How many times have I voted and expressed my preferences during elections? I was walking back home and I dont know why but this question came to mind. The answer is twice. Both times because somebody told me that it was my constitutional right to vote and that I owe it to the motherland blah blah. But is not voting really a sin? From a practical stand point sometimes not voting can be an equilibrium outcome.
Consider this scenario. When I land at a polling booth what are the choices facing me? I can be sincere and vote for the person/party that I support with all my heart. I could vote strategically such that my vote ensures that the person I dont want to elect never gets elected. Or my vote could be the decider, therefore a make or break deal which makes it all the more valuable.
Generally, if you are the supporter of a leading party, we are never in a situation where strategic voting is necessary. This is logical because by voting for the person you want, you are in fact loading the bets against the person you dont want. But imagine the case when you are a supporter of a marginal party. For instance in Indian politics forget supporters of BJP and the Congress. What about supporters of marginal local parties such as PMK blah blah.
These supporters have to make a choice between voting strategically or voting sincerely, because their individual party nominee is highly unlikely to win. If they vote sincerely, then this is equivalent to them not voting, because the outcome is not influenced by their vote. On the other hand if they vote strategically, then the outcome of their vote does play a hand in the final result.
Therefore here is a situation where "not voting" is actually an equilibirum outcome. Does it mean you are not excercising your constitutional right? Probably not. What would be more apt is, you do not want to use your constitutional rights as the platform to go against your own beliefs.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Is "not voting" a sin?
Posted by Mad Max at 5:27 PM
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11 comments:
Here are my thoughts,
1) In DemocraZy if you vote for the party which is unlikely to win OR which loses at the end, then your are the MINORITY and you loose!
2) If you are not voting in the situation where your vote could make a difference, then you loose the right to crib about the condition of the country/state etc. later
3) If you are not voiting in the situation where your vote will not make a difference (like minor party), then you are accepting the fact that the majority party wins. And because of point 1, you've to live with it.
4) If you vote, you have guilt-free right to crib :)
Have any of you did "postal" vote, like they do it here ?
Check Dilbert's blog on voting:
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/11/the_future_of_v.html
:)
@ Brainwaves: points 1 and 3 are in line with the thinking...point 2 i bef to differ. Whether you vote or not, you have every right to crib about the country (lol, not that i'm encouraging that). Coz the right to crib and voting are mutually exclusive. It would defy logic to say that if I had voted then the country would have changed and therefore I dont have to crib. hehehehehe...
@ Sdpal: No clue about that one
@ Calm and Serene: I read the dilbert blog. I think it is interesting but highly impractical. Several points he raises are contestable. Lack of information is not exactly true. Quantity of information is never the problem but the precision of the information is a big question mark? To check the precision means investing time into the process, which every citizen should rightfully do. Asking for complete information makes no sense because that is really a polar case and highly improbable. In fact the question then begs: How much information is complete information?? Other questions remain but will reserve them for later
This topic has a lot of variables to analyse. Also, I would like to look at this problem in isolation and not in relation to any specific country.
I think, "not voting" may seem like it has no noticeable impact at a micro-level, but it will certainly have a macro-level outcome. In democracy, people are the system and if people dont participate in building the system, they will suffer the consequences... The real question that one should ask is, if everyone thinks that the consequence is going to be bad irrespective of the choices they make, what happens to the system?
@ Mindframes: The last point you made is very intuitive. Let us assume that everyone thought that the outcome is going to be bad and everyone is sincere, then there will be no votes cast, which will lead to success of the voting procedure, because it was able to capture exact preferences of all voters. However the entire world does not consist of sincere people, hence there will always exist a strategic voter who will cast his vote for reasons other than his personal preferences. Given this line of thinking, the system should always fail. What say u???
I agree with you on the point that no votes would be cast in a perfectly sincere society... Then, the next question becomes, what is the solution to the problem? If there are no proven solutions to other systems which are better, then, I guess people have to start becoming sincere given that the system supports it inherently...
While I am all for cribbing about the current situation, I also dont want to exclude the discussions of other possibilities. The question i have is, is the system bad or the people? When people are the system, I would blame the people than the system...
I thought we had couple of blogs discussing this same point. Are we going in circle..:)
Tough to distinguish between a strategic voter & "sincere" voter. If strategically voting is what I want who are you to judge me? (It is a rhetorical question not targetted at you? :) )
@ Brainwaves: I agree, I have written about this topic before, but the question was never based on whether "not voting" is an issue. Thats why i just thought that a counter example might be helpful.
Of course there is no judgement aspect here. All that I'm claiming is not voting is not really bad from the perspective of social welfare.
@ Mindframes: The syetem is a manifestation of the beliefs of people who created the system...therefore inherently, the solution in my opinion is heteregenous and individual specific. As I have always maintainted, I think it is an incentive story and the winner is one who can offer the best incentives to the "potential" voters. It is not "information" but rather "incentives".
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