The purpose of the vote here is to discover what the preferences are, and to follow the course of action consistent with it. It is NOT to force the unwilling to go along (as is often the case elsewhere).

To repeat: no one is being forced in this case. All freely consent to abide by the result of the democratic vote in advance. This is a given in the example.

I introduce this given deliberately, in order to separate objections to democratic voting on the grounds that a single vote is liable to be insignificant, from objections to democratic voting on the grounds that it is immoral.

I am disputing objections of the first sort, not objections of the second sort.

Clear?

I agree no one person make a decision when it is made collectively via a democratic vote. I do not dispute that. Why point it out?

You then seem to inferring that, because no one person makes the decision, the decision could just as well be made randomly. But this is false.

Suppose 60% of the group want to visit place X, and 40% want to visit place Y.

If the decision is made democratically, more people will be more satisfied, and fewer people will be less satisfied.

However, if the decision is made randomly, then it is equally likely that (a) more people will be more satisfied, and fewer people will be less satisfied, and (b) more people will be less satisfied, and fewer people will be more satisfied.

So, all else equal, it’s better to make the decision democratically than randomly. It satisfies more people more.

You may object: all else is not equal. The dissenting 40% are being taken for a ride (literally!). That violates their rights, etc.

However, if so, you may be forgetting a key premise of the example.

It is this: all the students amicably agree that the democratic vote should be held. That is, all of them, so to speak, unanimously “vote” for the democratic vote, before they actually cast their vote.

Why might they do so? Well, I think it’s easy to understand: the students are reasonably unselfish. They all figure, “You know, the worst that is going to happen is that I, and everyone else, will visit a nice place that was my personal second choice, not my personal first choice. But it makes sense that we should arrange for more people to definitely get their personal first choice than should get their personal second choice, as opposed to deciding the matter in some other arbitrary way that does not take these preferences into account. So, I support democratic decision-making process, and will gladly abide by it.”

The key point here is that all students support the vote itself. If they didn’t, it would be a different matter. If, say, half really wanted to visit place X but not place Y, and half really wanted to visit place Y but not place X, one would imagine that they would not all support the vote. Fair enough.

But, in my example, they DO support the vote. Given that this is the case, I submit that the democratic decision-making is not irrational. In particular, even though a single vote is unlikely to count, the democratic decision-making is still not irrational. This is a prima facie counter-example to Brandly’s claim that the democratic decision-making is irrational because a single vote is unlikely to count.

All clear?

Now, how should Brandly respond to my argument?

Well, it’s a tally, at least within a specific context. For example, an election by the inmates of a prison who get to choose between two pre-approved wardens is also a tally. Calling it a “decision” is more problematic however since this “decision” is not a purely voluntary one. One cannot decide, for example, not to have one’s rights abused by whoever the winner turns out to be in a political election.

“Therefore, a person who assumes his vote does not matter increases the odds his preference is not chosen in the election by abstaining from voting.”

I think you and others are missing the ethical context here. We’re talking about political elections, not a group of friends riding in a car on a Saturday night voting on where to have dinner. In a political election, no real “preference” is ever expressed because no one has a choice regarding the political system. Political systems are imposed by force. They are based on violence. And while they transition to propaganda and voting as their public face, that doesn’t change their true underlying nature.

You can say you’re expressing a preference when you say you want to eat at Pizza Hut while two of your friends vote for Outback. You may lose but your rights were never violated. Likewise, a preference is expressed when you freely decide to become a member in some group (business or church or whatever) that relies on voting for some group decisions. But this is not the case in political elections. This is most clearly evident when a new state is established through the disintegration or destruction of a previous state by means of violence. The fact that elections are set up completely belies the fact that the people have either been conquered or absorbed or discombobulated in some sort of way demonstrably against their individual wills.

And again, non-voters in the US clearly demonstrate that they prefer none of the candidates, yet this preference is never calculated into the results, reason being that they would nullify the whole system. The system would be (and actually is now) de-legitimized.

When “preference” is mentioned in the context of political elections, it only refers to pre-approved (by the state) candidates. Voters have forever acknowledged that they vote for, not who they prefer to rule over them, but the best of whoever happens to be left as over against whom they feel is a worse choice. This is described as “voting for the lesser of two evils” or “defensive voting” or some other similar phrase.

Perhaps it would be easier to understand the non-voters’ argument if you imagine living in France when the Germans invaded and took over. Do you vote in the ensuing elections? Well, if you have half a brain, you’re going to realize that the system will only provide pre-approved (by the conquerors) candidates. Now, you might choose to dive right into the “lesser of two evils” rationale, but I’ll bet you’d be more open to the “this regime is illegitimate, so let’s get rid of them” argument in that case. Right?

Can you see that over time, the conquered would be pacified and learn to accept the status quo and feel like it was “theirs” through years of propaganda and voting in the new rigged system? But what if a loyal minority remained? Can anyone seriously argue against the claim that the conquerors were illegitimate rulers despite the fact that they eventually started holding elections? Of course not.

If we REALLY wanted to know what people PREFER, we would allow people to SECEDE from the system that rules them by force and allow them to form voluntary associations where there is no question whatsoever of a person’s will and rights being respected. But whenever anyone denies that the system is an ipso-facto rights-violating system, they are unfortunately engaging in self-deception. Then they spread that deception to others using the state’s own propaganda!

So arguments about what elections are and what they accomplish are, to me, devoid of meaning because they are so wildly out of context. I mean, you’re actually voting for the people who are systematically robbing you and degrading your rights day by day. Not only that, but the federal gov’t has actually murdered millions over the years and continues killing people day by day. Do they deserve to be legitimized by some formal public ritual? I think not.

