Borda Count Voting: 2008 Heisman Case Study

The Heisman Trophy is awarded annually by media voters to the season's most outstanding college football player. Voting is conducted using the Borda Count method; voters rank their top three choices, awarding 3 points for first-place, 2 for second and 1 for third. Generally, this is highly uncontroversial as most years the winner receives an overwhelming majority of the first-place votes. For example, in 2025 Fernando Mendoza received 643 first-place votes while runner-up Diego Pavia received 189. However, the Borda count winner does not necessarily have to receive the most first-place votes. Consider the 2008 voting below:

Tim Tebow received the most first-place votes and finished third, outraging Florida fans and much of the college football-watching public. These fans were shocked by the system, assuming that Tebow would win the award having won a plurality of the votes. Unfortunately, complete ballots are not released publicly and we cannot determine the Condorcet winner for the award. We can clearly see however that Bradford received only 9 fewer first-place votes than Tebow and dominated him in second-place votes by a margin of 108. Bradford had broader support across the rankings, but it would be interesting to check for Condorcet efficiency with full ballot access. Mueller Table 7.4 tells us that in a 3-candidate voting system (oversimplified compared to this case) a Borda Count is 90.8% efficient at selecting the Condorcet winner compared with 79.1% efficiency for plurality voting. While Borda Count voting may seem counterintuitive in the 2008 case, it is likely helpful in the identification of the player with the broadest support.

How redistricting/political gerrymandering can change the median voter: Illinois' 10th Congressional District

Every ten years, the US conducts a population census, and from this census, congressional district lines are redrawn in each state.  In most states, lawmakers in the state legislature draft and pass the new district boundaries just like regular laws. Also, in many of these states, the governor can sign or veto the map. However, if a single political party controls both the state legislature and the governor seat, they can essentially choose the new district lines and control who falls in what district. Naturally, as any rational person/group would, that political party redraws the lines strategically to best ensure their preferences are met. In other words, to have as many candidates of their party as possible in the House of Representatives. When a party redraws electoral district boundaries to give themselves an unfair advantage, it is called political gerrymandering, and even though it seems like it should be illegal, it isn't and happens all the time. So, how do they do this? They take advantage of the median voter theorem. 

Let's say that there is a very competitive two-party district with a normal distribution where the median, decisive voter is extremely moderate, and the median voter might swing either way. Now, imagine the party with absolute control of redistricting, Party A, redraws district lines so that the new district is more in line with Party A than Party B. Now, the median voter favors Party A. One may be thinking that Party B would simply move their ideology toward Party A, but in the real world, the MVT's assumptions do not always hold. Specifically, in the real world, candidates are dealing with many single-issue debates at a time and their mobility on policy isn't as fluid as the MVT states. So, Party A is simply moving the population distribution "closer to them" and almost guaranteeing to win the election.

One real world example that is very personal to me in the redistricting of congressional lines is the 2011 redistricting of Illinois, specifically looking at Illinois' 10th Congressional District. My uncle, former Congressman Robert James Dold Jr., won the 2010 congressional election in a 51.08%/48.92% election in a very competitive race. However, Illinois is an extremely democratic state, and in 2011, Democrats in Springfield proposed a new Congressional map that was drawn without any input from Republicans and was considered to be an attempt to undo the results of the elections held just six months ago. In the redistricting process, not only was my uncle physically forced out of his district, the district was pushed further north into more democratic neighborhoods and removing some of the swing voters that had allowed him to win in 2010. The democrats used the lack of absolute policy mobility to their advantage. They redraw Illinois' 10th Congressional District so that the median voter was now further left on a political ideology scale. Because of this, he was listed as the 5th most vulnerable Republican incumbents in 2012 as a result of redistricting. Even though my uncle was a very moderate republican, he still did not have the mobility to move his political ideology far enough to the left to account for the change of the median voter and in the 2012 election, he lost.

