Kevin Shows that Voting is Pointless
Well it’s almost time for the next presidential elections (just over 3 years!) so I suppose it’s an appropriate time to share the anti-voting article I wrote for the Antimovement… check it out!
Voting?!
The 2008 presidential election had a turnout of over 130 million voters, that’s about 56% of voting-age Americans. That means that at least one in two Americans who could vote, took the time to register, wait in line, and vote. What this also means is that at least one in two Americans who could vote, wasted their time.
The Statistical Argument
Let us first examine the futility of voting from a statistical perspective. The traditional way to view voting is that your vote does make a difference, no matter how small. From this view, if you vote along with 130 million Americans, your contribution to the vote was 1 in 130 million, or 7.69×10-9. Congratulations, you have an impact on the world to the same order as the Bohr radius (5.29×10-9 m).
All joking aside, this view assumes two clearly false statements. The first is that everyone’s vote reflects their own opinion and also that this is an accurate reflection of the voting system. We will ignore the former for now, and focus on the latter.
As you are certainly aware, being a politically minded American the presidential election is decided by electoral college. Rather than using the popular vote to decide the president, US citizens vote for electors, who are technically free to vote for any eligible candidate. In practice, these electors pledge to vote for candidates according to some specific rules. In general, this usually means that whichever candidate receives the most votes in a given state receives all electoral votes from that state. Since 1964, there have been 538 total electors in each election. The number of electoral votes from each state varies, for example California casts 55 votes while North Dakota casts 3.
So if we consider having and impact in the election to mean your vote contributing to the electoral vote, your vote only counts if your state’s popular vote is dead even, and you cast the tie-breaking vote. In any other circumstance, you could have stayed home and the outcome of the election would have been exactly the same.
So let’s look at this by the numbers. Let us derive a generous probability of your vote having any impact on the election. Let us imagine you live in Wyoming (I feel bad for you), where only 256,000 people showed up to vote in the 2008 presidential election. Let us also imagine that everyone votes for one of two candidates, with exactly 50% probability. This is equivalent to a coin toss. The odds that exactly 128,000 people vote for each candidate, and consequently the probability that your vote will have an impact in the election can be derived using the binomial distribution. Without boring you with the math, given this distribution you have a healthy chance of 0.16% chance of having an impact on the election!
So if the rest of the voters select their candidate by coin toss, I would say that voting is worth it. But we all know this is not true. If, for instance, one of the candidates spends just a little more money on advertising in Wyoming than the other, to the effect of increasing the odds of voting for them to 0.51%, the probability that the election will be dead even in Wyoming reduces to 9.067×10-24%!!
To put this number is perspective, the odds of winning the grand-prize Powerball jackpot is 5.12×10-7%. That means that the odds of having an impact on the election when the probability of everyone else voting for one candidate is skewed by only one percent is approximately the equivalent odds of winning the powerball 3 times in a row.
Considering that the impact you could have on the election by spending all that money you won in the powerball is astronomically higher than the impact you have by voting, a Nashian agent who’s interest is making a difference should pick the lottery every time.
The Philosophic Argument
So by now, you’re upset. Instead of feeling embarassed about voting like you should, you’re coming up with all sorts of ways to tell me I’m wrong. Why don’t you just try saying something starting with “But if everybody thought like this…” or how about something even less tangible like “Do you know how many people died for your right to vote?” Wait, I have one! “It’s your duty as an American citizen to vote!”
Great job. I’m proud of you, you voting advocate. You’ve convinced me… rally the troops, it’s time to vote. Sorry, but I’ve heard it all before. The fact of the matter is your hypothetical non-voting situation will occur with negligible probability. What are the odds the presidents themselves don’t vote huh? How about everybody who depends on them or wants to see them succeed? If the American public somehow miraculously stops caring, it’s then a competition of who has a bigger family. Even worse, there’s still the case of those rogue electors who still have the freedom to vote for whoever they want. Regardless, people like you will always vote because it gives you some pathetic sense of influence.
The bottom line is that people are not Nashian agents. They make irrational decisions on a daily basis. They choose to vote because their peers pressure them into it with grand-sounding arguments of American duty and history. Surely you’ve discussed politics with someone who believed that “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain.” They listen to MTV’s Rock the Vote campaign. Or they just do it to convince themselves that they are not as powerless as they feel.
Worse yet, we have all these people voting who know absolutely nothing about the candidates. For every single person who does a little research before voting, there are 99 people who vote based on which commercials they liked better, which candidate relates to them better, or who had more signs in their town. Winning an election is not a function of being a better candidate, it is a function of having a better PR firm, which is often simply a matter of spending more money.
Even if you do vote, what are the odds you are making a decision that you would truly have made if you had filtered out all the political noise. What are the odds you weren’t just tricked by a candidate who has neither your interests nor the interests of the country at heart. Furthermore, how can someone who managed to climb the political ladder to be in a position to run for president possibly have time to take these interests into consideration.
Your time could be better spent doing almost anything rather than voting, so next time the election rolls around, just say no… or vote.
-Written by Kevin Dolan (link). Reproduced without permission!
So there you have it… time to stop voting!
Voting?!
The 2008 presidential election had a turnout of over 130 million voters, that’s about 56% of voting-age Americans. That means that at least one in two Americans who could vote, took the time to register, wait in line, and vote. What this also means is that at least one in two Americans who could vote, wasted their time.
