People should be discouraged from voting

Great Debates
41

Every voter is ethically obligated to identify and vote for the best candidate. Typically this entails being well informed about the issues and the candidates’ positions and records, and voting on that basis rather than naiive or emotional or whimsical or shortsited bases.

The message that everybody is obligated to vote is mostly promoted by candidates who hope that their advertising is reaching more of the voters who would pick them and fewer of the ones who would pick their main competition.

The thrust of giving everybody an equal vote is more to prevent anybody’s interests being systematically trampled than it is to choose the best candidate. By broad agreement, we concede that if each of us has the same leverage, our own interest has generally been fairly represented in the public forum, and so we should feel enfranchised with the resulting government, and cooperate with our fellow citizens, and apply our complaints to legal means of redress including protest and working within the law and voting in future elections.

42

Umm no. That doesn’t follow at all. The narrower the interest the higher the likelihood that candidates who represent a broader interest will come about to challenge the vested interests and thus you will have your chance to work with a candidate who actually represents you, with a greater possibility of actually getting a meeting with that candidate or being socially proximal to someone who knows them.

43
  1. Democracy is not based on the assumption that the people know what is good for them. It is based on the assumption that the people are sovereign. It’s not a theory of good government, it’s a theory of legitimate government.
  1. All of us, good or bad, civic-minded or selfish, wise or foolish, sophisticated or ignorant, equally have to live with whatever decisions our elected officials make, therefore each of us should have an equal voice in choosing them.
44

That’s irrelevant to this thread, as no one is suggesting that they should not have the right to vote only that they should take personal responsibility and not excercise that right if they cannot be bothered to actually engage it.

45

I think that probably nearly everyone who considers themself unprepared to cast a reasoned vote self-selects themselves out. That would mean that this thread itself addresses a problem that by definition doesn’t exist.

Unless the OP wants to push the voters to meet his standard of informedness, in which case I think it’d be simpler to be clear about things and define “a sufficient standard of informedness” as “informed enough to know to vote the same way the OP does”, and see how where that takes you.

46

Yes, sadly, it does follow. It is baked into the rules of the system.

Candidates prefer to be supported by fewer, narrower interests because that implies they have fewer people to pay off once they win the election. This bears out both logically and empirically: populism in the United States has been a complete, utter, and resounding failure every time it was attempted in a general election. Perot tried it and lost, William Jennings Bryan tried it and lost. Candidates do not aim for a broad base of support across multiple constituencies, they aim for (n/2)+1 voters across critical consistencies. The smaller the n, the cheaper and easier it is to get their vote and to pay them back.

You may get ego rent from being “socially proximal” to someone who knows a candidate, but the truth is, most people are just looking for getting services that someone else has to pay for.

47

Perot is a bad example because his dropping out crushed his support. It is hard to say what support he might have had if he hadn’t dropped out then rejoined. What you are saying though, is true, but not terribly relevant. See when people support a narrow base, other groups that do not belong to that base begin to form coalitions to unseat them or to acquire power through a different means. If the field is smaller, it is easier to identify whether or not one is part of the winning field. Not only does the candidate have to satisfy the winning field, but they also have to placate the fields that have the greatest chance of unseating them. Your statistical analysis, is ignoring the human factor I think. Human beings immediately begin to reform to regain their power when they are put out of the power position.

It’s not about ego, it’s about being able to know what’s going on. Having more information, being able to calculate your position and your odds with greater accuracy. It’s about being able to worm your way into the winning coalition, or to be able to identify and target your assault on that winning coalition if you cannot. Social Proximity is not about ego rent, it’s about practical intel.

48

I have read this a few times but I just do not understand it.

It is not a matter of “people supporting a narrow base”. The quantity of interest is the size of the winning coalition that a candidate requires in order to win. The strategic problem looks like this. Candidates first place some value on getting elected. They may do it to enrich themselves, they may do it because they want to, it does not really matter.

  1. Candidates guess how many voters will turn out in each district.
  2. Candidates choose policy positions to capture (N/2)+1 of the voters and choose payoffs to the constituents who vote for them.

In a free democracy, these payoffs tend to be public goods, since they provide more for less money. It is cheaper to build a railroad than to cut every voter in a state his own check.

  1. Voters examine positions of candidates. They assess the likelihood of the candidates actually delivering their promises. The greater the magnitude and likelihood of the payoff, the stronger the preference the voter will have over the outcome. And the more likely that a voter’s vote will make a difference drives turnout.

  2. Voters choose candidates and they choose whether or not to vote. Since candidates understand the voters’ strategic problem first whether or not to vote and then whom to vote for, they position their policies and payoffs accordingly to maximize their vote share and to minimize what they actually have to pay out.