Ranked Choice Fishing

Over Fall Break I got to spend four days floating through Hells Canyon fishing the Snake River and hunting upland game birds in the canyon. On the trip we fished for Smallmouth Bass, Salmon, Rainbow Trout, and White Sturgeon. On the hunting side, we were primarily going after Chukar. At the end of the trip, I asked everyone on the trip which animal they most enjoyed pursuing. The results can be found in Table 1.

Table 1: Animal Preference Chart

	Jarrett	Derek	Omar	Jacob
1	Salmon	Chukar	Chukar	Sturgeon
2	Chukar	Bass	Trout	Bass
3	Sturgeon	Trout	Bass	Chukar
4	Trout	Sturgeon	Sturgeon	Trout
5	Bass	Salmon	Salmon	Salmon

 

With this data, I then analyzed the results using different voting methods to see if there would be any significant differences. Chukar wins in both a plurality and majority + runoff situation. But let’s now look at the results in various ranking systems. Tables 2-4 show the result.

 

Table 2: Results Using the Borda Count

Placement	Animal	Points
1	Chukar	17
T-2	Bass	12
T-2	Sturgeon	12
4	Trout	11
5	Salmon	8

 

Table 3: Results Using Coombs Method

Placement	Animal
1	Chukar
T-2	Trout
T-2	Bass
4	Sturgeon
5	Salmon

 

 

Table 4: Results Using Hare System

Placement	Animal
1	Chukar
T-2	Salmon
T-2	Sturgeon
T-4	Bass
T-4	Trout

 

From all these systems, Chukar was the winner. However, I wanted to see if Chukar is in fact a Condorcet Winner, and Table 5 shows that it is. In a head-to-head matchup, Chukar still beats all of the other options.

 

Table 5: Condorcet Matchup

Matchup	Result	Winner
Chukar vs. Salmon	3-1	Chukar
Chukar vs. Sturgeon	3-1	Chukar
Chukar vs. Bass	3-1	Chukar
Chukar vs. Trout	4-0	Chukar

 

The most interesting part of this is not which animal ended up winning. There was no difference between the methods there. However, it is notable the differences in the order. Most notable is that Salmon came in last in both the Borda Count and the Coombs Method yet secured second place in the Hare System. It demonstrates that the Hare System eliminated the option neither loved nor hated first, while Coombs and Borda got rid of the option most people enjoyed the least. 

Reforming the Downs Framework

    Much has been written about growing political "radicalism" within the West. In the UK, this new "radicalism" has taken shape in Nigel Farage’s Reform and Rupert Lowe’s Restore. If we were to map these two parties using the Hotelling Model, Reform would be to the right of the Conservative Party and Restore would be a little further right of Reform. Within a multiparty system, these parties tend to remain ideologically pure as there is more of an incentive to remain put and secure your base as opposed to moving closer to other party platforms. Downs notes that new parties crop up either as a means to win elections or influence current parties. While it seems as though Lowe’s Restore (2025) was likely founded with the hope of influencing Reform (2021) to move further right to regain the defectors, Reform itself grew out of the Brexit Party. Amazingly, Reform has overtaken the Tories to become the second most popular party in the UK behind Labour. How did this happen?

    According to Downs, parties seeking victory are founded in response to a change in voter distribution or a crisis which disrupts the social order. Because there was no seismic change in voter distribution pre-Brexit, we would conclude that there must have been a crisis which disrupted the social order. For Reform to have surged in popularity in such a short time period is at the very least indicative of the socially disruptive quality of the Brexit decision. To be clear, it would be confirmation bias to use Downs’s framework as a means to retroactively categorize Brexit as a cataclysmic event akin to his examples of WWII or industrialization. Since Downs is rather vague as to defining what it means for a crisis to disrupt the social order, it’s difficult to avoid using confirmation bias to force these events to fit within his framework. Perhaps another explanatory category should be added such as a long run ideological trend. The current trend of populism is arguably the fuel for Reform and many other new parties, and is incredibly difficult to pin down to a single causal event. Adding this new category to the mix could help explain the success of Reform and the rise of other parties that may seem to slip through the cracks of the framework.

