Don’t Vote: Just in Time for November

Most of this material was developed for a presentation in my Managerial Communications course last winter. The assignment was to deliver a presentation asking the audience to take some kind of action. I promised the audience and I promise you that, if you do as I say, you will save time, save money, and enrich your life. In fact, taking my advice is easier than not taking it because the action I am asking you to take is actually inaction. I am asking you to not vote.

Because it was a speech as opposed to an essay, I had attention-grabbing fun stuff to start the show. I told them a famous Boss Tweed quote: "The people can elect whoever they like as long as I get to choose the candidates." (Boss Tweed was the infamous boss of the 19th century political machine in New York). Then I showed them a bumper sticker which reads, "Don't Vote – it only encourages them". I wrapped up the fun stuff with a classic economists' joke.

Two economists run into each other at the polls.
Economist A: "What are you doing here?"
Economist B: "My wife made me come. What are you doing here?"
Economist A: "My wife made me come."

This joke tied in nicely with my two-pronged argument against voting and illustrates how economists, the world's experts in maximizing benefit and utility with limited resources, regard it silly to waste one's time voting.

The two-pronged argument against voting: (1) your vote will not affect the outcome of the election and (2) your candidate will not change your quality of life.

The first part of the argument is based on statistics and economics. I explained the economic theory, the Paradox of Voting. This theory states that "for a rational, self-interested voter, the costs of voting will normally exceed the expected benefits. Because the chance of exercising a decisive vote (i.e. the chance of a tied election) is tiny compared to any realistic estimate of the private individual benefits of the different possible outcomes, the expected benefits of voting are less than the costs." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting

Economics hinges on rational behavior, and how rational people should behave in order to maximize their utility. According to this theory, voting is not rational behavior.

To further drive this point home, I developed a methodology to calculate one's chances of changing the outcome of an election. The truly random method would be 1 / n where n = total voters. However, elections are never random since we have opinion polls that seem to come out hourly which add predictability. In some states like California or Texas, your chances will actually be much lower because the election will not be close. In small, politically divided states like Iowa, your chances may be higher than with that methodology. So I scrapped that method for one that I arbitrarily made up which isn't accurate at all but is the most generous in yielding the highest probabilities of casting a deciding vote. 1 / n where n = the margin by which the winning candidate won in past elections. This completely ridiculous methodology doesn't even take into account the size of the state, but nobody can fault me for padding the numbers because I am padding them in the voters' favor. Using this methodology, I computed probabilities of changing the result for some recent elections in the St. Louis area.

2006 Missouri Senate (McCaskill by 48,314)
p = .000021

2004 Missouri President (Bush by 196,542)
p = .000005

2004 Illinois Senate (Obama by 2,206,766)
p = .0000005

2004 Illinois President (Kerry by 545,604)
p = .0000018

I emphasized that any Illinois residents were really wasting their time by voting because they don't have a chance in hell of making a difference (chance in hell = 0.00019%). Then I threw out some of the closest elections in history and their p-values.

2000 Florida President (Bush by 541)
p = .0019
* Statistically closest election ever

1876 South Carolina (Hayes by 889)
p = .0011
* 8.4 million votes cast in the whole country
* Women couldn't vote
* p-value inflated past any realistic comparison to present times

1916 California President (Wilson by ~4000)
p = .00025

1976 Ohio President (Carter by 11,116)
p = .00009

2006 Virginia Senate (Webb by ~10,000)
p = .0001

I pointed out that for all of the closest elections in US history, using my ridiculously generous methodology, the voter's chance of changing the outcome, when rounded to the closest percentage point, equals 0%.

Then I started the second prong of my argument against voting. Your candidate will not change your life. Because this is the business school and students are typically laissez-faire, free market conservatives, I picked on the Republicans first. Before I dug in, I emphasized that I was not trying to talk about or debate politics (especially Iraq), but to illustrate how the parties don't necessarily practice what they preach.

I showed statistics that showed how George W. Bush and a Republican Congress have presided over the largest inflation-adjusted federal spending increase since LBJ. Total spending grew by 33%. The federal budget, as a percentage of GDP, grew from 18.5% to 20.3%. Discounting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Bush non-defense spending grew 4.8%, second to only Richard Nixon (another Republican!). On the other hand, the federal budget as a percentage of GDP shrank the most in recent decades under Bill Clinton and a Democrat Congress. So, as far as your economic politics are concerned, does it really matter who wins?

Then I picked on the Democrats. Just a year before my presentation, a national Congressional election gave the Democrats control of the House and the Senate for the first time in fourteen years. Discontent with the war in Iraq was the widely-accepted reason for the change in power. In January 2007, the Democrats took office as a national poll showed that 70% of Americans opposed sending more troops to Iraq. I explained to the international students and the Americans who don't read newspapers that, while Bush can send troops to Iraq, he can't spend money. He can not fight a war if Congress doesn't give him money for "beans and bullets". In March, the newly-elected Democrat Congress passed a spending bill for the war with a timetable for US troop withdrawal. Bush vetoed it. In May, newly-elected Democrat Congress passed a spending bill without timetables. So among all the discontent with the war, and all the Americans who went to the polls to end the war or change how it was being handled, the newly-elected Democrat Congress gave their voters a fully-funded troop surge with no timetables for a withdrawal of our forces. Good job, voters.

In summary, I addressed one of the most common pleas from pro-vote types. "But what if everybody says that?" This argument is insignificant because everybody doesn't say that. We are discussing rational behavior here. Assuming everybody will abstain is irrational because many people vote. 150 million people will vote in November. I told the class that I have never said that their vote won't count. Their vote will count. However, their vote will not matter. And I reminded them that their candidate isn't going to change their lives at all. I left them with a final thought. I appealed to them to enrich their lives as I had promised they could. I told them to see the opportunity for extra time. Take the hours you will spend at the polls and spend that newfound time with your kids. Play ball with them. Or spend some quality time with your spouse. Do something that really enriches your life. Don't waste your time voting.

I am a news junkie and I have strong opinions. I am cheering for Obama to win, but I won't vote because there's not much of a point. I don't see any situation short of a terrorist attack on US soil ending in a McCain victory. I still feel the same and I hope some of my classmates take my advice. To be completely fair, there is one argument for voting that may bear credit with me. This would be an emotional appeal based on American soldiers who have fought and died for our country and to preserve our democracy. However, I think they also fought for my freedom to not vote. Compulsory voting scares me almost as much as compulsory military service. Plus, this is an emotional appeal and I, on the other hand, am a rational person.