It seems like you only have to defend voting from the pernicious attacks of statistical improbability in early democratizing countries like America. Ask anyone in a new democracy if voting matters and you won't find the same apathetic disinterest that you find here. On the eve of a midterm election here in America, where voting is usually dismal even when compared to the relatively modest turnout levels of Presidential elections, it seems especially important to defend the most fundamental component of our democracy.
There is a well known paradox within the Political Science literature that questions the efficacy of voting. I thought I was going to have to explain this argument in my post but, as it turns out, I woke up and found an article by Steven E. Landsburg of Slate.com that perfectly summarizes its main point. This argument comes from the rational choice school of thought that seeks to scrutinize every individual's decision with a personal cost-benefit analysis. In this particular case the cost (that is, the time and energy needed to go to the polls to vote and to educate yourself so you make an informed decision) is always outweighed by the benefit (that is the likelihood that your individual vote will be the decisive one). Since very few, if any, major elections are decided by a single vote, your vote doesn't matter and you might as well stay home (or go to work) on election day. As Landburg puts it, "Instead of waiting in line to vote, you could wait in line to buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win $100 million and use it to advance your causes - and all with an almost indescribably greater chance of success than you'd have in the voting booth."
Is he right? Is voting obsolete? Not even this argument would make such a bold statement. He points to the 2000 election in Florida where the official count gave Bush a 537 vote win and, in turn, a victory in the Electoral College and the Presidency. This argument is not that voting itself is irrelevant, it is that a single vote is irrelevant. If one more person showed up in this election (an managed to vote properly and have it counted properly, a big if indeed) then the total would have been either 536 or 538 vote margin for Bush, which would not have changed the outcome. So why vote? There is something sinister going on with this argument.
Any high school dropout could tell you that the odds that a single vote would be decisive in a critical election with a large voting population is slim to nil. When someone presents me with this argument I always respond by asking them to imagine a hypothetical scenario, let me lay it out for you now. Imagine that you live in a state where electoral law forbids candidates from identifying themselves by party on the ballot. Imagine further that they only use the first letter of the first name plus the last name of the candidate so that you are't biased by gender preferences (something we might like to consider). Now lets assume that you have no information heading into the polling booth and you are presented with two candidates, J. Anderson and K. Anderson, and the only information you are given is that they are both small business owners. You have no information to decide which candidate shares your interests and no criteria to decide who you should vote for. Should you vote? Many people would say that you should abstain but I believe that the answer is a definite yes. You absolutely should vote and the reason why goes a long way toward explaining why you should also vote even knowing that a single vote never matters.
Are you a woman? Are you a young voter? Are you middle class? Do you believe in God? If so, do you attend church regularly, which congregation? Do you have a college degree? Are you or were you ever in the military? Do you have any kids? Are you married, divorced, single, widowed? Do you have a car or do you use public transportation? Did you go to public school or private school? There are a million questions I can ask you here and to each of them you have a definite response. All of these questions and more define who you are, and many of them are shared with others like you. There is nobody exactly like you but there are many people who share some of these characteristics. When the polls close on election night the real magic happens. Statisticians begin to work out the answer to a very critical question, who votes? They break the answer down along all of these dimensions and they figure out who helped get candidate "X" elected. If your group, people who share certain parts of your identity, votes in large numbers it is more likely that the politician will prioritize issues that are important to that group. Far more likely is that your group does not vote and you will be ignored on the legislative agenda. If you ask why insurance providers cover Viagra but not birth control the answer is that old people vote and young people don't. Your vote doesn't matter, but your identity does. Even in the hypothetical example I detailed above you should vote, its 50-50 that you will actually vote for the candidate that actually supports your interests better, but its 100% certain that they will recognize that a young, single, African American woman, with a child and no college degree showed up to vote.
Let's get back on track here. Landburg is talking about single votes not whether whole groups decide to show up on election day or not. The problem is that his argument is more convincing for certain groups, even if they haven't heard it laid out so starkly. Young people, poor people, and minorities are far more likely to buy into this argument. This fact systematically biases the electoral outcome because whole demographics are purposefully abstaining from voting. Let me offer one last example to help prove my point. Hispanics are far less partisan than African Americans who overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Hispanics lean Democratic but not to the same extent as African Americans. Let us imagine a Senatorial election in Texas where Hispanics split 50-50 between the Democrats and the Republicans. If this is the case then it would make no difference whether 10% or 90% of Hispanics turned out right? Wrong. Hispanics might be split between the two parties because each voter is pressed with a variety of issues that they deem important and some give more weight to one over another. Here you can be sure that if 90% of Hispanics showed up to vote in Texas that whoever was elected, Democrat of Republican, would prioritize any issue that united the Hispanic voting bloc and might influence future elections. This incumbent, from either party, would be far more likely to push for and support comprehensive immigration reform because they know that their future electoral success would be dependent on the support of the Hispanic community. Votes have consequences that extend far beyond the specific election in which the ballot is cast. They help set the agenda, they influence voting behavior, and they tell politicians that you are paying attention and are willing to hold them accountable if they don't press your interests when they are in power. So yes, your vote does matter, even though you will never cast the deciding vote.