Couples, Chaos, and Condorcet Winners

     Contrary to popular American opinion, the most wonderful time of the year is not Christmas, it’s June 1 – the first episode of Love Island USA. My friends and I get together to watch another messy season of couples fighting for the title of America’s Favorite Couple. After the first week, America gets to weigh in on the couples and their compatibility. 

   To vote, viewers register through the Love Island app, where they cast votes on challenges, favorite couples, and potential eliminations. These votes are combined with Islanders’ votes to determine the outcome. When analyzed more carefully, Love Island producers actually implement many different voting systems to answer the various questions they pose to viewers. Sometimes, viewers rank couples from favorite to least favorite, with the couple receiving the most last-place rankings placed at risk of elimination. This resembles the Coombs system. Other times, the couple receiving the fewest first-choice rankings is placed at risk, resembling Ranked Choice Voting. For the final vote, ITV uses a plurality voting system, crowning the couple with the most votes as the winner. 

Determining whether there is a Condorcet winner within these votes is tricky because voters’ preferences are not always fully observable. For example, this season, the Island had a couple, Trinity and Bryce, who appeared to be very strong throughout the process. From an outside perspective, especially in comparison to the other, much messier couples, Trinity and Bryce appeared to be a potential Condorcet winner because viewers could reasonably prefer them over each competing couple in hypothetical head-to-head comparisons. They were ultimately chosen as Season 8’s winners. However, in previous seasons, the plurality winner differed from a potential Condorcet winner. For example, Amaya and Bryan were crowned winners of Season 7. However, their victory was debated by many on social media, with some viewers questioning whether their popularity reflected their true compatibility as a couple. Many argued that Amaya’s popularity as “America’s Sweetheart” contributed to their victory, while stronger couples like Nic and Olandria, may have been more compatible. This commentary suggests that Nic and Olandria may have performed well in a hypothetical head-to-head election against Amaya and Bryan, although this alone would not establish them as the Condorcet winner. Despite this, the actual plurality vote produced a different result, demonstrating how the voting method can influence which couple ultimately wins.

The Right Moment to Enter Politics: The Bulgarian Election Example

Since 2021, Bulgaria has held eight parliamentary elections for government. It became the country with most elections held in the European Union before a permanent council of ministers could be even formed. As a parliamentary republic, the constitution of the state requires a single party or a coalition to have at least 50% of the votes (or seats in parliament) in order to form a cabinet. Except for the last election in April 2026, parties were only able to barely reach 30% of the votes. When majority-rule elections repeatedly fail to produce outcomes that satisfy enough voters, abstention can change the effective electorate and create opportunities for new parties to gain support.

Bulgaria is an interesting example of how different voter turnout can affect election outcomes. If voters become disappointed with their preferred party or candidate and decide not to vote, while supporters of another party continue to vote regardless of who their candidate is, the election result may not reflect the preferences of the population as a whole. This is an excellent opportunity for brand new parties to emerge to capture a larger portion of voter turnout as a group of voters abstain from voting. For example, a party could be preferred by more eligible voters but still lose because many of its supporters stay home while the other party has higher turnout. The absence of duopoly also creates more opportunities for new parties to attract voters who are dissatisfied with the existing parties. In previous Bulgarian elections, a right-wing party gained significantly more votes than the second-largest left-wing party, showing how a party can gain greater representation when turnout is low and its supporters remain more motivated to vote. This asserts that uneven voter turnout can lead to different election outcomes because abstention changes the composition of the electorate, meaning that the median voter among actual voters may differ from the median voter among all eligible voters.

