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Is An Uninformed Vote Better Than No Vote?
ras_b asks: "I don't pay attention to politics at all, and so I will not be voting in today's elections. My family has been telling me that this is a mistake and I should vote anyway, partly because I have slightly conservative views which agrees with their political outlook. My reasoning is that since I am totally uninformed, I shouldn't vote. I don't want to vote Republican or Democrat, only to find out later I totally disagree with something a candidate stands for. So, here's my dilemma and my question: Is an uninformed vote better than no vote?" This issue is touched upon in a posting by Ezra Klein, of the The American Prospect, who disagrees, arguing against a similar assertion by Greg Mankiw, from a suppressed Fortune article. Greg says: "Sometimes...the most responsible thing a person can do on election day is stay at home ... If you really don't know enough to cast an intelligent vote, you should be eager to let your more informed neighbors make the decision." What do you think?
Informed-ness is in the eye of the beholder.
I realize that the seemingly correct thing to do is to stay at home. But all that does is ensure the tyranny of those with an agenda. This stuff isn't rocket science. There are not that many candidates to choose from, and you're chosing the lesser of two evils anyway.
Get Informed.
Get to the Ballot.
Get your vote counted.
Period, end of story.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If you don't care, and are not going to vote. Vote for more variety, if nothing else...
Is An Uninformed Vote Better Than No Vote?
Is crapflooding better than a no post?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Of course not. An uninformed vote will be insignificantly different from a random vote, and I don't think anyone would encourage you to go to your polling place and flip a coin to determine each vote. In fact, I suspect that the very same people insisting you go vote would be appalled if you did that.
The people who argue that it's somehow your "duty" to go vote are also full of it. It may be possible - may - to make a case that it is the duty of each citizen to cast a reasoned vote. But it would be ridiculous to claim that it's the duty of every citizen to, again, go to the polling place and flip a coin.
Now, a caveat: I would argue that an uninformed vote is vastly superior to an misinformed vote. So I, personally, am happier hearing that people went and just voted according to whim than hearing that people went and voted straight ticket (I find the odds of each candidate at all levels of government for a given party just happening to line up with your opinions on each issue at each level of government to be quite low). After all, basically random votes should, ultimately, cancel each other out.
That being said, the comment that you should be happy to let your more-informed neighbors make the decisions really ought to be incentive to become informed, so you don't have to trust what Joe Bloggs thinks of who's in charge.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I don't want to vote Republican or Democrat
Then don't! Sigh... why is everyone so stuck on the 2-party system? No wonder people are uninterested and uninformed. We have so many choices with everything in life yet we limit ourselves to two political parties, both of which have more in common these days than not.
VOTE THIRD PARTY! For my third party of choice see my sig, but really please just vote for anyone but the Republicrats.
Vote Libertarian
'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding both puppets!' 'Shut up! Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control.'"
You cannot be TOTALLY ignorant. You will know something.
You must be new here.
I'm surpised the Mankiw piece got linked without mentioning a someone similar piece by Prof. Bryan Caplan (who himself links the Mankiw piece) that summarizes his upcoming book, The Myth of the Rational Voter.
Long story short, he argues that because people don't personally bear the cost of holding ridiculous political beliefs, they relax their standards of intellectual rigor, similar to how they do with religious beliefs. They thus use voting to appeal to their "feel good" side rather than seriously analyze the issues (like the would with, e.g. their own finances), resulting in destructive policies all-around.
So he takes Mankiw one step further and says that it's not just ignorance that's a problem, but irrationality. If it were mere ignorance, the errors would cancel. But, Caplan, claims, they don't -- they skew the wrong way.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
In America, where only two parties are given a chance at winning by the media [and thus they shape perception that way into reality], you really can't lose by voting for a 3rd party. If you aren't happy with the current system, staying home isn't getting changes put into place. But if you vote Green, or Libertarian, or Independent, you're sending a message that you don't trust mainstream politics. Imagine what would happen if 10% of the voters went for non-Democrat and non-Republican. Could politicians really believe that that many millions of Americans don't deserve to be represented in Congress or the Presidency?