This is very relevant because in a situation where few people vote, fewer payouts are required. Candidates like this, because it makes their lives easier and cheaper. People who don’t vote can’t unseat anyone. People don’t bother “reforming power” if they just don’t care of if they feel their opinion doesn’t make a difference.

It’s a really interesting self-fulling prophecy. Most of us will make no difference in our farcical election whatsoever. But if everyone knew that were true and acted on it, candidates would only be elected by a handful of people and the rest of us would get nothing. So the civic norm to vote, even if not utility-maximizing in the short run because voting has costs but is worth nothing, probably is utility-mazimizing in the long run. Eventually you may be part of a winning coalition.

This is a very crude summary of the model. All the same, it has a great deal of explanatory and predictive power. There is no statistics here: I could use statistics to predict voter turnout in a given district based on a set of explanatory variables. But that is not really the point here.

The point here is to show that whether you are informed or not probably has no impact whatsoever on your being part of any winning coalition either now or in the future.

In a mayoral race in a small town, sure. But in a general election? None whatsoever. Your vote in NYS will never important, no matter whom you know or whom you vote for.

49

Thanks! I’ve long thought you were special, too.

Mainly this part:

For not the first time, it appears you have taken an arguably true idea (that an informed electorate is a good thing) and from that, extrapolated much more questionable conclusions (that convincing people not to vote is a good thing; that you can improve society by personally endeavoring to discourage people from voting).

Due to my poor reading comprehension skills I’ve had to read the thread several times, so please be gentle with your explanation, so that I might better appreciate its myriad complexities. When you and the other Champions of Democracy go out to anti-canvass, do you plan to perform some sort of intellectual triage to determine those who should abstain from voting—or simply petition everyone who crosses your path, and assume that the ones weak-minded enough to be convinced by your argument also comprise your target demographic?

(Suggestion: you may wish to print up some stickers reading “I voted… NOT!” or “Don’t Blame Me… I stayed HOME!” to pass out on election day. The feebs really love that catchphrase shit, and who doesn’t love a colorful sticker?)

50

The poor groundhog has a hard enough time getting his message out as it is. Can’t you pick a day no one is using?

51

That about sums it up yeah. Also getting out the meme that voting in and of itself has no value, that being engaged is what has value. If you are not engaged your vote is meaningless, it’s a random roll of the dice. Maeglin’s cynical approach to aggregates may be true in some sense, but I find a value in meaning, which I am about to address to him here. It’s actually not to so much affect the way people vote, but to run a contrary opinion to the ‘Vote or Die’ rhetoric. What’s more important is that people think about their place in the process, as opposed to them actually not voting.

Maeglin You are making an assumption that individuals are discrete entities. You have these ideas of winning coalitions as though they are made up of big groups of definable cogs. Every individual belongs to multiple coalitions. Not only are groups represented proportionally, but so are people. For instance, every candidate represents my interests in a certain proportion. One issue A they might vote against my interests but on issue B, C, and D they vote in my interests. It might turn out that issue A is the most near and dear to my heart, and so I feel unrepresented, but on my secondary, tertiary and so on interests I am being represented. For instance, I might think that I want a military base to be closed because I am anti-war, but in reality my Father’s Kwik-E-Mart depends on Military Personnel for a large portion of its business, so when they don’t close the base, my Father’s business stays open. Now, if I were uninformed I’d be pissed off that the base stayed open, but if I were informed I’d understand the issue a little bit more than that, and see at what points my continued engagement with the issues throughout the year sees me represented, and where I can nudge it toward my educated self-interest. I want Obama to win, but I can see benefits for myself if Hillary or even Giuliani win. Even though Giuliani will probably be predisposed toward New York, ultimately to my benefit, I don’t want him to win, even though arguably he’d be the candidate most likely to favor my interests in the short term. This is because I have a moral issue with him, one that I understand, because I am somewhat educated on the issues. As I said above, Meaning is quite relevant, and you are distilling personal meaning and discarding it as though it has nothing to do with the process.

Also, you are assuming that I am talking only about Presidential politics. I am talking about all political elections, at every level. The lower the level the more impact your vote has, and the more important it is. I know that my vote for President means nothing. Giuliani and Clinton will likely carry the primary in New York. Clinton or Obama will likely win the Dem nod, and either one of them would carry New York in the General. I even considered registering at my parents house in New Mexico so that I could vote in a swing state making my vote slightly more relevant.

Bottom line is that meaning and Social Proximity are more relevant than I think you give it credit for because those winning coalitions are influenced by people they are socially proximal to people who aren’t in the coalition.