The Statistical Argument
Let us first examine the futility of voting from a statistical perspective. The traditional way to view voting is that your vote does make a difference, no matter how small. From this view, if you vote along with 130 million Americans, your contribution to the vote was 1 in 130 million, or 7.69×10-9. Congratulations, you have an impact on the world to the same order as the Bohr radius (5.29×10-9 m).
All joking aside, this view assumes two clearly false statements. The first is that everyone’s vote reflects their own opinion and also that this is an accurate reflection of the voting system. We will ignore the former for now, and focus on the latter.
As you are certainly aware, being a politically minded American the presidential election is decided by electoral college. Rather than using the popular vote to decide the president, US citizens vote for electors, who are technically free to vote for any eligible candidate. In practice, these electors pledge to vote for candidates according to some specific rules. In general, this usually means that whichever candidate receives the most votes in a given state receives all electoral votes from that state. Since 1964, there have been 538 total electors in each election. The number of electoral votes from each state varies, for example California casts 55 votes while North Dakota casts 3.
So if we consider having and impact in the election to mean your vote contributing to the electoral vote, your vote only counts if your state’s popular vote is dead even, and you cast the tie-breaking vote. In any other circumstance, you could have stayed home and the outcome of the election would have been exactly the same.
So let’s look at this by the numbers. Let us derive a generous probability of your vote having any impact on the election. Let us imagine you live in Wyoming (I feel bad for you), where only 256,000 people showed up to vote in the 2008 presidential election. Let us also imagine that everyone votes for one of two candidates, with exactly 50% probability. This is equivalent to a coin toss. The odds that exactly 128,000 people vote for each candidate, and consequently the probability that your vote will have an impact in the election can be derived using the binomial distribution. Without boring you with the math, given this distribution you have a healthy chance of 0.16% chance of having an impact on the election!
So if the rest of the voters select their candidate by coin toss, I would say that voting is worth it. But we all know this is not true. If, for instance, one of the candidates spends just a little more money on advertising in Wyoming than the other, to the effect of increasing the odds of voting for them to 0.51%, the probability that the election will be dead even in Wyoming reduces to 9.067×10-24%!!
To put this number is perspective, the odds of winning the grand-prize Powerball jackpot is 5.12×10-7%. That means that the odds of having an impact on the election when the probability of everyone else voting for one candidate is skewed by only one percent is approximately the equivalent odds of winning the powerball 3 times in a row.
Considering that the impact you could have on the election by spending all that money you won in the powerball is astronomically higher than the impact you have by voting, a Nashian agent who’s interest is making a difference should pick the lottery every time.
The Philosophic Argument
So by now, you’re upset. Instead of feeling embarassed about voting like you should, you’re coming up with all sorts of ways to tell me I’m wrong. Why don’t you just try saying something starting with “But if everybody thought like this…” or how about something even less tangible like “Do you know how many people died for your right to vote?” Wait, I have one! “It’s your duty as an American citizen to vote!”
Great job. I’m proud of you, you voting advocate. You’ve convinced me… rally the troops, it’s time to vote. Sorry, but I’ve heard it all before. The fact of the matter is your hypothetical non-voting situation will occur with negligible probability. What are the odds the presidents themselves don’t vote huh? How about everybody who depends on them or wants to see them succeed? If the American public somehow miraculously stops caring, it’s then a competition of who has a bigger family. Even worse, there’s still the case of those rogue electors who still have the freedom to vote for whoever they want. Regardless, people like you will always vote because it gives you some pathetic sense of influence.
The bottom line is that people are not Nashian agents. They make irrational decisions on a daily basis. They choose to vote because their peers pressure them into it with grand-sounding arguments of American duty and history. Surely you’ve discussed politics with someone who believed that “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain.” They listen to MTV’s Rock the Vote campaign. Or they just do it to convince themselves that they are not as powerless as they feel.
Worse yet, we have all these people voting who know absolutely nothing about the candidates. For every single person who does a little research before voting, there are 99 people who vote based on which commercials they liked better, which candidate relates to them better, or who had more signs in their town. Winning an election is not a function of being a better candidate, it is a function of having a better PR firm, which is often simply a matter of spending more money.
Even if you do vote, what are the odds you are making a decision that you would truly have made if you had filtered out all the political noise. What are the odds you weren’t just tricked by a candidate who has neither your interests nor the interests of the country at heart. Furthermore, how can someone who managed to climb the political ladder to be in a position to run for president possibly have time to take these interests into consideration.
Your time could be better spent doing almost anything rather than voting, so next time the election rolls around, just say no… or vote.
I agree with me!
The same part of me that feels vaguely disgusted when I see a picture of starving children after eating a double cheeseburger feels vaguely disgusted again now when I think of all the people in the world struggling to gain the right to vote. Or to have their votes legitimately count, as in Iran (or in the US in 2000, though I don’t think anybody kicked up much of a fuss. Well, hindsight is 20/20). Only in America could we consider the privilege to vote a chore not worth carrying out. I’d also argue that in the time it took you to calculate and write all of this, you probably could have dragged your a$$ to register and once again to the polls.
…and Obama would be even more president?
You’re missing the point here, having the right to vote means worlds more than actually voting.