They'd HAVE to change the system to a more fair electoral system.
Oh You POS
I think that we can assume a uniform distribution on parties. But your forget the independents. If a large segment of the population flips a coin to decide whether they vote straight rep or dem, then those two candidates in each race get a large boost. Not relative to one another, but versus independents they do.
Hypothetical Numbers: Suppose 1/2 the population doesn't care, but votes anyway, by flipping a coin for rep or dem. Now, of the remaining half, who do care, suppose that just under one third will vote rep, just under one third dem, and just over one third will vote for the independent candidate. If everyone who doesn't care stayed home, the independent would have a plurality. If everyone who doesn't care votes, then it is a tossup between the rep and dem candidate, each of whom now have just under 5/12 of the total vote, whereas the independent, preferred by caring voters, only has just over 1/6, or 2/12 of the total vote.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
It's the voting system. The very nature of our plurality system ("one man, one vote," winner take all) will inevitably lead to a two-party system, because that's the only way to extract meaningful information out of the process. To quote the wikipedia entry on voting method, "[m]ost systems showed some potential advantage over Plurality, in many cases greater than the advantages of Plurality over monarchy."
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Which ones I can't get to right now, but the attitude is common.
1. If you are not following politics, then how would you -ever- know if your representatives did something you did not agree with.
2. It's a good bet your Representatives are going to do things you disagree with. Again, since you don't follow politics, I'm not sure how it is you will know.
3. It took me about an hour last night to check my understanding of the candidates/issues and then make voting notes. Your favorite search engine makes it easy.
It's 1:45 PST, so pretty much everywhere in the U.S., your polls should be open and you have an hour to get your facts straight on the issues and candidates in your area.
Many people have fought and died for over the last 200+ years so that YOU have the priviledge of participating in our democracy. There is no excuse. Get informed and Go vote.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
People don't normally walk in and attempt to vote in a statistically random manner. They're going to look at two names and think, "Which one should I vote for?" With no research, it's their subconscious that ends up voting. What does the subconscious rely on? Clever, well-timed, or memorable TV spots, signs, telephone calls, whatever. The voter might only really hear one issue about the candidate, and that alone determines who he will vote for. This isn't a random vote, it's a vote for the loudest candidate.
If you check polls from 2004, you will find that Bush voters were more likely than Kerry voters to be wrong about Bush's positions, and that independent voters were often wrong but wrong less often than Bush supporters. There's no reason to assume the uniform distribution.
The problem with this philosophy is it assumes everyone's interests are the same, that there is one "best" candidate and if you aren't informed enough to know who he is, you should stay home and let the informed people vote for him. (Or, rather, it assumes that the pool of uninformed voters has the same overall interests as the pool of informed voters.)
But that isn't necessarily true. Suppose uninformed voters tend to have some characteristic that separates them from the general population. For the sake of argument, let's say uninformed voters tend to be younger and poorer than informed voters. Clearly, younger and poorer people will have a different set of interests than older and wealthier people, and policies that benefit one group might harm the other. A young, poor, uninformed voter who decides to stay home and let someone more informed make the decision for him may be handing his vote over to a policy that will harm him, whereas even if he went to the polls himself and just picked a candidate randomly, he might have a better chance of casting it for someone whose interests are more closely aligned with his own.
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If you know a person is good, vote for him regardless of which party he or she is in. If you don't know, vote Libertarian. If there is no Libertarian, don't vote (or vote for another third party on the ballot with which you agree, if there is one).
The country goes the same direction no matter which party is in control. As it is sometimes said, both parties are running a train toward a cliff, it is just that one party wants to go off the cliff a litter faster than the other party. I don't want to go off the cliff fast or slow, so I'm not going to vote for either one of them (unless there is someone really good running, like a Ron Paul Republican).
However, a vote for a third party, such as the Libertarians, sends a much more powerful message than not voting.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Just shut up and vote yes on prop A unless you hate families.
