Rational Ignorance - Part 2

From "The Trouble With Elections: Everything We Thought We Knew About Democracy is Wrong," Chapter 8.2

If each person’s single vote is but a drop in a large body of water, why do so many people vote anyway? It is rational to spend your limited time doing something that you enjoy, or has a probable payback, rather than becoming politically informed or voting. Although it is standard rhetoric for encouraging voter turnout to insist that “your vote matters,” this is an article of faith rather than a mathematically true statement. Many non-voters (including some highly prestigious economists) simply don’t buy into that myth, and choose to abstain. The rational thing to do is to not waste time with voting. And indeed, most Americans do not vote in most elections.¹

However, many people enjoy, or feel good about voting. Following campaigns and political news is akin to following a sports team. Being a voter, or being a sports fan, provides psychological satisfaction and partisan or team camaraderie, rather than exercising any significant power over the outcome of the election or the game. Voting can be thought of instead as an expressive act, or an act of group solidarity. Voting fulfills a felt duty of “doing one’s part in a democracy” (or for one’s self-identified sup-group). The analogy of feeling good about “doing one’s part” by taking a few extra steps to put a plastic container in a recycling bin, rather than the trash comes to mind. The history of plastic “recycling” as a public relations distraction by oil companies and plastics manufacturers to avoid the risk of government regulation, and the fact that most plastics placed in such bins are never actually recycled, are unfamiliar to most people. But even if voting has an expressive value for voters, as Hélène Landemore notes, you still do not have a compelling reason to vote in a genuinely informed manner. So, as Downs observed back in 1957

“A large percentage of citizens — including voters — do not become informed to any significant degree on the issues involved in elections, even if they believe the outcome to be important.”

Humans are not reliable at making rational cost/benefit analyses. An activity might “feel good” even if the utility is hard to calculate or express. This “feeling good” may itself be the only utility. In a 2016 paper titled “Voting to Tell Others,” by behavioral economists from UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago and Harvard University, the researchers concluded that a major factor for why many people vote is because it is seen as normatively good and they wish to avoid feeling shamed or having the discomfort of telling a lie about having voted if asked whether they voted in the recent election. Voting can be considered an act of symbolic group solidarity, duty, or an expression of community interest, and as evidence confirming one’s self-identity as a “responsible person,” rather than as democratically instrumental.

This psychological aspect of voting was verified by social psychologist Christopher Bryan and his colleagues at Stanford University. In several experiments he sent surveys to people on the voter list and asked one randomly selected group whether they agreed that it was “important to vote,” and asked the other group if it was “important to be a voter.” He found that merely changing this wording had a significant impact on responses, and actual turnout among the two groups of participants in the following election. Among 133 young Californians surveyed, 82 percent of those who got the “vote”(a task) version of the question actually voted in the 2008 presidential election, while 96 percent of those getting the “voter” (a personal identity) variant of the question did. In a confirming replication experiment in New Jersey,  244 people were surveyed, and 79 percent of those receiving the question whether it was important to “vote,” ended up voting in the governor’s election, while 90 percent of those who were asked if it was important to be a “voter” actually voted. Being a voter is akin to being a responsible citizen, a valued character trait, whereas “voting” is merely a task, like folding the laundry.

But the fact remains that the overwhelming bulk of citizens who do participate by casting ballots, do so without significant research into all the candidates and issues, which cannot be uncovered merely by watching the news or reading the newspaper, since they focus on the horse race aspect of the campaign. Deep down they know that their vote almost certainly won’t make a difference, even if they publicly assert that “every vote counts.” This also means that a voter is guided by superficial understandings and prior biases, which they might have sought to verify or overcome if they knew their vote actually had any likelihood of being decisive. 

Every election cycle, we hear news stories about how ill-informed voters (and non-voters) are. This constantly reinforces the view put forth by Lippmann (and many others since) that the “average man” is simply not competent in the realm of politics. On the other hand, it can be argued that it is those who devote energy to constantly staying abreast of the latest political news who are revealing a lack of genuine appreciation of the reality and basic mathematics of elections. Thus, nonvoters who tell a pollster that they just don’t think they know enough about the candidates to vote, appear to have a more accurate understanding of the reality of the situation than most voters. As noted above, staying informed about policies and electoral politics is akin to staying informed about one’s favorite sports team. It is a fine hobby, if one enjoys it, but it doesn’t contribute to real democracy or self-government, any more than a fan who memorizes team statistics helps that team win.

Economist Bryan Caplan in The Myth of the Rational Voter has gone so far as to propose the term “rational irrationality” to describe the dynamic where voters who have a world view or underlying set of biases that might lead to harmful policies, may gain some psychological pleasure from voting in accordance with their biases, even if the policies are in fact contrary to their demonstrably genuine interests. Since the risk of one’s single vote actually affecting the world is nearly non-existent, it makes rational sense to vote in a way that “feels good” and affirms one’s ill-informed biases. This helps explain why many voters vote ideologically but objectively against their own interests. Caplan’s argument suggests that people are more likely to spend the time to make an informed decision, and act on it, when they believe their one vote may realistically be decisive, such as in a small group, or when making a personal purchase (though even in this last circumstance advertisers know rational analysis by a consumer can readily be circumvented).

On the other hand, Gerry Mackie, a University of California political theorist, disputes the expressive theory of voting and proposes a “contributory theory of voting.” Rather than needing to alter the outcome for a vote to matter, (or merely being expressive) a vote can contribute to a larger margin of victory or mandate (or reduce the margin if on the losing side), which may incrementally influence the boldness of the winner’s policy actions. Voters activated by this view of an election may have a slight incentive to vote in order to plump up the side they prefer, though there is no evidence this prompts voters to become well-informed. 

There is another counter-argument, which a few academics have proffered, that deserves comment. As long as some voters are well informed, the ill-informed voters will essentially cancel each other out. Most votes are essentially just random noise, from which the pure signal of the informed voters can emerge. This is only a valid analysis, however, if poorly-informed voters’ choices are genuinely random. If there is any general bias in one direction or another, such as from exposure to TV advertisements, or a history of party affiliation, the mathematics behind this assertion falls apart.

So, is it possible that rational ignorance is the underlying cause of a “bad rap” that average people get for political incompetence? Is it the structure of the political system, with its primary reliance on elections, that essentially promotes these low levels of political knowledge? Even Edmund Burke, who was not shy about saying how foolish the people could be, also noted that a reason for this was that they generally acted “without deliberation.” Sortition provides the means to remedy this, by giving a representative subset of everyday people both the opportunity and, by dramatically increasing the impact of a participant’s vote, incentive to overcome rational ignorance, and actually deliberate.

1. In a few US elections, as many as half, or more, of eligible voters cast ballots.