# Freakonomics author says it's stupid to vote **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 26, 2012, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907 "2012-10-26T06:38:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/41 "2012-10-26T20:14:25Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > I suppose they’re the same in the sense that a $1 bill and a $1 lottery ticket are the same. > > Note that allocating funding to a political party can have an affect on the election in a way that simply allocating votes doesn’t. For example, if a party receives $500 dollars, they can broadcast an ad that shapes the course of the political discussion, whereas receiving 500 votes (and no money) doesn’t. Well, as a Florida voter, I guess I’m much more cognizant of how (roughly) 500 votes can not only change the shape of the political discussion, it can change the shape of world history. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/42 "2012-10-26T20:32:03Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > These are logically the same thing. > > There is a tiny, but non-zero chance, that your vote will in fact be the one that determines the outcome of an election. For a federal election, it’s a zero chance. Not tiny. Zero. No federal election is ever going to be decided by one vote. The “fuzziness” in counting votes is WAY more than one vote. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/43 "2012-10-26T20:40:28Z")
> [@voltaire](#): > > Well, as a Florida voter, I guess I’m much more cognizant of how (roughly) 500 votes can not only change the shape of the political discussion, it can change the shape of world history. 500 votes. Not one. If you can manage to cast 500 votes, you really should run to the polls. ---
**Author:** ![TransMonk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e8c25b/32.png) [@TransMonk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TransMonk)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/44 "2012-10-26T21:19:33Z")
Look down the ballot, folks. Lots of important (if not more important) choices down there. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/45 "2012-10-26T21:48:52Z")
> [@](#): > > I think if you don’t vote, despite genuinely caring about the outcome, then you’re a jerk, in exactly the same way you’d be a jerk for not paying your taxes despite wanting the government to be fully funded. Your personal contribution is of course miniscule, but so is everybody else’s, so for you to not do your part and rely on everybody else is unfair. This, and what \*\*Pleonast \*\*and **Exapno Mapcase** and \*\*tomcar \*\*and \*\*brickbacon \*\*said. Lots of good responses, as I expected! If there’s a better source for collective, intelligent analysis online I don’t know what it is. (Does anyone agree with me that even the blogger, who disagrees with Levitt, does so in the “wrong” way, while accepting Levitt’s fallacious premise?) As for the wrapper in the wind: if exactly one person did that, and no one ever did it again, it would have a negligible impact on the world around us. The wrapper would get buried and have no meaningful impact on the ecosystem. Maybe a better example is dumping your used motor oil in the local (decent-sized, clean) lake. If you’re the only one to ever do it, the dilution of the toxic crap you dumped will mean no significant harm to humans, flora, or fauna. But if everyone in the area starts doing it routinely, it’s going to have a negative impact. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/46 "2012-10-26T22:04:23Z")
Did anybody read the quote? > [@](#): > > DUBNER: So Levitt, how can you in your life, when you wander around, tell the difference between a smart person and a not-so-smart person? > > LEVITT: Well, one good indicator of a person who’s not so smart is if they vote **in a presidential election** because **they think their vote might actually decide which candidate wins**. > [@](#): > > LEVITT: Yeah, so I think you’re right that most people understand that their vote doesn’t really matter for the election, which is exactly why I said it’s only the not so smart people who vote because they’re actually going to influence the election. I think the reason most people vote, and the reason I occasionally vote is that it’s fun. It’s fun to vote, it’s expressive, and it’s a way to say the kind of person you are, and it’s a way to be able to say when something goes wrong when the opponent wins, “well I voted against that fool.” Or when something goes right when you voted for a guy to tell your grandchildren, “well I voted for that president.” **So there’s nothing wrong with voting. I think you can tell whether someone’s smart of not so smart by their reasons for voting.** ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/47 "2012-10-26T22:48:25Z")
He’s still full of it. No, nobody really thinks that _their_ vote is the vote that tips the scales. But many do realize that if everyone thinks the way they do nobody would vote. You go to vote because it’s your civic duty, and so that you can be one of the millions of votes counted, because if everyone on your side thought their vote didn’t count and they shouldn’t bother, then your candidate won’t win. The fact that the poll might say 52% to 48% doesn’t mean squat if the votes don’t actually happen. _Some_ percentage of voters need to go vote. An individual vote may not count, but everybody’s vote counts. The fact that he goes on to explicitly say that a “good” reason to do it is “for fun” shows just how convinced he is that nobody’s vote actually matters. Full of it. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/48 "2012-10-26T23:54:00Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > For a federal election, it’s a zero chance. Not tiny. Zero. No federal election is ever going to be decided by one vote. The “fuzziness” in counting votes is WAY more than one vote. The fuzziness in election funding is way more than a buck seventy-five. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/49 "2012-10-27T00:18:54Z")
