(Cross-posted to the BetterCA.com blog)
Just don't ask an economist, they are embarrassed to be seen there.
Why would an economist be embarrassed to be seen at the voting booth? Because voting exacts a cost - in time, effort, lost productivity - with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your "civic duty." As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, "A rational individual should abstain from voting."
But millions of Californians have already proved them wrong. At last count 1.8 million of you have already submitted your absentee ballots. Economists and millions of other Americans make it to the voting booth, but why? Most elections are rarely close enough where one vote either way will make a different. What motivates people to pull the levers, touch the screen, or mail in their ballot?
The New York Times Magazine today offers up three reasons.
- Perhaps we are just not very bright and therefore wrongly believe that our votes will affect the outcome.
- Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.
- Perhaps we have been socialized into the voting-as-civic-duty idea, believing that it's a good thing for society if people vote, even if it's not particularly good for the individual. And thus we feel guilty for not voting.
Last weekend I asked our readers at BetterCA why they care about this race. Today I ask you, why do you vote?
I can tell you that personally, one of the first things I did when I turned 18 was to go fill out my voter registration form. I had been raised in a household where it was part of my civic duty to vote. I believe strongly in this republic we have and voting as my contribution to it. No matter how many times I write my legislators, the only time my voice counts, is at the ballot box.