Is there a name for this “paradox”:
A single voter says, “Well, my one vote doesn’t matter. If all other things stay the same, and I don’t vote, the outcome will be the same.” But if millions of voters all use the same reasoning then the outcome *might not * be the same as if they had all voted.
Don’t know of a name for it, but I think it isn’t paradoxical. The voter’s conclusion would logically follow from his opening statement that one vote doesn’t matter. The voter’s error is in that opening statement, which logically is an assumption, and is erroneous.
I agree, which is why I put the word in quotes. (There are other propositions called paradoxes that aren’t truly so, like Zeno’s Paradox.)
[Bart Simpson]You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.[/Bart Simpson]
The paradox of voting. Looks like I need to edit that page.
It is true that for a single voter in a large number election the chance of changing the outcome is very small even if the election is likely to be close. It is therefore irrational to vote with the sole purpose of changing the outcome of the election if the costs of voting are positive.
If everyone thought that way there would be few voters. To then vote on this basis is everyday Kantianism and a confusion of causal and diagnostic reasoning. The fact remains that lots of people vote, presumably for other reasons.
It’s very similar to but not exactly the same as the fallacy of composition.
I dont care if my vote is essentially nulled out by someone else … I vote so I can bitch if the opponent wins… then I can be happy and say “I didn’t vote for that asshole, you did now shut up and suck it up and vote differently next time” 
Although my vote did count at least once or twice in town elections … when they hold a vote on a budget issue and less than 500 people voted total you can be pretty sure that every single vote might count. I voted against the school system getting the $10,000 US paper disintegrator for the school system. They can use a $1000 US crosscut paper cutter just as well and use the balance of the money for something we actually NEED like books or materials … :rolleyes:
>Is there a name for this “paradox”
Why, so you did put it in quotes. And not surprisingly, in light of your accurately worded posts in other areas. Sorry I didn’t notice, and suggested you misunderstood this to actually be a fallacy!
This assumes (indeed, the entire problem assumes) that questions of rationality are always questions of what it is rational for *me * to do, rather than what it is rational for *us * to do. But many people in both economics and philosophy (Robert Sugden, Margaret Gilbert, etc.) are challenging the dogma that rationality must be understood individualistically this way, and are advocating notions of team or cooperative rationality. Sugden has a really good article called “Team Preference” in the journal *Economics and Philosophy * where he gives examples of decisions that can only be understood in terms of group reasoning, rather than individual reasoning. The article used to be on-line, but I can’t find it anymore; I guess it was taken down.
Voters who use this reasoning have not learned why it is we vote. We don’t vote to change outcomes, or to be the deciding vote, or even really to have much impact on the result. We vote because the result is the aggregate of our desires as expressed through the mechanism of the ballot.
George Bush is president because a majority of voters expressed… oh, wait a minute, maybe I’d best get a different example. 
>George Bush is president because a majority of voters expressed…
The American voter knows what he wants, and he deserves to get it. Good and hard.
-H. L. Mencken (IIRC)