I vote because I feel it’s a duty of citizenship, and I’d feel like a hypocrite if I didn’t (not to mention how going out and voting can motivate others to vote). It’s that simple, and I think it’s perfectly logical. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/50 "2012-10-27T00:47:34Z")
Thanks to Gangster Octopus for putting up the text. The author is more of a fucking idiot than I thought. Anyone who wants to judge the intelligence of a person based on one question, especially one as stupid as “why do you vote?” is dumber than a sack of wet mice. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/51 "2012-10-27T00:56:55Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > For a federal election, it’s a zero chance. Not tiny. Zero. No federal election is ever going to be decided by one vote. The “fuzziness” in counting votes is WAY more than one vote. Come on. Obviously the chance is very small, but it’s not zero. Since Maine and Nebraska are not winner take all, there is a small chance one congressional district could break an electoral college tie. There is obviously a non-zero chance an individual congressional district could be won by one vote. > [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Players don’t have the option of not showing up - they’re being paid to show up, and the management does not consider it from the perspective on each individual player. But those motivations don’t really factor into it. The point was that if we consider the likelihood of one’s actions being decisive to the outcome as the primary motivation to act, then the disincentives are the same. > [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > But more importantly, the likelihood that an individual player will have a decisive impact on a game is greater by several orders of magnitude than the likelihood that a given voter will have a decisive impact on a given election. Depends on the player and the voter. For example, how Colin Powell, or Bill Clinton, or Sarah Palin vote is more important, and has a greater impact on the race than how I vote. I have a question for you. What do you consider a decisive in the following circumstances: Say the Lakers are playing the Heat. There are 4 minutes left. Kobe drains a 3 to put the Lakers up by 1 point. Then Gasol scores 6 straight unanswered baskets to bring the lead to 13. Then Lebron scores 12 straight points. The game ends with the Lakers winning by 1. Who scored the game winning basket? Now let’s say the The first part remains the same. Kobe scores, then Gasol does his thing, but the Heat don’t score at all. In this scenario, who scored the game-winning basket? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/52 "2012-10-27T01:55:43Z")
> [@](#): > > Some percentage of voters need to go vote. An individual vote may not count, but everybody’s vote counts. Very well said, **Bosstone**. **Gangster Octopus** , I acknowledged the distinction Levitt makes in the first sentence of my OP. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/53 "2012-10-27T02:12:22Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Of course the same argument can be made; it makes no real difference if your party of choice gets $5,000,000 or $5,000,001.75. > > People vote because it increases their personal utility to do so. It doesn’t matter if you call it “fun,” as Leavitt does, or a “Civic obligation,” as Measure for Measure does; either way you are voting because you feel better about voting than you do about not voting. So… all morality collapses into selfishness? I don’t think you want to go there. > [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > The problem with this is that you voing or not voting does not have an impact of whether everybody else will or will not use that logic, which leaves you back where you started… > There is a very small impact of one wrapper blowing in the wind, or of a small contribution to a party. There is zero impact from making your candidate win/lose by one vote more/less. I recognize you retracted earlier (and props for that btw: cognitive flexability is a good thing). But there’s also this factor to consider > [@Double\_Foolscap](#): > > If you don’t vote, you’re making it less likely for future politicians to view your demographic as one to influence. It’s why old people are so important to politicians - they vote reliably. Voting is part of a _set_ of behaviors, which include communicating your choices to those you care to. (Reference brickbacon’s post). They don’t total to much, but collectively they have nonzero significance, or so I argue. They just don’t affect electoral outcomes for nonlocal elections. