A lot of people today are voting, and a lot of people are not voting, and a lot of other people are wondering if their vote matters in the least. Here is what we wrote on the subject last year. If it is indeed irrational to vote, as many economists believe, then instead of mourning low voter turnout, perhaps we should be lauding low voter turnout as a sign of great rationality on the part of the American public.
But if you really do want higher voter turnout, there are at least three things that could help: pay people to vote (even if the payment is in the form of a lottery ticket); make voting mandatory, as it is in Australia; or — and this would be an interesting, albeit impossible, experiment — forbid anyone from conducting and publicizing pre-election polls. If you don’t know the likely outcome of an election, would you be more willing to vote? I am guessing the answer is a big fat yes. When we get bombarded with poll numbers, supporters of the leading candidates are disinclined to vote because the victory seems in the bag; and supporters of the trailing candidate are disinclined because defeat seems inevitable.
And if none of these measures work, you might just try handing out live pigs or jugs of whiskey, as they used to in the old days.
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Why are more votes necessarily better? I’d rather see fewer, well-informed voters casting their ballots than many more who are motivated solely by that lottery ticket (or jug of whiskey) and informed by little more than a negative ad or two on TV.
Why are more votes necessarily better? I’d rather see fewer, well-informed voters casting their ballots than many more who are motivated solely by that lottery ticket (or jug of whiskey) and informed by little more than a negative ad or two on TV.
The way I see it is that we don’t exclusively want low voter turn out, and we don’t exclusively want high voter turn out. Ideally, we want only well-informed, rational human beings to vote.
Under the current system, we do get a lot of well-informed voters, because one must know enough about a candidates positions to have some opinion, otherwise they wouldn’t bother voting without compensation. However, these voters may not be the most rational, because they are incurring the cost (time, effort) involved without any compensation.
Per ballot incentives would add a great deal of rational, but uninformed voters, becuase they have no opinion and only want to receive the subsidy. However, some sort of universal subsidy, to be spent however the consumer–er, voter–chooses would add fewer voters, but these voters are more likely to be both rational and well-informed. One such subsidy might be making election day a holiday. Those who deem themselves to apathetic to decide wouldn’t be compelled to vote anyway, however this should create a “time effect” like an income effect. Demand will rise for every activity to which this time may be allocated, including voting. So informed citizens who wanted to vote but otherwise could not would be able to use this extra time to vote, and would probably feel morally obligated to do so now that it was made easier. The very modest increase in total voters would be made up solely if informed citizens for whom voting was never considered because there were too few hours in the day.
The way I see it is that we don’t exclusively want low voter turn out, and we don’t exclusively want high voter turn out. Ideally, we want only well-informed, rational human beings to vote.
Under the current system, we do get a lot of well-informed voters, because one must know enough about a candidates positions to have some opinion, otherwise they wouldn’t bother voting without compensation. However, these voters may not be the most rational, because they are incurring the cost (time, effort) involved without any compensation.
Per ballot incentives would add a great deal of rational, but uninformed voters, becuase they have no opinion and only want to receive the subsidy. However, some sort of universal subsidy, to be spent however the consumer–er, voter–chooses would add fewer voters, but these voters are more likely to be both rational and well-informed. One such subsidy might be making election day a holiday. Those who deem themselves to apathetic to decide wouldn’t be compelled to vote anyway, however this should create a “time effect” like an income effect. Demand will rise for every activity to which this time may be allocated, including voting. So informed citizens who wanted to vote but otherwise could not would be able to use this extra time to vote, and would probably feel morally obligated to do so now that it was made easier. The very modest increase in total voters would be made up solely if informed citizens for whom voting was never considered because there were too few hours in the day.
I’m not certain motivating people to vote should be our first priority. It seems to me that voting should be done by people who understand the issues and understand what the candidates really stand for (their TV ads certainly make things clear as mud, most of them don’t even say who the candidate is, just that the other guy’s a [derogatory term]).
But if our goal is to represent the people (even the stupid ones) I think a lottery system might actually work to get people to the polls, a million bucks makes people do crazy things (see: Reality TV). I also like the idea of making Election Day a national holiday. That would really help to underscore the importance (debatable, I know) of voting. It’s pretty inconvenient to vote if you’ve got a standard 9-5.
However, I think that if you’re going to really increase the number of people that vote you absolutely need to do something about the voting system. Add the “None of the above” option on the ballot and implement a weighted voting system (I really like A, but B is my second choice, and I hate C) which might allow third parties back in. Hopefully that would break the left/right partisan-ism and get representatives elected to actually represent their constituents.
At any rate I’ll be really glad when the elections are over. Politicians just make me weep when I see their manipulative ads and I know they’re working on some poor person who wasn’t taught critical thinking by our failing school systems.
I’m not certain motivating people to vote should be our first priority. It seems to me that voting should be done by people who understand the issues and understand what the candidates really stand for (their TV ads certainly make things clear as mud, most of them don’t even say who the candidate is, just that the other guy’s a [derogatory term]).
But if our goal is to represent the people (even the stupid ones) I think a lottery system might actually work to get people to the polls, a million bucks makes people do crazy things (see: Reality TV). I also like the idea of making Election Day a national holiday. That would really help to underscore the importance (debatable, I know) of voting. It’s pretty inconvenient to vote if you’ve got a standard 9-5.
However, I think that if you’re going to really increase the number of people that vote you absolutely need to do something about the voting system. Add the “None of the above” option on the ballot and implement a weighted voting system (I really like A, but B is my second choice, and I hate C) which might allow third parties back in. Hopefully that would break the left/right partisan-ism and get representatives elected to actually represent their constituents.
At any rate I’ll be really glad when the elections are over. Politicians just make me weep when I see their manipulative ads and I know they’re working on some poor person who wasn’t taught critical thinking by our failing school systems.
I think making election day a holiday might lower the turnout of interested voters. If today were a holiday, half my office would have taken off tomorrow as well, and they’d all be out of town somewhere. They’d have kids home from school and needing attention, and they wouldn’t want to drag them to the polls. Further, you can’t make it a mandatory holiday for private businesses, so many people would have to work anyway. In an admittedly irrational way, it would be easy to say, “Well, I don’t get Election Day off, so I guess I won’t have time to vote, and that’s not my fault, so there goes my civic duty.”
Maybe if elections were on Wednesdays it would decrease the vacation effect, but still…
I think making election day a holiday might lower the turnout of interested voters. If today were a holiday, half my office would have taken off tomorrow as well, and they’d all be out of town somewhere. They’d have kids home from school and needing attention, and they wouldn’t want to drag them to the polls. Further, you can’t make it a mandatory holiday for private businesses, so many people would have to work anyway. In an admittedly irrational way, it would be easy to say, “Well, I don’t get Election Day off, so I guess I won’t have time to vote, and that’s not my fault, so there goes my civic duty.”
Maybe if elections were on Wednesdays it would decrease the vacation effect, but still…