Unincentives of Voting

    We have talked a lot about how there is a lack of incentive to vote because there is such a low chance that one’s vote influences the outcome. This low likelihood makes people believe that their political opinions are not important or influential within the American political system. As a result, we have talked about other reasons as to why people decide to go vote. These include a patriotic view of the elections, a feeling that it’s your civic duty, and social pressures felt by those in certain groups. But something else that hasn’t been talked about quite as much yet are the barriers to entry that are created within the political system. I recently came across a New York Times article detailing in which states it is the hardest to vote. This article is reporting on the findings of a non-partisan think tank that calculated this ranking by looking at many facets of voting, including how early you have to register to vote, if there’s early absentee voting and if individuals can vote by mail. These barriers to entry, create something very similar to the market system, where there are laws that make it difficult to vote thus creating an environment that pushes them out of "market" of voting. This deincentivizes people from voting and pushes back against the previously mentioned incentives that people feel such as patriotism or civic activism. These factors or barriers to entry must be calculated into the formula Ui = p[IVi] + EVi in the EVi portion.  This formula considers both the physical impact that individual has on the outcome (p[IVi]) and the non-physical impact (EVi) or expressive voting has on their decisions to vote. One way that I interpret this article is that the lack of easy voting in some states could add to the feeling of civic duty that citizens in "easy to vote states" feel. This is because they feel that they have it better than others, and thus it creates like a feeling of obligation to vote when others may not have the option due to more rigorous barriers to entry.

    Overall, the impact of the emotional response (or expressive voting) that people have to voting has the largest impact on an individual's decision to vote. I feel that there are these external influences that weren't initially contained in the expressive voting idea, but should be considered as even though there are positive influences on an individual's decision to vote, the potential negative external influences should also be considered when describing and demonstrating the causes of people's voting patterns.