I would expect that it wouldn’t take many competitive elections before most people would be submitting votes that are as strong as possible.
That seems right; the surprising thing is that people are willing to ‘undervote’ at all, and that they do so deliberately instead of through ignorance. But it makes sense, especially for downballet candidates where you vaguely suspect parks commissioner candidate A is better than B but don’t want to put your full force behind A (because if other people are well-informed on the parks commissioner race, you want them to settle it).
Beyond ignorance, altruism sometimes motivates this, which is easiest to see for simple things like picking what restaurant to go to. If you’re mostly indifferent between them but have a weak preference, it makes sense to do a compressed vote if you suspect other people might have strong preferences that you don’t want to overwhelm.
That seems right; the surprising thing is that people are willing to ‘undervote’ at all, and that they do so deliberately instead of through ignorance. But it makes sense, especially for downballet candidates where you vaguely suspect parks commissioner candidate A is better than B but don’t want to put your full force behind A (because if other people are well-informed on the parks commissioner race, you want them to settle it).
Beyond ignorance, altruism sometimes motivates this, which is easiest to see for simple things like picking what restaurant to go to. If you’re mostly indifferent between them but have a weak preference, it makes sense to do a compressed vote if you suspect other people might have strong preferences that you don’t want to overwhelm.