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Yes, it’s a paradox, and a variation on the [tragedy of the commons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). Which means that every economist should know better. Exapno nails it. > [@brickbacon](#): > > Arguments like this are one reason I am of the opinion that economists have to be the dumbest, most useless smart people that the public feels inclined to listen to. Not only does much of their discipline fail spectacularly at modeling the real world, but they rarely acknowledge the fact that that is the case. Especially the freakonomics guys who “prefer an interesting [story](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/10/the_shoddy_statistics_of_super.html) to an accurate one”. These are the guys that argue for drunk driving instead of drunk walking. They got slammed on their sequel. Incidentally though, Levitt (the economist of the duo - the other guy is a reporter) won the Clarke Medal, which is more competitive than the Nobel in economics. > [@](#): > > It reminds me of the joke about two economists walking down the street. One economist see a $100 bill on the ground. He points it out to the other who tells him to ignore it because he must be seeing things. The second economist notes, if there were _really_ a $100 bill on the ground, someone would have picked it up already. I once found a $20 bill on the ground. It shocked me. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/54 "2012-10-27T02:40:06Z")
There’s nothing stupid about voting. You can’t complain if you don’t vote. I like to complain. Therefore, I vote. It’s simple. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/55 "2012-10-27T02:52:05Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Come on. Obviously the chance is very small, but it’s not zero. Since Maine and Nebraska are not winner take all, there is a small chance one congressional district could break an electoral college tie. There is obviously a non-zero chance an individual congressional district could be won by one vote. There have been somewhere around 20,000 federal elections between 1898 and today. Exactly one of these 20,000+ was decided by one vote. And that was in 1910 and the votes were 20,685 to 20,684. Such a situation is not possible today, since the total # of voters in congressional elections is an order of magnitude higher than in 1910, and due to the way we vote the error/uncertainty in counting votes is much higher than 1. That is, if you count, then recount, then recount, then recount etc… you will be coming up with numbers that differ by more than one vote. Hanging chads, pencil marks in/out of boxes, wholes punched not exactly in the center etc. etc. would only add to the margin of error. Any election that had a difference of one in one count would be immediately contested in court, recounts would find different numbers, which would be contested in court again, etc. etc. In the end it will be decided by a lot more than 1 vote. The chance of a congressional election being decided by one vote in US today is exactly 0. Not just small. Zero. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/56 "2012-10-27T03:13:28Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > There have been somewhere around 20,000 federal elections between 1898 and today. Exactly one of these 20,000+ was decided by one vote. And that was in 1910 and the votes were 20,685 to 20,684. Such a situation is not possible today, since the total # of voters in congressional elections is an order of magnitude higher than in 1910, and due to the way we vote the error/uncertainty in counting votes is much higher than 1. That is, if you count, then recount, then recount, then recount etc… you will be coming up with numbers that differ by more than one vote. Hanging chads, pencil marks in/out of boxes, wholes punched not exactly in the center etc. etc. would only add to the margin of error. Any election that had a difference of one in one count would be immediately contested in court, recounts would find different numbers, which would be contested in court again, etc. etc. In the end it will be decided by a lot more than 1 vote. > > The chance of a congressional election being decided by one vote in US today is exactly 0. Not just small. Zero. None of what you said would mean the chance of such an occurrence would be zero. Zero means it cannot possibly happen. Obviously, that is not the case. Even though you are right about the counting, that does not mean the in the end, the _certified tally_ could not yield a difference of one vote even if the actual difference is more or less. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/57 "2012-10-27T03:25:32Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > So… all morality collapses into selfishness? I don’t think you want to go there. Ultimately all behaviour is about utility. Utility is not selfishness; it is by definition whatever a person wants. But what a person wants isn’t necessarily selfish. You may want to contribute to the plight of refugees by working for Doctors Without Borders. That’s hardly selfish, and yet it remains the fact that you’re maximizing your personal utility by spending your time doing that. I like putting a lot of my time, money and effort into making my daughter’s life happy and healthy. That’s not selfish, but I undoubtedly do it to raise my own personal level of utility. I’m smart enough to acknowledge that. As to the OP, Leavitt is a smart guy who makes a lot of fascinating arguments, and there is a kernel of truth in what he’s saying. I would suggest, though, that one of his recurring failures is that he tends to quite unconsciously assume that his personal preferences are the way everyone thinks. