The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency introduced me to other books by Alexander McCall Smith, and I’m now reading his novel The Lost Art of Gratitude (Pantheon Books, 2009). At one point the protagonist is annoyed with somebody who argues that voting is an irrational act. "Why bother if it takes one away from something more individually enriching?" Our protagonist, Isabel Dalhousie, calls this "unadulterated selfishness" of the sort that "encouraged both greed and economic disaster."
Here’s her response: "It was not rational to look after oneself at the expense of others, for the simple reason that we sank or swam together."
Isabel sees the specious argument of "My vote won’t make a difference" as a red herring that distracts attention from the real-world fact that one vote DOES make a difference in combination with other votes. As we all know, in some close elections a mere handful of votes can turn the outcome.
I came across an interesting 2008 summary of research that concluded that voting is both rational and unselfish: http://economistsview.typepad.com/...
".... If your vote is decisive, it will make a difference for tens of millions of people. If you think your preferred candidate could bring the equivalent of a $100 improvement in the quality of life to the average person in your country—not an implausible hope, given the size of national budgets and the impact of decisions in foreign policy, health, the environment, and other areas—you’re now buying a billion-dollar lottery ticket. With this payoff, a 1 in 10 million chance of being decisive isn't bad odds.
And many people do see it that way. Surveys show that voters choose based on who they think will do better for their country as a whole, rather than their personal betterment. Indeed, when it comes to voting, it is irrational to be selfish. The probability of your vote being decisive is roughly inversely proportional to the size of the electorate ... but the "social benefit"—the total gain for the country that you would anticipate, if your candidate wins—is proportional to the population...."
The authors of the study make a good case that rationality and selfishness are not the same thing. http://www.voxeu.org/...
"Surveys show that voters choose based on who they think will do better for their country as a whole, rather than their personal betterment.... Except in very small elections, a rational person who votes will choose the candidate or party with the best perceived social benefits to the population."
The article concludes,
"Voting and vote choice (including related actions such as the decision to gather information in order to make an informed vote) are an interesting example of decisions that are rational in large elections only to the extent that voters are not selfish."
The realization that we all sink or swim together touches on issues of how connected we feel to others in our society. What else but the right to vote defines us as citizens of a democracy, with shared risks and rewards? On November 2, whether we vote with the stroke of a pen or the pressing of a button, in that moment we will all be each other’s brothers and sisters, in each other’s keeping, sinking or swimming together.