Lawn Selection: Approval vs Borda

    Getting a room on the Lawn is a huge honor but few students know how the winners are actually picked. The lawn selection committee consists of 64 Students. These students vote in rounds: first each member gets a limited number of "yes" votes, then they vote "yes" again on the top 100, and ties are broken by ranking. After the reading, I wondered if instead of approval voting the committee should use a Borda count. During the second round, members would rank every finalist and then add the points rather than a second yes round. The big plus of Borda is that it shows how much a member likes someone, since a "yes" treats a member's first pick and fiftieth pick the same. Mueller reports that Borda picks the Condorcet winner more often than approval, and that it is hard to game.

    The usual problem with ranking is that it takes a lot of effort, but that matters less here because members would only rank the top 100. However, there is a larger problem which is that Borda says the gap between 1st and 2nd is the same as 10th and 11th, which is hard to assume when the qualifications being judged are "meaningful and engaged participation." Along with the time it would take to rank all 100 people, a yes is easier to explain to a student than a rank. Overall, the Lawn's process already works well, but using Borda in round two would make the final cut more precise for a small cost in effort. 

Hotel(ling)

While driving out of Boston Logan Airport to begin my venture home for Fall Break, three hotels made a triangle around I-90: Embassy Suites, Hilton, and Hyatt. With the same multi-story, brown brick, uniform box structure, the buildings' "identity signs" served as their only differentiation. And while the architectural and location choices were identical enough, inside, visitors enjoy all the same complimentary services (breakfast, housekeeping, Wi-Fi, parking) and amenities (gym, pool, mini-fridge, toiletries). The convergence of the greater hospitality industry is explained by, ironically, Hotelling's Spatial Location Theory. 

Each of the three hotels is "midscale." If traveler accommodation preferences were sorted linearly, with camping at 0 and the Four Seasons at 100, Hotelling's Spatial Location Theory predicts market share maximization at this dominating "midscale" tier. The middle-to-high-end travelers sacrificing an infinity pool for a better price point and the middle-to-low-end travelers paying a little extra for a standard pool, for example. And while these hotels might not have a fine dining room, the list of once "luxury" amenities is growing and standardizing (listed above), as brands are forced to match those of their competitors to maintain such market share. The hotel trifecta's location choice (equilateral triangle around Logan) further supports Hotelling's Theory, with all three looking for an even split of traveler demand as travelers flock to the nearest hotel after a long travel day.

Thus, the hospitality industry is unique in that it upholds Hotelling's Spatial Location Theory in the homogenization of both its location and product offerings.

Ranked Choice Chaos in Alaska

Alaskan voters recently affirmed their loyalty to Ranked Choice Voting, and it seems that this decision has the potential to sway a highly contested Senate seat...due to a split vote between current Senator Dan S. Sullivan (R) and retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan (R) who share similar names. Currently, the vote is projected to be neck and neck between Dan S. and Democratic challenger former Rep. Mary Peltola, with Dan J. grabbing just ~3% of the vote. 

However, one Republican interest group filed a complaint with the FEC claiming that Dan J.'s sole purpose in joining the election was to split the Republican vote and bring down Dan S., citing Dan S.'s illegal dealings with ad groups against Dan S. The name confusion is said to be enough to split the Republican vote. However, this is a complaint that rings true with a plurality system of voting like that of Nicaragua, not RCV. Here, the voters leaning towards the imposter Dan J. will almost certainly rank Dan S. as the second option, as a vote for Dan J. seems more like a statement vote than anything more substantial, but yet not enough of a statement to actually vote for a Democrat. 

In this sense, those using this situation to press the iron to RCV have little case. Of course, there is an opportunity to have voters rank Dan J, Peltola, Dan S. and actually split the vote, but this seems unlikely and insignificant (I hypothesize that anyone who votes for Dan J. is on the more extreme side of the political spectrum, and as demonstrated by the Hotelling-Downs Model, will not likely vote for Peltola before Dan S.). Perhaps Alaskans should be grateful for such a voting system that removes the incentives of a vote-splitter, as Dan J. running as an independent in our traditional election systems may actually hold sway (perhaps there is variability in voter preference between the election and the runoff to give an edge to Peltola) and avoid producing the Condorcet Winner.

