• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Would It Make A Difference?

Bikewer

Penultimate Amazing
Bikewer
Joined
Sep 12, 2003
Messages
13,242
Location
St. Louis, Mo.
This just popped into my head after hearing a news blurb about the voting rate in the last term elections....

We know that even in a busy voting cycle, there is a rather shocking percentage of apathetic voters.

What I wondered was....Would the participation of these folks in a given election make any difference in the results? If these folks, presumably not only apathetic but uninformed or ignorant of candidates and issues....Were to participate (perhaps mandatory?), would it skew the election one way or the other?

Are current non-voters more likely to be right-wing or left-wing? To go for outliers or independents?

We might think that though only about half of eligible voters actually vote, at least they are interested enough to do so and might (hopefully) be at least somewhat informed as to the issues and candidates involved.


Of course.....Listening to interviews with potential voters in previous elections....One has to question that "interested and informed" notion.
 
Voter apathy might stem from the fact that there aren't any good choices to be had.
 
I'm interested and informed. However, if I believe the policy that is likely to be enacted at the polls is already as close as possible to the policy I would like to see enacted, then I have better things to do than waste my time casting a token vote that gains me nothing.

I think that citizens who see no pressing need to cast their vote are saying just as much about the state of the country, and the candidates and policies under review, as those that do.

Democracy lies in citizens having the freedom to go to the ballot box if they so choose, not in compelling to go whether they choose to or not.
 
theprestige said:
I'm interested and informed. However, if I believe the policy that is likely to be enacted at the polls is already as close as possible to the policy I would like to see enacted, then I have better things to do than waste my time casting a token vote that gains me nothing.

I think that citizens who see no pressing need to cast their vote are saying just as much about the state of the country, and the candidates and policies under review, as those that do.

Democracy lies in citizens having the freedom to go to the ballot box if they so choose, not in compelling to go whether they choose to or not.
Click to expand...

True, not casting a vote is still voicing an opinion, but it also seems to have zero impact on the actual candidates and policies of future elections. They try to court the vote and if you don't vote your opinion isn't important to them.
 
"Getting out the vote" frequently makes a difference by getting the occasional voter off the couch. It works best when one side does it better than the other, as in Reagan and Obama's first terms.
 
Last edited:
And this getting apathetic voter into a booth, where he will pull for the latest commercials he saw.

Whoo hoo! That's dealing with the money issue in a quality manner.
 
There are a number of possible interactions that can be had:

Would all insufficiently informed citizens cast blank ballots under CB? Probably not. Ballot order position effects would not exist if some people weren’t willing to vote at random. However, roll off voting trends and other comparative studies demonstrate that uninformed citizens are capable of rationally abstaining.
There’s more. Imagine all the informed people who don’t vote. If incentivized to submit a ballot, most of them would probably invest the extra few seconds to mark votes on that ballot. So the number of informed votes would increase. Furthermore, because CB penalties effectually sink part of the cost of voting, CB makes it more likely that a previously uninformed voter will find it rational to invest in both information and informed voting.

Information levels are not static. They are dynamic, and adapt to the cost and incentive structures shaped by electoral systems. When we allow the decision to become informed to be endogenous to participation costs, this demonstrates that lower costs of participation increase incentives for uninformed actors to invest in both information and informed voting. The net result is that CB increases informed voting among previously informed people, increases informed voting among previously uninformed people, and theoretically does all of this while not increasing uninformed voting at all. See this paper (pdf) for an extended demonstration of this effect.

Again, there’s more. Information environments aren’t static either. Campaigns are dynamic and respond to the incentives shaped by electoral rules. Introducing non-participation penalties will shift the composition of the electorate, and campaign strategies should adjust accordingly. A likely effect is that moving from voluntary voting to CB will shift campaign strategies from a focus on mobilizing the base to a focus on persuading the centrist, undecided, and most uninformed people. These people have weaker prior commitments and are the easiest to persuade. This might, in effect, make information more readily available to populations who need it most, further increasing aggregate information. This paper (pdf) discusses the mechanisms that link CB to increased information and demonstrates that Austrian citizens who lived in CB provinces had more political information than those in voluntary vote provinces.
Click to expand...

Linky.
 
I've largely abstained from voting as an adult. I've voted a few times, but largely have conciously and intentionally avoided it. The reason? I've typically been a transient member of the community--9 times out of 10 we were either living in an apartment until we could find a permanent place to live, or was a student. There's absolutely no justification for someone who's going to leave before the results of the election are enacted to voice their opinion on the election. The few times I have voted have been for federal elections, or when I genuinely believed I would be living in the area long-term (either state or local elections).

So the proposal is to punish me for feeling that I should not force others to live by choices I've helped make but which will not affect me. This is completely insane.

We'll leave aside the obvious problems in forcing someone to vote in a free society....

The more pragmatic issue I have is this: We know that even those who do vote are swayed more by emotional manipulation as by rational discussion. That's why sound-bites and smear campaigns work--complex ideas can't be made into pithy sayings, and smear campaigns are by definition ad hom attacks that ignore the issues. So the proposal to fix this is to encourage folks who don't vote to do so. I'll grant you some may be in my position--there may be a few hundred people who genuinely consider voting as a transient member of a community immoral. But the overwhelming majority are almost certainly too apathetic--for whatever reason. So our solution to the problems in politics is to force people who don't give enough of a rat's furry backside to go to the polls to do so. This isn't going to make them care; force CANNOT cause genuine concern, it can ONLY come from the individual.

