To Vote or Not To Vote

As everyone knows, last Tuesday was election day! I sent in my Texas absentee ballot early but happened to be in Dallas on Tuesday. I got a call around 3 pm that there was something wrong with my ballot and that the only way I could vote in the election was to go vote in person. Upset, I called my mother who suggested I hop on a flight to Houston and go vote before 7pm (She was being facetious, but humor me please). I rolled my eyes at her whilst doing a quick marginal benefit – marginal cost analysis in my head. 

The cost, both in lost time and money, of taking a detour to Houston made me ponder the importance of marginal cost in my decision to vote. In class, Professor Coppock mentioned two examples to illustrate the impact of MC. On one hand, when Switzerland (?) made the cost of voting zero by allowing people to vote from home, voter turnout actually went down because of the loss of expressive utility. On the other hand, voters in rural New Zealand are less likely to vote because the cost of getting to the polls is so high. These two examples show that while a low MC does not make an impact on people’s decision to vote, a high MC does and cannot be overlooked.

My decision to vote absentee, which had a very low MC, and my decision not to fly to Houston, which had a very high MC, illustrate the same point. I did not care about my vote's probability of having an impact – I was voting to have a Democrat (and my favorite teacher’s sister-in-law) as my representative for the first time in 50 years, and that was enough for me. I also did not really care about letting people know that I had voted. What I did care about was the loss of time (I probably wouldn’t have gotten back to Cville until at least noon the next day) and the serious cost. Given the same decision – to vote or not to vote – I made two different choices. I both voted and did not vote, and neither choice influenced the outcome of the election, although it might have impacted the future.