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Critique of ‘Is it rational to vote?’ by Keith Dowding

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

-- Charles Bukowski.

Is it rational to vote? Keith Dowding in his article “Is it rational to vote? Five answers and a suggestion,” tries to bring out the very reasons that one would vote. According to Dowding, one votes as sense of duty. But this claim is invalid as duty is not necessarily a rational choice and thus it does not make it a utility- maximizing act.

Dowding argues that this solution is compatible with the assumption that ‘individuals maximize their utility by definition’ (Dowding 2005, 454). However, the ‘problem’ raised through attempting to incorporate ‘duty’ is not alleviated through relaxing the self-interested assumption. The problem is rather that an individual who votes out of a sense of duty is not ‘maximising their utility by definition’. Dowding’s proposed ‘solution’ is incompatible with the axioms of rational choice theory (Stephen Parsons 2006. “The Rationality of Voting: A Response to Dowding,” British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 295)

Voting may not be a sense of duty as Dowding claims, but there is rational choice behind why one does vote. According to Dowding, there are three main reasons for an individual to go to the polls-

1. People vote in order to express their preference for their preferred candidate

2. Increase his or her chances of winning and 3. Because they feel they ought to. (Dowding 2005, 442)

Dowding here minimizes the reasons, which is saying that, the above three reasons are the only reasons to why someone would cast a vote and if there are more, they would come back to these ones. Now this presumption is not faulty, but has some flaws. He missed out on people voting because they are forced to vote. This may be in terms of anti-social-pro-social groups that either by force or bribe, make people vote for their candidates.

In the 2008, Zimbabwean Elections, Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai accused President Robert Mugabe of forcing Zimbabweans to vote in an election in which the 84-year-old leader is the only candidate.

Tsvangirai said voters were being ordered to record the serial numbers of their ballot papers to identify how they cast their ballots. Pro-Mugabe militias had threatened to kill anybody abstaining or voting for the opposition, he said. (Chris Chinaka, Reuters, Jun 27, 2008).

People are forced to vote in many countries including the likes of India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. Then there are countries where voting is compulsory.

A few countries have compulsory voting, where by which you can be fined if you do not vote. This by far is a very undemocratic thing and absolutely disregards any democratic value.

In Australia, Belgium, and Venezuela a citizen who does not vote is in violation of the law and subject to fines and other penalties unless excused by illness. The potential sanctions in Venezuela are particularly harsh. Such penalties have also existed in Costa Rica since 1960 and were in effect in the Netherlands until the 1971 election. Similar penalties and requirements also existed in Chile before its democracy was overthrown, and apparently in Greece before the 1967 military coup as well as at present. (Bingham Powell, Jr., 1982, 113).

The arguments in place for compulsory voting are that it is the duty for everyone to vote. We often get these remarks if you haven’t voted, “You cannot criticize the government if you have not cast your vote.” This is not only a remark that falls short but one that is rationally irrational in nature. Not voting in itself is a democratic choice. Even if you do vote for the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing an evil.

It is well known that people have a poor understanding of probabilities (Kahneman et al. 1974). Some writers suggest that voters may simply misunderstand the probability that their vote is decisive (Riker and Ordeshook 1968; Barzel and Silberberg 1973, 53), partly subject to propaganda put out by parties and the state (Brunk 1980). Blais (2000) provides stated preference evidence that individuals massively overestimate the probability of their decisiveness. But, even on these estimates the probability of being decisive is small and, whilst it may provide the basis for a Margolis B-term solution, other stated preference evidence suggests otherwise. When asked why they vote few people cite the probability that their vote will be decisive. Indeed, they are rarely questioned in this manner but rather asked if they are more likely to vote when the election is close (Dennis 1991) and I suspect would query the sanity of the interviewer if they were directly asked the question. Decisiveness does not enter into individuals’ decision framework when deciding to vote. (Dowding 2005, 448).