“One votes because it improves one’s prospects of having his preferences chosen by lot.”

That only applies to voluntary situations, and ones where the violation of one’s fundamental human rights are not at issue in the vote. Political elections put into contest one’s fundamental rights. That’s all you nee to know in order to condemn that system as illegitimate. No legitimate system of elections would EVER put one’s life and property rights on the line and subject them to a cheap rigged deceptive popularity contest.

Can we be allowed to disassociate from this monstrosity without severe punishment? No? Then what the heck are we being sold with this talk about “preference”? I prefer not to be violated and abused. How about you? : )

Why not start a mass movement of non-voting as a protest? Doesn’t that tell people that you REALLY care about the issues?

Why not start the League of Non-Voters and protest at polling stations and hand out literature? That might show people that you care, eh? That’s certainly one kind of “public involvement, ” right?

So that means that the tens of thousands (or however many) who voted for both didn’t matter. The one that mattered was the 50%+1. And it also means that the tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions, who did not vote for *either* man were not allowed to prevent one of these two men from claiming that they “represent” them when they obviously don’t!

And when you say “won by 312 votes, ” you realize of course that 311 of those margin-of-victory votes are superfluous, right? If you were one of those 311, your vote wouldn’t count either.

You ask if non-voters would have made a difference. No, because every voter for Colmann is nullified by a corresponding voter for Franken. This is true no matter how many voters vote. As soon as I vote for A, my vote is nullified immediately as my neighbor votes for B. This is about whether a single vote “counts.” They just don’t. This doesn’t mean that one guy wins and the other loses based on 50+1; it just means that your “say” is meaningless and null. You can’t even vote “none of the above.” They’re not interested in your “say,” only whether mass marketing and mass manipulation can produce a win from a mass popularity contest.

The system only exists to provide legitimacy to rulers. That’s why it was implemented by force in the beginning and is carried out by force at every minute. If the purpose was to find out what people want, then the non-voters would win every time because the simple fact is that they are the majority – at least here in the US. Can you choose not to be ruled by one of the candidates and their benefactors and financial supporters? No, you cannot. So you’re just fodder for them when you show up to vote. You are living propaganda for the state. “We have a mandate!” cries the winner. If you vote for the winner, you and he take it as validation that you can force your collective will on the losers. If you vote for the loser, not only did your individual vote not count but the whole group you aligned with failed, and so now you are expected to “honor” the results and allow the winner to “govern” according to “the will of the people.” The will of the people then amounts to only HALF of the actual VOTERS (in a two person race, that is) now because the losing voters’ “will” is disregarded completely. On top of that, even the winning candidate can disregard his own “winning” voters because he holds office now, not them! He is not obligated to vote in any way at all now. Everyone knows this, but they still spout childlike fantasies about being “represented” in a “democracy.”

So two opposing guys lie to you (this is indisputable) about what they will do. A popularity contest is held. Only the winner – one guy, not his “voters” – gets to participate in a smaller group of voters (House or Senate). He is free to vote or abstain from voting, support his stated goals or not. Both the “winning” voters as well as the losers and the non-voters have NOTHING to say about how he votes in office.

The lack of choice and impact and meaning for the individual voter or non-voter is just utterly staggering once you lay it all out. What it is is a complete annihilation of the individual and their will, not to mention their rights.

Now, if you consider a mass movement of de-legitimization of the political system through non-voting or secession or nullification, etc., then you will see how far superior those methods are to participating and strengthening the political system by voting. They are very fast at getting results once they get going, whereas you can keep voting til the cows come home and the system will still stand because you are playing its game and not asserting your right to be free.

Nice work. Those figures look much better.

As we can both agree, the principle is still the same that an individual voter has an almost not existent probability of influencing a typical presidential election result so unless they’re incredibly passionate about being counted they may as well stay home.

I think you and I both agree that they’re still tiny odds so the article’s author is spot on in saying that an individual has for all practical purposes almost no chance of making a difference.

You would still get a majority count.

Not always. If you have more then two parties, based on the results of the polls made after the elections, it happens quite often that parties that form the coalition do not represent the mix favoured by the voters of those parties. Election thresholds can also contribute to distortions.

You know Wildberry, there are countries other than USA.

I’ve addressed Kyle’s comment. It doesn’t change or refute a single thing I said above.

Remember Wildberry, this is empirical science now… probabilities are what they are. If you want dispute what I’ve clearly stated above (IMHO) then you’ll have to do it with mathematics.

Review my comment above and dispute the probabilities I’ve listed if you disagree with what I’ve said http://blog.mises.org/16162/why-vote/#comment-767722)

All you have said here is that by not voting you reduce your chance of influencing the election outcome to 0%, and I certainly don’t dispute this. My point is that your probability has probably reduced from something infinitesimally small down to to zero – so no great loss necessarily.
This is mathematically correct from any one individual’s point of view – you’re now spinning it out by saying if every person responded this way then the case would change. This is not valid because as the numbers of people voting dropped off then the amount of influence each vote may have would increase which would spur more people to vote again.

This type of argument appears to me to be a case of the sorites paradox.

As I stated in my linked comment above though… people shouldn’t necessarily read from Dr Ferris’s article that therefore voting cannot have any value to anyone. There are reasons for people to value their vote and I do not try and take this away from them. This doesn’t change the mathematical probabilities of any one individual influencing the outcome of an election though.