You don't hate family, do you?
Not only what the parent said, but everybody always wants to talk about which candidate to vote for. If you don't feel confident voting for any of the candidates on your ballot -- and you really don't think you're affiliated with any party, including the Green party, Libertarians, what-have-you -- then you can always leave those boxes blank, if your conscience just won't let you pick one.
Nonetheless, there are lots of other things on the ballot you might be interested in voting for. Are you really, really, really against cigarette taxes? You might want to show up at the polls. Do you think that bond measures are just borrowing money we don't have, and you don't want to float any more bonds for your local schools? You might have an opinion on that, and the information on the ballot is going to be pretty straightforward. Do you think immigrants are great for America and all the crying about how they steal our jobs is hogwash? You might want to see what kind of things your legislators have proposed in the name of tightening up the borders. People have opinions, and the elections give you the opportunity to vote not just on candidates but on specific bills and measures that affect your local community.
My gut feeling, of course, is that the statement "I don't pay any attention to politics" is a total cop-out. Do you not watch the news? Do you have absolutely no idea about what's going on in the world and no opinions about it, either? I have a hard time buying this. There's a certain little voice in my gut that thinks that "I don't pay attention to politics" is tantamount to saying "I am a lazy couch potato with no sense of ethics or civic duty, who's totally happy with the status quo because I'm too self centered to ever be involved with my community or care what happens to it."
Breakfast served all day!
Instead of choosing between steel or "metal" bats, let's make the analogy closer to how many voters really feel. You've got the choice between being hit (very hard) with a bat, or being slapped (very hard) on the face. You have the option not to choose, but if you don't choose, they'll let someone else decide. What do you do then?
Having said that, I've got no problem with voting for a 3rd party candidate - just make sure it's an informed decision within the context of our voting system. Not voting, however? That's just letting someone else choose how to abuse you.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Show up to vote, but only vote on the candidates / questions that I am familar with. For example, 4 years ago I only voted for 1 candidate and left the rest of the ballot blank. Today I left about 1/3rd of the ballot blank.
I agree, but NOT FOR BALLOT MEASURES. Government office is a temporary position, but ballot measures seldom are reversed even if they do obvious harm once passed. When in doubt, VOTE AGAINST CHANGING YOUR STATE'S CONSTITUTION.
This is a big problem in Oregon. Too many things, in my opinion, are placed on the ballot as Constitutional amendments. I vote against most of these things, even if I fundamentally agree with the measures. The Constitution is not a dumping ground for piecemeal amendments. These issues should go through the normal legislative process.
Too true, and so sad. I didn't actually vote until I was 26 because of my fear of my own ignorance. I was buying into the political rhetoric that the issues were complicated and I needed considerable research to provide a properly informed decision on election day.
But what the hell does that even mean? "Properly informed" by whom? What critical piece of information was *I* missing that somehow invalidated my opinion, or at least made it less worthy than others? Did I honestly belive that the electorate which did believe in themselves enough to vote were doing an adequate job of choosing the leadership of this country? Is the list of those to vote *for* even adequate to the task? I clearly belive this is not the case, but what should I then do about it? Am I then charged with civic responsibility to either run myself or inspire a worthy candidate? Would this obligation then charge me with doing my utmost to get into office? How far would I really have to take this responsibility?
Of course, the answer for me turns out to be far more simple. My problem wasn't ignorance, but procrastination. I would always wait until the last moment to decide if I should get informed on the issues, until I eventually decided to not bother. I mean, I didn't even know where or how to register! Yet, but taking a little initiative to start researching before the election, I quickly found the information I needed from my state website, which also listed all the candidates which would be on my local ballot. Using the little state bio information provided was more than enough to google each of them. Although there is certainly a lot (sic) of biased political information on the web, it really didn't take me long to decide which candidates I preferred. I registered as an Independent, and more often than note my votes tend to cross party lines. However I suspect this isn't so much that I'm a moderate, but because our sad excuse for a two party system has turned into giant political monoliths that blur the issues in an attempt to garner mass appeal.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
Therefore, not voting because you don't think you are informed enough results in fewer votes by smart people. It puts more power in the hands of the stupid.