Is it possible that every vote counts? Anthony Downs assumes efficient government will occur when every voter expresses the views they would have if they were the decisive voter: But in fact his vote is not decisive: it is lost in a sea of other votes. Hence whether he himself is well-informed has no perceptible impact on the benefits he gets. If all others express their true views, he gets the benefits of a well-informed electorate no matter how ill-informed he is: if they are badly informed, he cannot produce these benefits himself. Therefore, as in all cases of indivisible benefits, the individual is motivated to shirk his share of the costs: he refuses to get enough information to discover his true views. Since all men do this, the election does not reflect the true consent of the governed (Downs 1957, 246).

According to Dowding, For Downs it is about information costs and not benefit costs. So the predicament is not of non-voting but ignorant voting. But what really is ignorant voting. Is it ignorant for someone whose family is Democratic to vote Democratic, without actually knowing the policies of his candidate? It is a rational choice for the man in question as he has been born and brought up on Democratic Party philosophies, so he votes for the Democrats.

This is the same across a majority of voters, for whom information benefits are not a vital or necessarily vote changing choice. But if we informed them of both candidates’ policies, would it change their vote?

My vote will not cause people like me to vote, nor will my voting because I think people like me will vote cause people like me to vote. Indeed, such thinking is used by causal decision theorists to suggest the irrationality of non-causal evidential decision theory. (Dowding 2005, 450).

What are the decisions based upon one to vote? Do individuals care by how much and what margin do their candidates actually win an election? Voters do not care about margins; they only care about the victory. According to the paradox on nonvoting - the idea that a single vote has no effect on the outcome, seems to imply that the individual act of voting is instrumentally irrational, or is at best merely an expression of preference, and at that undisciplined by proper constraints. (Gerry Mackie, 2008).

Dowding ignores the social benefit of voting, a point that he completely misses out. Andrewe Gelman wrote people often vote strategically when they can (in multicandidate races, not wanting to "waste" their votes on candidates who don't seem to have a chance of winning). Not everyone votes strategically, but the fact that many people do is evidence that they are voting to make a difference, not just to scratch an itch or satisfy a civic duty.

Knowing that one had helped to secure one or more victories (or helped stop such a bad loss) is simply to claim that one gains utility from contributing to a collective effort (Hinich 1981). That is okay as an empirical claim, but not as a defense of the rational choice approach. So, let us leave decisiveness. It has always been a red herring. (Dowding 2005, 452).

Isn’t it to say that one gains utility from contributing to a collective effort actually indicates that every vote counts? Cause the collective utility can only be brought upon, if those individuals, who voted, voted in the same manner.

Dowding claims that if real costs deter people from voting, those deterred will tend to come from the less educated, poorer social classes and those with disabilities.

He further goes on to say is that, “Some people have claimed that richer people will vote less since the opportunity costs of voting are lower. But, this assumes that richer people are less likely to take leisure time since they can earn more in their leisure hours than poorer people. This is simply false. Often wage-earners can earn overtime whereas the salaried do not receive more money for putting in longer hours, especially later in their careers (earlier it may lead to promotion). Furthermore, as Downs points out, if time must be taken off work to vote, wage-earners may lose money, but the salaried not.”

The issue with the above mentioned quote is that he takes a very Anglo-American approach to his finding. It is quite the reversal in a developing country like India. Turnout percentages of poor and rural voters are significantly higher than the average Indian turnout. The poorer-social classes and the poor will come out to vote more because they need a representative to voice them. There is more rationality for a person of poor means to vote, than one that has a better source of income.

Spending patterns and outcomes that are particularly skewed towards special interests and are particularly incompatible with the interests of the poor are puzzling, since the poor in India tend to vote more than the middle class or the rich, villages more than cities, and lower castes more than upper castes [Yadav, 2000].

Hence, the failure of democratically elected governments to provide adequate services to the poor cannot be explained by lack of participation of the poor in the political process. It must hinge on the nature of that participation.