Are Politicians Still Chasing the Middle Voters?

The Median Voter Theorem suggests that in a two-party, majority rule election, parties will have an incentive to move towards the median voter so that they can get the most amount of votes possible. But what happens when candidates change who the voters are instead?

As politics becomes more polarized and extreme, at least seven states have redrawn their congressional districts to help the party in power prior to the 2026 midterm elections, most favoring Republicans. This process of gerrymandering has reduced electoral competition, meaning that some individuals and groups are losing voting power. It has also created an interesting problem for the Median Voter Theorem. 

Neither the voters nor the candidates preferences have shifted. Instead, the distribution of voters has changed, shifting the location of the median voter and therefore, candidates vote-maximizing strategies. Redrawing the districts moved the median voter closer to the party in power, creating a margin of safety in case of abstention and making it unnecessary for incumbent candidates to moderate their policies. In Louisiana's 6th district, the Black voting population fell from 53% to 25%, shifting the median voter from a liberal to a more conservative voter, reducing the Republican candidate need to appeal to Black voters. 

Politicians are still trying to maximize votes, but by changing district boundaries, they changed the group they need to appeal to. If politicians can choose the voters they need to win, then they may not need to chase the moderate median voter anymore, which can have extreme effects on future elections and the shape of politics as a whole in America.

Is Bolsonaro Brazil's Condorcet Winner?

Condorcet winners seem like an optimist's dream - but finding Condorcet winners in elections is like trying to find a four leaf clover. But could there be one in the Brazil presidential election? Brazil runs its elections as majority rule with a runoff, so since no candidate reached 50% or more of the vote after the recent election results, Lula (incumbent) and Flávio Bolsonaro will be sent to a runoff election. Many of the candidates that received less than 3% of the vote are right of center, so Lula would likely not be the Condorcet winner since Bolsonaro is very right-wing. But does Bolsonaro have the makings of a Condorcet winner? 

There one way this is likely to go when comparing Bolsonaro with any of the minor candidates, including Cury. In an election between Bolsonaro and Cury, if all 47% of Bolsonaro's voters vote for him again, the 53% of other voters decides the election results. Bolsonaro would win the election if he gets a share of non-Bolsonaro voters such that: 47 +53*s > 50 =. s > 3/53=5.7%. Cury would need a share of 94.3% of all non-Bolsonaro voters to win, so it seems like Bolsonaro is a shoe-in for a Condorcet winner. 

To prevent Bolsonaro from becoming a Condorcet winner, 94.3% of all non-Bolsonaro voters would need to vote for Cury. Even though Lula's base is very anti-Bolsonaro, a 90%+ preference for Cury from all non-Bolsonaro voters seems unlikely. Strategic voting could have also caused understatements in the minor candidates' first-round support, which may mean that some Bolsonaro voters engaged in strategic voting and did not vote for Cury even though they liked him. With all that in mind, it still seems like this is a likely case where Bolsonaro is an elusive Condorcet winner.

Copper or Cooperation?

Online and in the news, you hear about the virtues of a “high trust society”. Japan in 2011 was noted for the lack of looting following the Fukushima disaster by both the BBC and NPR. Many attributed this lack of thievery in the wake of a natural disaster to Japan being a “high trust society”. 

An understanding of the prisoner’s dilemma tells you why a “high trust society” might be valuable. Simply put, the prisoner’s dilemma describes a scenario where uncooperative behavior, that constitutes a dominant strategy for both parties, can be deterred by government action to achieve a pareto optimal move whereby each party achieves a utility improvement via their joint choice of cooperative behavior. A world where cooperative behavior (looting abstention) does not need to be compelled by costly government action saves tax payer money and is therefore more efficient. 

On the other hand, one can see how an uncooperative society comparatively struggles. Either the parties reside at a pareto inefficient utility level, or the government has to continuously spend money to compel cooperative behavior. Neither of these are good. 

