>>>>On the contrary, before the votes are counted, one has only
>>>>a certain probability of the election being decided by one's
>>>>vote. It is very, very low, events in Florida notwithstanding.
>>>>If one pretends to rationality, one must find another reason
>>>>for voting than its significance in deciding large elections.
Brad DeLong:
> >> If one is an anomic, isolated, Hobbesian individual, you are right.
> >>
> >> You may be. But I'm not.
Gordon:
> >I'd like to see a rational, materialistic demonstration of
> >that. Short of some kind of electoral Quantum Mechanics, it
> >seems that one's beliefs about one's vote wouldn't change
> >its effects on the outcome of an election like the one we're
> >discussing.
Brad DeLong:
> I have a feeling that this is closely tied to Newcomb's paradox. It
> involves whether one views oneself as an independent moral agent or
> as one of a group of people subject to common influences.
>
> Let us suppose that there are two influences on how I vote. The first
> is my position as a bearer of certain attitudes and social forces
> that I share with others. Call this GW (for "General Will"). The
> second is my own idiosyncratic individualist beliefs: call them I
> (for "Individual"). Suppose that G and I are independently
> distributed, and each has a 50% chance of being positive and a 50%
> chance of being negative.
>
> If G and I are both positive, then I vote "yes". If one of G or I is
> positive and the other is negative, then there is a 50% chance that I
> vote "yes" and a 50% chance that I am too apathetic to go to the
> polls. If both G and I are negative, then I am too apathetic to go
> vote. The total vote, however, is determined by G and not by I. If G
> is positive, yes wins. If G is negative, it does not. ...
You're going astray. I doubted whether a vote, whatever it might be, could be reasonably said to have a different effect on the outcome of an election depending on the mental state of the voter (as given above, as whether one has a Hobbesian or some other view of one's social environment).
Showing that it does, or even might, strikes me as a very difficult task, but not impossible if you play extreme pomo hardball. You could claim, for example, that an election is not a unitary, definite thing but a collection of innumerable event-views seen from different perspectives constructed by participants and other observers. Then the mental states of the various voters might weigh significantly on how they constructed the election(s) for themselves, including its outcome(s). The constructions themselves, of course, would not be static but would change constantly in the minds of the observers -- if, indeed, they have any minds -- another problem. As I say, it's a tough row to hoe. Maybe it's unambitious of me, but I prefer sticking to the classical view if possible.
In that view, a vote's a vote and makes up a fraction of the unitary outcome. If the election is large, like a national election, the fraction is correspondingly small, something like the chance of winning a major lottery jackpot. Usually, "realism" is boring, but since elections are very strongly mythologized, looking at a strictly rational, materialistic view of the procedure is worthwhile because it sets off and displays the more interesting mythic elements more clearly. (More interesting in themselves and also more interesting in that people create and adhere to them so passionately, as witness all the raging about Nader as spoiler.)