Voting is important to me. It’s something that I do every time elections roll around, and it’s something that I take a lot of pride in. I wouldn’t say that I’m the most political guy in the world, but I definitely have strong opinions about the best direction for my country to go. I want to make sure that those opinions get counted and have an effect.
That’s why I’m so bothered by people who don’t vote, especially if those people agree with me. People’s excuses for not voting are as numerous as the non-voters themselves, but they usually fall into a few different categories. There are the people who don’t vote because they’re too lazy. Some don’t vote because they just don’t care (or claim not to, they sure complain about the government a lot for people who don’t care). Others don’t vote because they say it’s not worth it.
It’s that last group that I want to address here. I’ve recently been in a few different conversations with people who feel that their vote has such a small impact that it’s not worth the time it takes to get informed and actually cast their ballot. The people I’ve met who think this way tend to be economists and computer scientists, so it’s not like they’re ignorant about the situation. From their perspective, they’re probably making the right choice. However, that choice is predicated on the fact that many other people with similar views will be voting.
Voting is the Prisoner’s Dilemma played at scale. There are huge groups of people who can either defect (not vote) or cooperate (vote). Assume for simplicity that each issue is divided on party lines and each party is the same size. In that case, each individual voter is playing the prisoner’s dilemma with people of their own party.
If the person defects and doesn’t vote, they get the extra time and energy they would have spent on voting to use for other things. If everyone defects, then the bill/politician/whatever that they wanted gets voted down by the other party.
So when people who share my political ideas say they don’t vote, I get upset. I don’t much mind that my vote is then that much more important. What I do mind is that those people are making it less likely that the world turns out how I want it.
This is a bit different than the popular idea that voting is a civic duty, and that everyone should vote. Basically I’m saying that I only want people who agree with me to vote. I’m still working on how to reconcile that with my general belief in the process of democracy.