This understanding helps explain why so many say LA is failing. LA is experiencing unprecedented levels of copper wire theft from their street lights currently. Over 27,000 feet of copper wiring has been stolen since February of last year according to the LA Dept of Water & Power. Now, LA city officials are calling on Governor Newsom to pass AB1941 criminalizing “organized metal theft” for up to a year. Most US cities don’t even consider the need to deter infrastructure pilfering. LA must now do so to ensure its citizens can simply drive on lit roads.

Fashion Week or Campaign Season

This month, fashion week took over all the big cities. While watching the runway shows, I kept wondering where these pieces end up. The pieces are sculptural, full of clashing patterns, and extravagant materials. Yet at the same time, these brands' stores are full of cream sweaters, black trousers and a wall of simple handbags. For a long time I assumed the runway was just art for art's sake; I now know this is a strategic move. The runway is a party platform's "extreme stand."

In a two-party system, parties pack their platforms with an overlapping mass of moderate policies in the middle of the scale, where most voters are. But a party can't go completely bland, or it loses its most loyal supporters at the edges. So each party will sprinkle a few extreme stands to please its far-out voters. A fashion house does exactly this. Its stores are the moderate mass, full of wearable basics that could belong to almost any label. Its runway is the sprinkle of extremes for editors and collectors. Like a party's extreme stands, those looks aren't meant to win over the average shopper. Take Loewe under Jonathan Anderson. His runways featured heels made from nail polish bottles, birthday candles, and cracked eggshells. Yet the brand's defining product was the Puzzle bag, a structured, clean leather bag. 

Although they might not be consumed, these extreme stances let a customer differentiate one brand from another. Strip away the logos, and one luxury house's camel coat is nearly impossible to tell from another's. The runway isn't where a brand makes its sales. It's where a brand shows what it stands for.

 

A Transfer Portal Dilemma

The introduction of the transfer portal into college sports, particularly football and basketball, created an interesting example of the prisoner's dilemma. Coaches and programs can choose to cooperate and minimize their use of the portal, or they can defect and seek out transfer players. For our purposes, let us consider only two programs. There is a Pareto-efficient outcome where each decides not use the portal (cooperate). However, each program has an individual incentive to defect; using the portal while the other does not gives them a competitive advantage. Since each faces this incentive, they defect and are both worse off than they would be had they each cooperated. What if they didn't reach this equilibrium?

Let's consider a comparison of two coaches currently participating in the transfer portal dilemma: Curt Cignetti and Dabo Swinney. Cignetti turned around an Indiana team that went 3-9 in the year prior to his arrival to a 16-0 national champion in just two years. He did this with a roster that added 52(!) transfers during this period. Dabo Swinney has been stubborn in his refusal to allocate resources towards the portal in favor of developing high school recruits, taking only 3 transfers over the same period. Swinney has fallen from the heights of his pre-portal success and Clemson has turned into a middling program. As noble as Swinney's motivations may be, Cignetti's defection and Swinney's insistence on cooperation have created the outcome we may expect. Cignetti's behavior demonstrates the benefit programs can gain from defection while others continue to cooperate.

The Future Harm of Rational Ignorance

Rational ignorance assumes that the cost of acquiring information may outweigh its immediate benefit. There is a significant stepback of this idea. Rational Ignorance can be very harmful to you because deciding not to deepen your understanding on certain topics now, may result in greater marginal cost in the future. This can be seen when you will urgently need an information/skill after several years if you had learned/mastered it in the past. This missed opportunity will probably cause you to waste your precious free time as you get busier with a career. Currently, many college students have free time that tends to be used unwisely. Therefore, depending on the developments later in your life, such unwillingness to learn additional information may stab you in the back. 

