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Does Voting Matter?
Its election time in India and boy, oh boy, elections haven’t invoked this much public interest in a really long time. There is a sudden wave of interest in the elections, the candidates and voting all thanks to that guy in the tea advertisement who told an ordinary looking woman in a rather dramatic tone, “Election ke din aap vote nahin kar rahe ho toh aap so rahe ho!” It was a smartly conceived campaign to prick your conscience and make you feel like you were not doing your duty if you didn’t vote. Very soon, every Ram, John and Khan on the street and in the film industry thought it was their duty to start preaching about the importance of voting. People filled out forms, stood in long queues to submit them and dealt with irritable election officers who had never seen such a crowd at their offices, organized election walks and what not. So the question really is, is it worth the trouble? Does your vote really count? The presidential elections in the United States which concluded a while back created quite a stir among the newspersons and economists of the country who argued about whether voting is irrational. The debate itself has been going on for some years now. From an economist’s view point, ‘Every human action/deed should be associated with a reaction with comparable payoffs or the human action/deed is, in effect, pointless’. This might seem selfish to those with a strong sense of patriotism and civic duty but if you really think about it, politicians seem to know this fact about human psychology pretty well. No wonder they spend all their time, energy and money wooing the financially backward sections of the society. All their policies, gifts and speeches are aimed at making the people believe that the next government, if formed by them, will directly bring them guaranteed progress in society. The urban middle class are a tougher lot to please. They cannot be bought with a bag of rice or a set of clothes which is why they have been a neglected vote bank for many years now. When this guy suddenly pops up on your television screens and asks you to go vote, you would be inclined to ask him what is in it for you and you wouldn’t be alone. I’m sure hundreds of young educated Indians are asking the same question, albeit in their heads. It is not particularly selfish of any voter, poor or rich, educated or uneducated, to want to know how his vote is going to help him because if it isn’t, he might as well get some work done or some sleep even in the time he is going to spend in the queues at the election booth. Economists by and large believe that voting is irrational. The only differences they seem to have are with respect to the reason why this is true. Bryan Caplan, an economist, of course, believes that voters are irrational. In his book titled ‘The Myth of the Rational Voter’, he argues that voters are not very smart and this is the reason why we have so many unexpected election results. Who would have expected George W Bush to be elected to a second term in office or Narendra Modi to be elected in Gujarat over and over again in spite of his notorious ways? So, even if we assume you are a rational voter, there is too much irrational voting happening around you to make your vote count or make a difference. And then there are those like Steven Landsburg, another economist, who believes that a rational person would choose to play the lottery over voting in an election because the chances that his single vote would decide the outcome of an election is way lesser than hitting the jackpot. You’ll find all the math behind this argument online if you just bother to search for it. So, from a purely statistical view point, voting is indeed irrational. For any individual vote to make a difference, it has to be counted with a sufficient number of other similar votes. Even if all these voter awareness campaigns were a big hit and everyone decides to vote, this additional voting population should have a collective opinion to make a difference which is unlikely. The urban, educated class could be as divided about their choice for a national government as is their rural counterpart. We might soon have another hung parliament, another coalition government and another occasion when your vote didn’t really matter. The portfolio trading and the pseudo alliances are what decide the next government in our country at the end of the day. So think again, does your vote really count? Chillibreeze's disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article.
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