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To vote or not to vote: The paradox of nonvoting

โœ Scribed by Guillermo Owen; Bernard Grofman

Publisher
Springer US
Year
1984
Tongue
English
Weight
638 KB
Volume
42
Category
Article
ISSN
0048-5829

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

โœฆ Synopsis

One paradox of voting states that, in a general election, in which many citizens vote, the probability that a single voter can affect the outcome is so small that in general citizens have no rational reason for voting. However, if all citizens accept this reasoning, then none will vote, and so each vote has a large probability of affecting the outcome. Hence all should vote after all. The adoption of mixed strategies resolves this paradox: if each citizen adopts a certain (small) probability of voting, then the actual number of citizens voting will be just enough to make it worth those citizens' while to vote. A Nash equilibrium point thus occurs. Here we compute Nash equilibria for the simple case of majority voting; for the more complicated case of composite voting (for example, as in a presidential election), we draw certain qualitative inferences.

๐Ÿ“œ SIMILAR VOLUMES

To vote or not to vote: abstaining from
To vote or not to vote: abstaining from voting in union representation elections
โœ C. Gail Hepburn; Julian Barling ๐Ÿ“‚ Article ๐Ÿ“… 2001 ๐Ÿ› John Wiley and Sons ๐ŸŒ English โš– 174 KB

## Abstract We conducted two studies addressing abstaining from voting in union representation elections. In Study 1 of a faculty representation election, we showed that compared to voters abstainers possessed less extreme work and union attitudes, believed less in the ability of their vote to affe

An approach to empirical measures of vot
An approach to empirical measures of voting paradoxes
โœ John Dobra; Gordon Tullock ๐Ÿ“‚ Article ๐Ÿ“… 1981 ๐Ÿ› Springer US ๐ŸŒ English โš– 92 KB

There is very little in the literature on the frequency with which voting paradoxes could be expected in the real world. The point of this note is to add a little, unfortunately very little, to this scant information and to suggest a method of getting more. One of the authors was on a search committ