Humans are bad at small numbers. Your vote does indeed matter. But it only matters 10^-8 of a presidency. With littering you’re probably anchored to 1 piece of litter, so 1 matters. But in voting you’re probably anchored to 1 presidency, rather than, say, 1 dollar. Noting, of course, that on the order of 10^10 dollars get spent per presidential race, so your vote is about $100.
In a typical election with a greater-than-one vote differential, it doesn’t seem like your vote matters at all to the outcome. In the specific sense that if you had not voted, the outcome would have been identical. So I guess that is something to resolve, do you deserve fractional “credit” for the win, even if the win differential was by millions of votes?
Assuming that in a perfect election, some set of people do “deserve fractional credit,” it’s easy to show that, since the labels on different voters can be changed without affecting anything, everyone deserves fractional credit. Similarly, if you assume that some set of people “don’t deserve credit,” nobody deserves credit. So there really is a dichotomy: either everyone (who voted identically) deserves credit or nobody does.
You seem to be approaching it the second way—starting with the thought that there is some set of people whose votes were definitely extra.
Meanwhile my train of thought is “the election was won, therefore it’s wrong to say that nobody deserves any credit, so it must be the other half of the dichotomy and everyone deserves credit.”
Perhaps my extra assumption that nobody deserving credit is bad would be more appealing if instead of “everybody/nobody deserves credit” we use “everybody’s/nobody’s votes counted.” If nobody’s votes counted, the election wouldn’t have had an outcome. So everyone’s votes counted. Then I assume that if your vote counts, you “deserve credit,” and bada bing.
So yes, I think that your vote can count even if, in retrospect, it changed nothing, so long as votes are interchangeable and anonymous.
I think that your vote can count even if, in retrospect, it changed nothing, so long as votes are interchangeable and anonymous.
I think that’s the crux of the issue. My take was to assign a mapping between people and votes such that your vote was in the “excess” portion and thus didn’t matter. But just because such a mapping exists doesn’t mean it is fair or valid to assign it. Instead I imagine it’s a statistics problem where all mappings are possible, which leaves you with a non-zero but tiny “contribution” to electing the winner.
And if you voted for the loser? Then I think the contribution to voter turnout mentioned in the post comes into play. Again a only very tiny amount, but non-zero.
Then finally social issues likes signaling status and desire to belong to a group probably are pretty big factors, maybe bigger than the above “real” factors.
In the end I think it’s possible to justify voting or not voting depending on your values, particularly how you value your time relative to these fuzzier benefits.
Humans are bad at small numbers. Your vote does indeed matter. But it only matters 10^-8 of a presidency. With littering you’re probably anchored to 1 piece of litter, so 1 matters. But in voting you’re probably anchored to 1 presidency, rather than, say, 1 dollar. Noting, of course, that on the order of 10^10 dollars get spent per presidential race, so your vote is about $100.
In a typical election with a greater-than-one vote differential, it doesn’t seem like your vote matters at all to the outcome. In the specific sense that if you had not voted, the outcome would have been identical. So I guess that is something to resolve, do you deserve fractional “credit” for the win, even if the win differential was by millions of votes?
Assuming that in a perfect election, some set of people do “deserve fractional credit,” it’s easy to show that, since the labels on different voters can be changed without affecting anything, everyone deserves fractional credit. Similarly, if you assume that some set of people “don’t deserve credit,” nobody deserves credit. So there really is a dichotomy: either everyone (who voted identically) deserves credit or nobody does.
You seem to be approaching it the second way—starting with the thought that there is some set of people whose votes were definitely extra.
Meanwhile my train of thought is “the election was won, therefore it’s wrong to say that nobody deserves any credit, so it must be the other half of the dichotomy and everyone deserves credit.”
Perhaps my extra assumption that nobody deserving credit is bad would be more appealing if instead of “everybody/nobody deserves credit” we use “everybody’s/nobody’s votes counted.” If nobody’s votes counted, the election wouldn’t have had an outcome. So everyone’s votes counted. Then I assume that if your vote counts, you “deserve credit,” and bada bing.
So yes, I think that your vote can count even if, in retrospect, it changed nothing, so long as votes are interchangeable and anonymous.
I think that’s the crux of the issue. My take was to assign a mapping between people and votes such that your vote was in the “excess” portion and thus didn’t matter. But just because such a mapping exists doesn’t mean it is fair or valid to assign it. Instead I imagine it’s a statistics problem where all mappings are possible, which leaves you with a non-zero but tiny “contribution” to electing the winner.
And if you voted for the loser? Then I think the contribution to voter turnout mentioned in the post comes into play. Again a only very tiny amount, but non-zero.
Then finally social issues likes signaling status and desire to belong to a group probably are pretty big factors, maybe bigger than the above “real” factors.
In the end I think it’s possible to justify voting or not voting depending on your values, particularly how you value your time relative to these fuzzier benefits.
To a large extent, I vote to avoid regret—if someone I detest gets in, I want to feel that at least I did a little something to not let that happen.