This is a perfect example of the fallacy of appeal to authority. Being smart but ignorant does not somehow make your ignorance any more valuable than that of stupid people.
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Summary: vote Dem this time - vote Independent often (explanation below)
The two-party system is NOT part of the American way. The strangehold of the two party system is what gets all kind of bad politicians - from both sides - to get elected without having real positions on issues, and then to pass laws that suck because it's politicially infeasible to vote against your party. It didn't use to be that way.
I'm no fan of the current administration or of the current members of congress who have aligned themselves most closely with it. Which is funny, because I'm really and old-school Republican. But I'm not going to rail against them here. I also have a lot more to be unhappy with from the people in charge - the Dems haven't been ABLE to do anything federally I really didn't like recently. But there are definitely people I love and hate in both parties. What's sick is the number of votes along party lines for crappy legislation...
But our government was founded on the policy of it being hard to get anything done. That's what "checks and balances" means. You should need broad-based support from different sectors to get anything done. Our current two party system doesn't do that. As long as no one is going to stand up to their party, we need at least one house of congress or the president to be different than the other two until we can change that or get more independents.
My first piece of advice is this: In THIS election, for the House at least, vote Democrat. House terms are only two years. For the next two years we are basically guaranteed of a Republican President. This situation is peculiar to mid-term elections... In this particular mid-term I have the same advice about the Senate, because there is zero chance of the Dems getting more than an EXTREMELY narrow majority at this point, so the impact after 2008 is minimal.
Next, if you can't make an informed vote - a vote informed enough for you - then I say make a real effort to vote independent, and do it for local races too. Green and Libertarian seem to be the dominant third parties - one for each direction. But even if they AREN'T your alignment, vote for one of them, preferably whoever is polling higher. It takes almost no research to see that in most major races they have no chance, and therefore your vote can be guaranteed not have an effect on THIS election - which is what you wanted, right? But those results are published far and wide.
The increasing number of independent votes helps finance independent parties, helps establish their creditibility with voters (most of whom have the reverse of the submitter's position - they don't want to "waste" their vote - people hate voting for a loser) and generally gives them an increasing chance to win some elections (starting at the local level) If enough people do it, it also sends a message to the politicians in both major parties that they have something to worry about and that what they actually do in office might just be important.
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This election, I voted on the on the candidates and propositions, but abstained (left them blank blank) on deciding whether to keep or oust the laundry-list of judges and other unrecognized names. My reasoning is that while I know enough to vote on the issues that matter, I know nothing (and care little) about the the head of the school board. It there's strong reason to vote either way, then I figure that those familiar with the issue will do so; I don't want to dilute the potency of their vote by casting an a vote at random.
In the previous vote, I had simply voted for "what sounded good" on the issues I'd never heard of, and as a result ended up voting the wrong way on some important issues because the wording on the ballot was severely deceptive (though that's a topic for another discussion).
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
1. Not voting isn't a neutral action, it helps the incumbent.
2. Even if you do know every policy of all of candidates, you're not going to agree with all of the policies of any one candidate. This is a feature of the electoral system folding politics into two parties. Until the electoral system is reformed the best you can possibly do is vote on broad general principles.
Deleted
I disagree.
Being smart gives you no advantage when voting unless you know something about the candidates. If you don't know anything about any of the candidates, you are reduced to guessing. In this case, the only information you have available to you is the candidates name, party and the position they are running for. You have nothing useful with which to draw a meaningful conclusion as to the best candidate.
In this particular situation, a stupid person who knows nothing about the candidates guesses just as well as a smart person who knows nothing about the candidates.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
It puts more power in the hands of the stupid.
That in a nutshell is why democracy is ineffective, dangerous, and should be abolished.
