“But Grandma, Voting is Meaningless.”

            Last week my opinionated grandma bluntly asked, “Josh, who are you voting for next fall?” And instead of explaining to her why rationally I should abstain from voting, at that moment, I realized I will vote because of “D”. As discussed in class, we can frame a voting utility function as: pB+D-C ≥ 0 with the probability(p) times the benefit (B) of your candidate winning minus the cost(C) of voting. It was made clear that the costs of time and gas alone to the polls will far outweigh the expected benefit of voting. However, the random factor “D” encapsulates the reason why I, and many others, will vote and that is the social benefit of being labeled a “voter” by others. The reason to vote is not because it makes a difference, but to tell people you voted. Advertisements can give false reasons such as, “if we work together as a community and increase voter turnout, then our state and national legislators will listen to our needs. ” If anything, by increasing voter turnout we are silencing many people's needs by adding drops of complaints in an ocean of unique preferences.         

Similarly, my aforementioned grandma said, “If someone does not vote then they have no right to complain about the election result.” This is a common criticism of the nonvoter that Johnson brings up in Voting, Rational Abstention, and Rational Ignorance. If I paraphrased his argument I could tell my grandma, “Actually, your argument has no merit because in virtually all cases the probability that my vote will affect the outcome is infinitesimally small. Therefore, I have every right to criticize the outcome regardless if I voted or not because the outcome would have been the same.'' Yet, I won't ruin thanksgiving dinner for the same reason I will cast a vote next fall, and that is because I derive a personal benefit, encapsulated in “D,” from being seen as a voter.