But as we have early mentioned about cost benefits, is the poor vote creating certain instability as they may not vote wisely cause of a possible lack of education? Although, what really is a wise vote? The mere fact that a person votes, depending upon different factors, cannot indicate if the vote is wrong or right. It is only a vote. So for one to claim that another voted wrong, is an invalid argument as they may differ in their ideologies, but in turn it was a rational thing for that person to vote in such a way.

There is a deeper reason for one to vote and the manner in which they vote. According to Dowding, “People do feel an obligation to vote. They enjoy expressing their preferences, especially when ideologically committed. They are aware that their vote is not likely to be decisive, but do want to try to help their side, especially when they think the election is important.” (Dowding 2005, 453).

There is no obligation to vote. Dowding continues to play the role of voting as a duty. It is not the duty of a citizen to vote. The very fact that one does not vote, whatever be the reason, makes it democratic in nature.

Critics of rational choice theory, of course, have had a field day arguing that rational explanations of human behavior are invalidated by the obvious fact that millions of people do vote, despite its being irrational to do so. The critics are, quite rightly, not swayed by arguments that voting is rational because people feel they have a "duty" to go to the polls. After all, why would it be rational believe you have a duty to do something that makes no difference? Duty-based explanations don't rescue rational choice theories of voting; they just add another layer of irrationality to the mix. (Ilya Somin, 2005).

If we can consider for a moment, that it is irrational to vote, can the same be said, that it is rational not to vote? The very argument that the probability of your single vote to count is negligible makes it perhaps a paradox in its own right. A single vote may not count, but a collection of these votes make up for the elections. So, even though the margin of victory is not by a single vote, the probability of the person you elect into office has a higher chance of winning, if you do vote.

Richard Tuck argues that individual voters can cause an electoral outcome, even when their votes were not necessary to cause the outcome, because their votes have a chance of belonging to the “causally efficacious set of votes.” The causally efficacious set of votes is the subset of votes needed to win the election. Suppose that 10,000 people vote for A and 3,999 people vote for B. If so, 4,000 votes for A were necessary for A’s victory; the other 6,000 votes were superfluous. Four thousand votes is the causally efficacious set of votes – these are the votes that won the election. The probability that a random voters’ vote formed part of the causally efficacious set is 40%. (Jason Brennan, 2009)

A person will vote only if the rewards depending on their vote are greater than the costs of their voting: pB > C, where p is the probability of someone’s vote being decisive, B is the benefit gained through the voter’s favoured party winning, and C the cost of voting. But p is minuscule. (Dowding 2005, 442).

Dowding mentions that one of the ways that to change the nature of calculation is to change the p-term or get rid of it completely. He says there are six general approaches to this.

1. By suggesting that people do not understand the true p figure and so overestimate their decisiveness.

Now according to Dowding, Decisiveness does not enter into individuals’ decision framework when deciding to vote. This is true, we do not go into an election to vote, thinking whether are cote will be the decisive one. We although do go in to vote, hoping that our cast will help in the victory of our candidate. There could be a sense of overestimation here.

2. By using a minimax-regret criterion rather than expected utility calculation.

If the result in one’s constituency was tied, or lost by one’s side by one vote, then one would really regret not having voted. Given the low costs of voting, one votes. (Dowding 2005, 449). But if the claim, that every vote is not decisive, then is there a chance for regret? How many times will this even be the case as it has been mentioned that the chances of a single vote victory or loss is less probable than being hit by a bus on your way to the polling booth.

