The Value of Voting

During a recent Freakonomics Podcast, which I listened to on 1/26/11, the host stated that you should not feel bad about skipping voting because it does you no good. I wrote the following letter to them:

"Ignoring my visceral response to your comment that it is a waste of time to vote, it doesn't ring true to me. If the premise of the question is whether or not your individual single vote makes any difference, I can understand the answer. Voting is not an individual act, but a collective one. Choosing not to vote as an individual may have little impact, but encouraging individuals not to vote (I should say dissuading people from voting) has a large collective impact. Further, failure to research issues prior to going into the voting booth to cast a vote, I believe already has an adverse collective impact, as seen by the government we get. A self-serving (or special interest serving) group of elected officials with a 98% incumbency re-election rate is a disservice to our country and a danger to any true progress or problem solving.

"To test the validity of the premise that voting makes no difference, please substitute other activities for voting, such as polluting. Those who grew up in the 60's and 70's, like me, probably remember the polluted lakes and streams and the roadsides littered with garbage. Your individual effort of throwing trash out of your car window or picking up trash a single piece of trash alongside the road might be meaningless, but the collective efforts of the nation to change our behavior has made for a cleaner and better world. The same would be true for voting if we took it more seriously and did it more consistently and with more care.

"I realize your intent was to analyze a particular question without any moral bias, but I couldn't help but hope as I heard you tell people that their votes did not make any difference that this would not influence people to give up their right to vote.

"Could you please re-address the original question with the thought in mind of the results of collective actions? Your coverage of the savings account lottery is another example of collective behavior making a difference when individual behavior seems insignificant. Without all the investors, there is no prize in the savings account lottery."

But I have to say, voting today is a lot more like cleaning up stinky garbage. I might argue that it's worthless to vote because it doesn't ever seem to change anything or fix any of our problems, but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.