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/58 "2012-10-27T03:49:13Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > None of what you said would mean the chance of such an occurrence would be zero. Zero means it cannot possibly happen. Obviously, that is not the case. Even though you are right about the counting, that does not mean the in the end, the _certified tally_ could not yield a difference of one vote even if the actual difference is more or less. No, it could not. There is absolutely no way it could. They would keep counting until the difference was higher. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/59 "2012-10-27T07:12:02Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Ultimately all behaviour is about utility. Utility is not selfishness; it is by definition whatever a person wants. Ok, but now you’ve substituted a dubious moral/psychological claim for a tautology. > [@RickJay](#): > > People vote because it increases their personal utility to do so. “People vote because they want to vote,” won’t get you very far. > [@](#): > > It doesn’t matter if you call it “fun,” as Leavitt does, or a “Civic obligation,” as Measure for Measure does; either way you are voting because you feel better about voting than you do about not voting. ## Ok, we’re back to early nineteenth century psychology. I can imagine a secret service agent that takes a bullet for the President might not feel especially chipper as his guts are bleeding. As someone said, “Mankind does not strive for happiness, only the Englishman does that.”[1] You can do something because you think it’s right and feel lousy about it: maybe you think you’re being played for a sucker. And to say that the Secret Service guy died for the cause because he preferred to doesn’t add a lot. ## **Counterfactually speaking…** Narrowly speaking, I’m going to have to side with brickbacon over Terr: one vote in theory could increase the odds of victory sufficient to flip an election. This could occur even if the number of votes measured is in itself a random variable. For example the real total could have any (narrow margin) and a single vote could flip the _declared_ margin on the last ballot counted. Or it could increase the margin sufficiently to avoid another recount. More broadly though, I agree with Terr: the odds are not 1%, not .01% and not .000001%. They are _de miniumus_, smaller than the harm of dropping a cigarette butt on the street. Seen from that perspective voting makes little sense: we need other justifications. No worries: we have them. Part of the problem here is that Levitt was talking out of his posterior and Dubner was reporting on his opinion as if it was newsworthy. While the original Freakonomics book was ok, the sequel showed that the team aren’t especially great as generalist pundits. When you want to be _counter-intuitive_, it’s really better if you cross your T’s, dot your i’s and run your idiosyncratic tendencies against some standard checks. Otherwise you end up writing material which is provocative but wrong-headed. Given the dismal science’s familiarity with game theory and The Tragedy of the Commons, the treatment that the OP linked to was eye-rolling. [1] Nietsche, actually. )-: ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2012, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907/60 "2012-10-27T07:14:30Z")
> [@](#): > > Any election that had a difference of one in one count would be immediately contested in court, recounts would find different numbers, which would be contested in court again, etc. etc. In the end it will be decided by a lot more than 1 vote. I find the debate about whether an election could be decided by one vote to be a narrow one that misses the larger point about collective action (which is why I said that while both I and the blogger I linked to disagree with Levitt, we do so in different ways). But I will play anyway, what the heck. You’re likely right that even with recounts they are likely to end up reporting a margin of more than one vote. I don’t believe that after the recount process is done, and the election is certified (think of the 2008 Minnesota Senate election, for instance), that it would be reopened just because the margin was that small. But even if you were right, think about it this way: let’s say you had the godlike power to rewind time and change initial conditions and rerun events. So you were bored and decided to do that with the aforementioned election between Franken and Coleman. So you keep disintegrating ballots marked for Franken, one at a time, rerunning the recount process over again each time. At some point, that “rerun” is going to result in a count that awards Coleman the election–right? It may not in fact come about from eliminating exactly 313 Franken ballots (I pick that number because he was ultimately certified as winning by 312 votes), but it would be likely to be somewhere between vote 300 and 330. And that tipping point ballot shows that one vote can swing an election, even if it’s not metaphysically precise that the candidate on that ballot got exactly one more vote than his/her opponent. It’s also true, as the blogger says, that there must be some point where a single ballot keeps an election from being close enough to even trigger (or allow) a recount. But again, I think these instances are vanishingly rare and mostly beside the point. They are not however impossible. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/freakonomics-author-says-its-stupid-to-vote/638907.md?page=4)