Last week in one of my ECON elective courses there was a group presentation. Before the presentation began, a girl from the group projected that she had voter registration forms and we could "easily register, only spending a couple minutes after class" to do so. Immediately, I thought of how big of a problem this girl was going to cause for the county of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia. To illustrate this destruction in the making I will compare this to polls on Twitter.
Ever since Twitter has allowed users to create polls, I have been a rationally ignorant voter. I vote on every Twitter poll I see. It does not matter if I have absolutely no clue what the topic of the poll is, I will vote. The method of voting is so easy, the only cost that I incur from voting is the strength I use in my thumb to press which option I desire. The utility I get from pressing that random answer cannot get any easier to obtain. Every time I do this though, I am actually hurting the true effectiveness of said poll. You see, the costs of actually taking time to go look up what I need to know about said poll, or message the maker of the poll about the topic, is too high for me to do and still be able to gain utility from voting. Just like how I am voting on random twitter polls I see, many from people who I do not even know, this girl in my class was encouraging students who may not even be from Virginia or Charlottesville, to effect the outcome of the upcoming election. Many of us do not even know who is running or what topics of legislation the election is covering.
This is a classic example of why making voting for public offices "easier" actually conflicts with the desired social outcome that would benefit society the most. Johnson writes "Even if individuals could be driven to the polls by social pressures, by fines, or by 'costless' electronic voting, there is no assurance that those individuals who did vote would have sufficient knowledge to vote their own interests". I hope in the future this girl can also handout pamphlets or brochures that provide all the information needed to become knowledgable of the current election before she attempts to pressure or make easier this registration process to vote.
1 comment:
Jay, thanks for your post! As someone who is pretty involved in voter registration efforts and mobilizing students to vote in local elections, I feel compelled to try to provide an economic justification for this girl's actions. According to Johnson, rational ignorance creates distortions that enable certain individuals to have disproportionate influence on policy formation. Assuming that this girl is a Politics or Public Policy major, she may have an incentive to become informed about politics, not so that she can become an informed voter, but so that she can do well in her courses. She would then be able to use her position of authority as a Politics/Policy major and active political volunteer to distribute low-cost information to others at UVA. She may very well know that other students are rationally ignorant and, thus, may be taking advantage of that by providing them with biased information that supports her goals. In this case, she may know that young people, on average, are more inclined to support liberal candidates, so she might be attempting to encourage students (who are rationally ignorant but more likely to vote liberal if they do vote) to go vote so that a liberal candidate will get more votes. Obviously, I am making a lot of assumptions here, but this is one possible explanation for her actions.
Post a Comment