Sept/Oct 2013
Neg: Voting Not a Duty
foundationbriefs.com
Page 51 of 104
Voting is expressive, not decisive therefore not a duty
The chance that a cast vote decides the election result is effectively zero. RMF
Mackie, Gerry. "An Examination of the Expressive Theory of Voting" (2011).
An economist would be embarrassed to be seen at the voting booth (Dubner and Levitt 2005). Although most citizens vote, the standard view in social science is that it’s irrational to do so. It’s extremely unlikely that anyone vote would break a tie, and when a single vote does not break a tie it has nothing to do with the outcome. Since voting is costly, almost any single vote would be irrational. The paradox of nonvoting was first stated by Downs (1957, 244 - 246), and is often formulated as follows. Bis the individual’s Benefit from a winning election outcome, C is the Cost of the individual voting, and pis the Probability that an individual’s vote is pivotal in causing the winning election outcome. An individual would vote then, when pB – C > 0. The probability of being pivotal, however, is minuscule, effectively zero for any individual, the act of voting is all cost and almost no benefit, and hence no one should vote. (2)
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