The solution to not voting is voting and the solution to voting while uninformed is to go read something
Well said, sir. Even if you start on election day you can read the manifestos/pledges/whatever of the parties you'd consider voting for, and find out a little about your local candidates. You can turn over in your mind whether to vote on an issue (such as economics, global politics or personal liberties) that you consider most important, or to make a 'tactical vote', go for a big party or a little guy etc. It doesn't take long to arrive at a decision you can at least live with for the next few years.
#define struct union
This is only true for extremely bad values of "pretty well".
So? When the incumbent is just as evil, just as blatantly operating outside the limits set by the constitution, when the government itself is completely, utterly out of control, as are the parties, as are the corporations, what difference will helping the incumbent or the challenger make? You are proceeding from an invalid position, and that is, the presumption that politicians are a force for good, or at least, that one might be a force for less evil. This has not been demonstrably true for many years, at least in the USA.
I don't agree with any of the policies of any of the candidates. I find them repugnant, in point of fact. Furthermore, I am personally unelectable because just about no one is willing to believe that they are invested in an evil and corrupt system, and no minor party exists that represents even a tiny fraction of my views. They're all blind and bloody optimists, as near as I can tell. The libertarians are the closest thing to reasonable, and they are a confused bunch of puppies.
Election day means nothing to me. You're either going to have democrats or republicans come out on top. They'll both continue to wreck the country, distance themselves from the founders and framers, blithely ignore the very idea of liberty, and steal from me using coercion, or violence if I am foolish enough to resist said coercion. They've taken my home under false pretenses and for grossly insufficient compensation (supposedly for the Tock's Island "dam"... which they never built and incompetently turned into a park) they've used my taxes to invade a sovereign country that was not attacking us and murder untold numbers of innocents, they've suspended habeas corpus, they coddle, support and project religion to an unconscionable degree, they've criminalized many forms of sexuality, free speech, all manner of personal choice, they've actually co-opted the voting process, even the voting hardware, they lie about each other and themselves, they are operating completely outside the bounds the constitution lays out... Voting is the opportunity to ask for more of the same, and no less.
Voting puts forth the very strong implication that you support the way the system works, as you are willing to participate. Well, I don't support the way the system works, as far as I am concerned, it is about as broken as it can get and still superficially resemble the occasional fragment of democratic procedure or any vestige of a republic well enough to fool the middle part of the gaussian.
Voting offers the sheep the illusion of control, without even a chance of actually handing any degree of such control over. If you enjoy voting, you should probably be examining what your core values stand for. If anything.
So that's why I don't vote. No point. Douche and a turd.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The original poster raises some good points. However, a close friend of mine recently wrote a rather extensive paper on this subject. He detirmined through research (I didn't write the paper, so I couldn't tell you what his sources were) that when people vote because they feel they have to, it skews the election because people in this demographic tend to vote for candidates based on reasons other than the issues. Personal appearance, or just the sound of a name play an important role here.
He also detirmined that overall, it's better if you don't feel strongly about the election that you don't vote. The analogy he used when explaining it to me was this:
Let's say that an office is throwing a party, and the host wants to know if he should serve peanuts or potato chips, so he sends around a survey giving the people attending the option to check either peanuts or potato chips. Let's also say that 50 people are going to the party, 40 don't really care whether peanuts or chips are served, 3 strongly favor chips, and 7 people are allergic to peanuts.
With the survey passed around all 50 people are forced to make a choice between peanuts and chips. While 40 of them don't actually have a preference, by forcing them to choose, it is possible that peanuts will win the vote, leaving the 7 people with a peanut allergy very unhappy.
However, if only those who cared strongly about the issue voted, chips would definitely win, the 40 people who didn't have a preference wouldn't be displeased, and only the 3 people would be unsatisfied. By limiting the voting population to those who strongly cared about the issue, more people overall were happy.
So, don't just vote because you feel you have to, vote because you care about the issues you're voting for. When you vote because you feel it is your duty, you skew the data, and it is possible that overall fewer people will be happy with the result.