All of that means that this will result in the majority of the votes coming from people who are woefully uninformed. How is that anything good? How will that fix anything?

Something else is going on. That's obvious. The question is, what?
 
The_Animus said:
True, not casting a vote is still voicing an opinion, but it also seems to have zero impact on the actual candidates and policies of future elections. They try to court the vote and if you don't vote your opinion isn't important to them.
Click to expand...
My belief is that voting in a stable, peaceful democracy is not a transformative or revolutionary event. If things are going well, and most citizens are mostly satisfied with the overall direction of the country, then you don't really need to get all of them out to the polls to make minor course corrections or improvements. And I think that most citizens understand that.

The ones that stay home are having exactly the impact they intend on the candidates and policies. Set aside the extremist rhetoric, that tries to convince you that Every! Single! Issue! Is! A! Crisis!, and you'll find that in a stable, peaceful democracy most citizens are generally content with the status quo and the direction of the country, and have no need to go to the polls to make their point.
 
theprestige said:
My belief is that voting in a stable, peaceful democracy is not a transformative or revolutionary event. If things are going well, and most citizens are mostly satisfied with the overall direction of the country, then you don't really need to get all of them out to the polls to make minor course corrections or improvements. And I think that most citizens understand that.

The ones that stay home are having exactly the impact they intend on the candidates and policies. Set aside the extremist rhetoric, that tries to convince you that Every! Single! Issue! Is! A! Crisis!, and you'll find that in a stable, peaceful democracy most citizens are generally content with the status quo and the direction of the country, and have no need to go to the polls to make their point.
Click to expand...

Or they could be in a district where the outcome of the vote is not really in dispute, either very red or very blue. Whether one is with or against the prevailing population it can feel futile to vote in that environment.

But, I agree that it would be worth the futile feelings if you really thought the future of civilization were on the line.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Or they could be in a district where the outcome of the vote is not really in dispute, either very red or very blue. Whether one is with or against the prevailing population it can feel futile to vote in that environment.
Click to expand...
It wouldn't just feel futile, it would be futile.

I know which way my county goes, and I know which way my state goes, so I only bother going to the polls when there's a city candidate or measure that I feel strongly about, or when there's a controversial county issue that is more evenly split than usual.

But I don't really see it as futile. It's the way it is. I choose to live here, and I choose to spend my resources on other things than minority position advocacy most of the time. I do more to change my county by donating to charity than I do at the ballot box. My time on election day is better spent volunteering than voting.

But, I agree that it would be worth the futile feelings if you really thought the future of civilization were on the line.
Click to expand...
If I thought civilization were on the line, voting would be the least important contribution I could make. If I thought civilization were on the line, I'd be speaking.

And that's another thing about democracy: the freedom to engage in political speech is as important as the freedom to vote. When an issue comes along that I think is worth making an effort on, to overcome the majority position, I don't just go to the polls, I engage in speech to persuade others to adopt my view and go to the polls themselves.
 
If voting was mandatory, there would be some changes. There would be no need to mobilize your base, since they would be obligated to show up anyway, so wedge issues would lose their appeal to politicians. We would probably pass gun-control legislation, and a lot of anti-abortion legislation would wither on the vine. Social Security and Medicare would stay unchanged, as while they are great at mobilizing the elderly, they are also supported by the vast majority of Americans outside of Wall Street and DC.

That would be if it was planned out ahead of time. If a hundred million unexpected voters showed up one Tuesday, all bets are off.
 
Monketey Ghost said:
I can get behind that! With free busing to polling facilities.
Click to expand...

Come to Milwaukee! Not only will you get a ride, you might get a free pack of What-I-Ams!

Mr. McCann, a Democrat, said today that he was taking the accusations seriously, but that so far he had found ''no evidence of massive voter fraud.'' He said his staff had verified that one Democratic campaign worker acting on her own bought 40 packs of cigarettes, and that she and other people distributed them to 15 to 25 homeless men as an inducement to send in absentee ballots.
Click to expand...

Link
 
Mudcat said:
Voter apathy might stem from the fact that there aren't any good choices to be had.
Click to expand...

That is my view. I vote, but not as much as I used to, especially in national elections. I find myself voting against candidates most of the time rather than for them. I'm fairly informed, more than most people I know personally. I think most people here at this forum are more informed than the "general public". At least we are interested enough to engage.

I don't see a presidential candidate right now that deserves my consideration. Some elections are just a waste of time - for example, Feinstein will win no matter how many times I vote against her.

I don't want to give my vote to a candidate that I couldn't sincerely endorse. That's just the way I feel these days, maybe it's silly, but I'm through with that.
 
Bikewer said:
Are current non-voters more likely to be right-wing or left-wing? To go for outliers or independents?
Click to expand...


A provably correct answer to this question would be worth millions to a presidential campaign strategist.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom