Democracy And Voter Incentives, Post-5

A Nobel Prize winner of 1986, James Buchanan was a distinguished economist at George Mason University. He was one of the architects who founded public choice, a specialized field in economics. Buchanan applied economic techniques of market place to analyze the political behavior of politicians, bureaucrats as well as voters. He concluded that no matter where they are, individuals act on their self-interest. That means those in market place as well as those in political setting are not different of each other and all act to advance their own self-interest.

Public choice theory supports those Americans who do not exercise their civic duties under the notion called, rational ignorance. Rational ignorance in simple terms means that one weighs the costs and benefits of his or her actions very carefully. To apply this to the voters, we need to examine the costs and benefits involved by casting a ballot. To cast a ballot, one need to know some basic things about the candidates and their standing on polices that matter to the voter. In economics term, every action has its opportunity costs. Therefore, instead of one spend time to gain information about the candidates and their policy, he or she could spend on other stuff such as earning money by working or enjoying his or her time by doing what she or he like. Even though voting without gaining some information about the candidates and policies not cost much, voter also spend some time in line waiting which comes with its own opportunity cost. That is where the rational ignorance comes handy which people don’t bother gaining information if gaining such information costs more than its benefits. This makes sense if one look at it from the stand point of immediate costs and benefits; in long run, this may not as obvious as it appears.

Another point public choice highlights about those who don’t vote is the probability of changing the outcome by voting. In my previous post, I noted about the four percent of unregistered voters who believe their vote does not make any difference and that is why they did not register. Public choice theory happens to support the assumption of these unregistered voters. One voter to make a difference or change the outcome, the number of voters need to be very small. If there are five thousand voters in one particular election, the probability of changing the outcome by one vote is about one percent. If there are five million voters instead, the probability of changing an outcome by one vote is about 0.036 percent, which is very unlikely outcome. Therefore, the odds are with those who don’t vote. About 50 millions of American eligible voters didn’t vote in 2012 election for reasons pointed out here . Are those who don’t vote better off?. They may or may not and depend on product produced by those who vote. If those actually vote have the same choice and preferences as those who do not, then those don’t vote will better off. On the other hand, the choices and preferences of those who actually vote are different than those do not vote which usually the case, those who don’t vote may worse off.