difference between an activity where each individual action makes a small, but real contribution (e.g. - as with rules against littering, where even one piece of litter might reduce the esthetic value of a landscape slightly), and cases where individual actions don't make any difference whatsoever unless that one action is the one that causes the total to get over a particular key threshold (such as winning an election).
I've been a reader for a while and this is my first time posting. This is a topic that's recently become near and dear to me. My comprehension of the issue at this point is limited to my own extremely limited experience.
I'm 31 years old and tomorrow will be my first time voting in an election. In the past, I considered it at best a pointless exercise and at worse a painful reminder of the average American's disempowerment under a 2 party, crony-based political system. I don't expect the Dem/Rep candidates to represent the best Americans for a given position; rather they are merely the ones who "served their time" in their respective parties and are now getting their "just desserts".
My personal political views tend to be pro-liberty and pro-business (something akin to "leave people AND companies alone as much as possible"). The Dems will tend to side with individual rights but businesses (in my mind, the engine of opportunity in our country) will suffer. And the Reps will create favorable business environments but interfere with what I believe are fundamental rights to equal treatment and due process. It's a popular cliche, but I want the gov't out of the bedroom and the boardroom.
My past thinking on voting was: if you found yourself in Hell and the dark lord himself personally presented you with two doors representing different but equally painful eternal tortures and asked you to pick one, you'd be perfectly justified in telling him to get bent and demanding he pick one for you. After all, who should participate in their own damnation? Faced with two equally unpalatable options, I opted for the third: to decline to choose either of the two.
More recently my thinking on voting has changed. We know that voting is fundamental to the success of a democracy. I believe democracy is the right form of gov't for America. So we can rightly conclude that in order to maintain our system of gov't, American citizens have a duty to vote. But what if voting is largely futile? I find this no longer matters. I now think I was being inconsistent and hypocritcal in the past. How can I accept that voting-is-necessary-and-good as a basic principle, not vote, and then complain when Washington fails to stand up for my principles - the very ones I was unwilling to stand on as well? They were, after all, only following my example at that point.
I used to believe that people who voted got what they paid for and weren't entitled to complain unless they were specifically mislead. Now I've come to believe that, for myself at least, it's important to take a stand on principle so as not to forfeit the right to ask others to do the same. This last week, I printed up my voter guide and I've been reading about the candidates and marking which ones I support. Tomorrow will be a first for me.
My apologies for the length and individualized nature of the post. I'm posting it in the vague hope that it's not entirely useless to this conversation.
How is it completely ineffective? You're saying votes don't determine elections?
I can't tell if you're being totally serious. Yes, if every vote gave a dollar to a homeless person, that would be an additional reason to vote. But how is that necessary?
The duty is based on the fact that unless conscientious people vote, our country is going to be ruled by idiots. Thus, if you're conscientious, you have a duty to vote. If you don't, then you're part of the problem rather than part of the solution. If people have a duty to do anything, isn't it to avoid being part of the problem?
Individuals aren't wholly irrational here. I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes at my NYC polling site. I did once when I was in college, in North Carolina; but my time was less valuable then, and I was younger and less cynical. I wouldn't wait an hour to vote today -- even though I will go by the poll tomorrow, and I expect to vote, notwithstanding that the vote will have no impact. It's hardly the only use of my time that lacks impact...
Also there is a certain righteous certitude that makes one want to win arguments or not let people get away with things. I think another reason people vote is because they feel this way about the other side of the debate. Now this on it's own wouldn't explain it as it only makes sense if voting is effective but as with the first point I think voting lets people feel like they are part of the party/group they are voting for.
In other words when I vote democratic I will feel like I'm part of the group that is smacking down the republicans for their idiotic policies. I know I won't personally make a difference but voting lets me feel the pleasure of smacking down the other side vicariously through my membership in the group.
As for how the practice started I suspect the voting paradox was much less effective in the smaller voting regions were voting started.
Of course votes in the aggregate determine elections. But an individual vote (which is the only one most people control) does NOT determine elections except in the rare case where that one vote is decisive.
Do you only refrain from littering in pristine landscapes? There's plenty of trash in the ditches, yet I still refrain from throwing even a gum wrapper out my car window. That conduct is "irrational." Sometimes I go to silly lengths to ensure the gum wrapper finds a trash can. Why? Partly duty. I think people should put gum wrappers in trash cans, rather than throw them in ditches. Because I believe it is something people should do, I do it. Moreover, it's "my" gumwrapper, it has greater significance than any other gumwrapper. By responsibly throwing it away I create a positive memory, or at least avoid creating a negative memory that I might later recall and find shameful.
I don't think voting is a unique case of "irrational" behavior. Even if it is objectively futile, you overstate the mystery by asserting people "know" this. (I also think you overstate the inconvenience of voting, which is not much worse than going to the corner store for milk.) Voters vote with the belief that their vote is of significance, and unless it is an utter sham, you'll have difficulty dissuading them.
For one, there is no way of knowing with certainty in advance that my vote will not be outcome-determinative. I've known of school and local elections that came out tied. I can't tell the future.
Then there's civic duty: people should do this, so I will do it.
Then ego and fantasy. I get a lot of milage out of it. My vote cancels out my liberal friend's. It also cancels out my ex-girlfriend's. Some days I might comfort myself with the "knowledge" my vote cancelled out Rosie O'Donnell's. It's my thumb in the eye of the MSM. It's my rebuke of John Kerry. It's my thank-you to the President. If my guy loses, I can look back on my vote and know that I tried. If my guy wins, his victory is my victory. It's not just one vote; it's "my" vote.
I don't have a very good data on this, but as far as I know it just doesn't happen. To take one rough data set, every U.S. Presidential election since 1972 has had turnout between 49% and 57% of the voting age population, while the difference in electoral votes has ranged from 5 (Bush-Gore) to 512 (Reagan-Mondale). Presidential year turnout never falls anywhere close to that of off-year Congressional elections, where it hangs around the mid-30s.
Obviously, a better study would take more care to control for the fact that voters often cast ballots for multiple elections at once. Other complicating factors could make it hard to get precise estimates. For instance, the voters' relative liking of the candidates, and the campaigns' efforts to increase turnout (e.g. by persuading voters of the difference between the candidates) could be correlated to closeness. Still, unless the data show that most of the turnout disappears when elections aren't close (and I don't think that they would), that implies that most people aren't voting instrumentally (because of the goal to alter the outcome of the election).
The strongest alternatives to instrumental theories of why people vote, I think, are expressive theories. People vote in order to express their values and help establish their identity, to others and to themselves. This includes showing that they care about their country and its political system, and showing that they support (or oppose) a particular candidate, party, issue, or ideology. It does not seem to me like such behavior is necessarily irrational.