3. By using game theory to change the calculation of p

If no one votes, p will not be very small so it may be rational to vote. But, if everyone works out that they should vote then p will be very small (first noted by Downs 1957, 267). Models in which p is endogenously determined by the interaction of strategically minded voters can generate equilibria with high turnout rates (Palfrey and Rosenthal 1983), but once the assumptions of complete information about the preferences and voting costs of others are relaxed the high turnout falls (Palfrey and Rosenthal 1985)

If you wanted make your vote stronger, that could happen if you vote for the third-party. e. In U.S. races, people say vote splitting “spoils” elections because it can result in the second-most popular candidate getting elected. (If enough votes to the most-popular candidate were split or “stolen” by a third-party candidate). The phenomenon is documented in William Poundstone’s book Gaming the Vote. (Talwalkar)

4. By replacing expected utility theory with evidential or conditional expected utility calculations.

Dowding asks why Grafstein should want to defend CEU as ‘rational’. More generally, why should we want to try and defend the voting act as a rational one? And, it is not just rational choice writers who wish to do that. The question here is, why not? Why shouldn’t we consider voting a rational choice? Why shouldn’t it be a question of rationality? Dowding takes Grafstein’s analogy -- I wish to meet a colleague before he reaches work and know that he has only two possible routes by which he may walk. I know that my colleague has very similar tastes to myself, and therefore it seems sensible to wait on the route that I would walk myself if I were faced with the same journey. Dowding says that this analogy fails. Well, yes the probability is only 50 per cent here. The probability cannot be increased by walking in the path which you think your colleague may or may not take, but there is as said a 50 per cent chance of walking into him. This a 100 per cent more chance than not taking any of the routes at all. In the same manner, it could be indentified that it would be rational to vote than not to vote.

5. By using adaptive behaviour models

Dowding concludes on adaptive behaviour models that we may see conditional expected utility models, or adaptive behaviour models, not as rational explanations of human behaviour, but rather as unthinking rules that organisms use because they are successful strategies for their genes. Actions that correlated with ‘success’ last time are reinforced, but success is just happenstance and is not caused by most actions. (Dowding 2005, 451). Dowding boils down success to chance, but the question is how much is the chance. In a closed election, one may have a feeling his vote will be a successful one as his candidate has a very high chance of winning. But another question that can be raised is that, if he knew his choice had a very strong chance, would he then take the effort to vote? And so could his vote be decisive if others like him thought the same.

6. By claiming no one cares if they are decisive.

Patrick Dunleavy has suggested in various unpublished writings, people want to ‘have a useful effect’. The problem for this answer is that the useful effect is one vote, and one vote does not a safe seat make. Wheresoever one puts the margin of victory, at one vote, or a large majority, the one vote that each voter makes is only one. (Dowding 2005, 452). Why do most political scientists take such an individualistic approach? Yes, one man, one vote and that is all you get. But what about collective action? Collectively people will have a useful effect. Dowding of course take the analogy of piles of stones and if we remove one stone, it will not stop being a pile of stone. In the same way we can talk about votes. So perhaps your vote is not decisive if taken away and nor does it become a decisive one. But collectively it becomes an important instrument.

We may not be able to answer in complete universal satisfaction to why people vote and why people vote in one manner and the other in another. We can also not answer if it is a rational or irrational act as it is duly said by Leo Ornstein is that, “the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There's no specific line, as you know.”

Dowding concludes his paper aptly with this quote: The lesson to be learned is that when examining human motivation—which is what the ‘why vote?’ question is about—we need to delve properly into human psychology and not simply try to make it fit with some predetermined modeling techniques, no matter how useful those techniques are at answering other questions. For that reason, the ‘why vote’ question may not be properly a part of political science—unless it is a branch of political psychology. (Dowding, 2005, 455)

Dowding may push out the question of pre determined modeling technique by saying that the question to why vote is not part of political science. Perhaps this is true, but the question is an important aspect to the political school as a whole and thus important to political science as well.

People vote because it gives them a positive utility and this acts like a social welfare and not an individual one. Voting is not an individual phenomenon; it is in fact a social benefit. There may be selfish wants and desires for a particular candidate to win but all in all, there have to be others voting the same way, for one’s desires to be fulfilled.