A good thing to note is that financial information can have value beyond the present decision. The majority of university graduates going into their first job had none or minimal information on how to do their tax deductions or plan their retirement savings. Most of their arguments were backed by the idea that retirement is “decades away and there is time”. This prevents many people from managing money in the best possible way and end up paying much more taxes than needed, for example. The finance saying “Money is worth more today” directly implies that rational ignorance underestimates that time is worth more today than tomorrow, specifically the opportunity you had to learn something more. In simpler words, rational ignorance may seem beneficial when the immediate cost of learning outweighs the immediate benefit, but this ignores the future value of information. Learning something today may have a small immediate payoff but provide significant benefits over your lifetime.

Rational Voter Theory in the NBA

ESPN recently released their annual list of the NBA's top 100 players of 2026, decided on by 7 panelists. These professionals have dedicated their lives to watching basketball feeding their analysis to fans who, however dedicated to their teams, cannot hope to watch every game every night. In this, we arrive at the theory of a rational voter. There are many opportunity costs to watching basketball, such as working, studying, or doing Public Choice homework. This means that the MC curve of the casual fan must slope up with increasing opportunity cost for each additional unit of basketball consumed. Additionally, without being paid for watching the game nonstop, there are obviously decreasing marginal benefits of another unit of basketball (watch a Kings versus Nets game to find out). At some point, where MB=MC of basketball knowledge, there is an optimal point. Can we show this empirically?

It's complicated. The NBA All-Star game participants are selected by a combination of media member, player, and fan voting, the results of which are published. One would probably expect when comparing player and fan differentials to media rankings that the players would be closer to the "truth", i.e. maximum knowledge, as their MB of knowledge is higher and their MC is lower, on account of their salaries and scouting reports, and thus higher equilibrium point. However, players only averaged .3 points closer to the media than fans on average.

Perhaps this means that players are actually under-consuming knowledge, as they consistently rank close to the fans who aren't paid millions to study film. This could be explained by the now-famous NBA player Twitter habit. The rational voter consumes the knowledge that is easiest to find first, meaning social media in this case. Take a twitter-controversial player like Lika Doncic as an example: players rank him around 10, yet the media has him at 4. As another example, a rookie player like Cooper Flagg is placed by players at 34, yet rises to 23 in the eyes of professionals. This is an interesting example of it being rational to consume more - one would expect better game-planning for players who are more accurate about the skill level of their opponents.

No Impact, No Problem

This past Friday, early voting opened in the state of Virginia, and my grandmother made the front page of the Richmond Times Dispatch, eagerly casting her ballot on the first day she possibly could, grinning ear to ear and proudly sporting her red, white, and blue. My grandmother has held an astounding enthusiasm for voting for as long as I have known her, and it is something I have always greatly admired about her. However, the rationality behind her eagerness to vote is questionable, as her candidate for the House of Representatives this year is currently forecasted to have a 99% chance of winning and is expected to receive 71.1% of the vote, meaning there is essentially no chance her vote would have an impact. When weighing the expected marginal benefit she gains from voting against the marginal cost (PB - C), the P is so tiny that it is most certainly negative.

Of course, this isn’t special to my grandmother’s district. We have discussed extensively that the probability of an individual vote being pivotal is essentially always zero, but in her case we can also rule out that she is voting because she overestimates this probability, as she is very aware her candidate will win in a landslide whether or not she chooses to vote. So why does she do it? I immediately called her after seeing this headline to ask her this very question, and she replied word for word: “It's a constitutional and globally unique right that I must never take for granted at any time”. She doesn’t vote because she thinks her individual ballot will elect a candidate or influence policy, she votes because she loves what the act of voting itself represents. She votes, and votes enthusiastically at that, because she is so grateful she can. As discussed in class, this high utility associated with voting, independent of whether her ballot influences the election, can be factored in, significantly increasing her marginal benefit. Accounting for this alters her equation to PB + HighUtility - C, which her behavior suggests is likely much greater than zero. So, despite knowingly having no tangible impact on the candidate elected, my grandmother's marginal benefit of voting still exceeds her marginal cost, and she proudly heads to the polls. Maybe you can make the news too if you cast your vote this election season :)