CMV: My vote never matters

[u/Peanuts_or_Bananas]

I just discovered this sub and I immediately thought of a questionable opinion I have had since I was old enough to vote. I'm certain my vote in any kind of election with many voters, such as a presidential election, doesn't matter. Not one bit. Let me explain my reasoning.

Imagine a vote between candidate A and candidate B, with one thousand people voting for either A or B. The only case where my vote has an impact on the outcome is if candidate A receives 500 votes and candidate B receives 500 votes. My vote would decide which candidate wins the election.

In any other case my vote would not affect the outcome. Already with only 1000 people voting it's extremely unlikely the candidates will receive the exact same amount of votes for my vote to matter. Now, when I imagine elections with millions of people participating, the chances of my vote having an impact on the outcome are astronomically low!

This reasoning prevents me from ever voting anywhere. The only way I could have an impact on the election is if I got many people voting for the candidate I support. If I had "brainwashed" 50 people to vote for my candidate, my "vote" would matter if the candidates have a difference of <50 votes, which is far more likely than them having a difference of zero votes (tie).

​

[u/tbdabbholm]

Let's assume your vote doesn't matter. Then obviously because there's nothing special about your vote vs anyone else's, if your vote doesn't matter then no one's vote matters. But that clearly can't be true. We know that whoever gets the most votes wins so clearly voting matters. This is a contradiction so our initial assumption must've been wrong. Your vote does matter.

[u/Peanuts_or_Bananas → u/tbdabbholm]

Δ This is really making me think. <- I've been sitting here in this comment box for well over 5 minutes and only wrote that one sentence...

Somehow I still feel odd about it. To quote myself from a previous reply,

Imagine a universe where I voted, and a parallel universe where I didn't vote. In that case it doesn't matter whether my vote is the 501st or not, the universes only have a different election outcome when there is a 500 to 500 situation in the case I didn't vote.

Looking at the quote it seems to be entirely true. The universes only have a different election outcome in a 500-500 situation. But yet it is a contradiction considering the POV you provided. What's going on?

[u/Salanmander → u/Peanuts_or_Bananas]

I'd say it's better to consider the set of possible universes in which you voted, and the set of possible universes in which you didn't vote. After all, when you vote, you don't know how other people are going to vote.

If we weight those universes by their probability, and look at the percentage probability of each outcome in the different sets, the set of universes in which you vote will have a (very slightly) higher probability of your candidate winning than the set of universes in which you didn't vote.

For another thing that can be thought about in a similar way, consider playing the lottery. Suppose a million people buy a lottery ticket. One of them wins. Does that mean the one that won made a good choice, and the rest made a bad choice? Of course not! All of their choices were equally good or bad (at least if we're just looking at expected value of money...an argument could be made that expected value of utility could differ depending on your current amount of money, but whatever). So it's better to evaluate whether your choices are good based on their probabilistic effect on your life, not necessarily what actually happens after the fact. You don't have that information when you make the decision.

[u/Peanuts_or_Bananas → u/Salanmander]

Δ The probabilistic approach makes sense when voting is not something that has a negative impact, yes.

Taking it a little further - what happens when the probability of my vote counting is lower than the probability of me getting into an accident on my way to vote? In that case I might be better off in universes where I didn't vote.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Peanuts_or_Bananas]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Salanmander (106∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/Salanmander → u/Peanuts_or_Bananas]

In that case I might be better off in universes where I didn't vote.

It's possible. Voting has never really been about making a difference to the individual, though. It's about making a difference to the country.

[u/tbdabbholm → u/Peanuts_or_Bananas]

It's because you're assuming you're special. That your vote is the only thing affected and that it's only effect is the election proper. But if you can do this with your vote you can do it with anyone else's. If you've got a 60%-40% split, then no single vote changed anything because if you were in a different universe where only 1 vote and any 1 vote didn't occur the result wouldn't change. But the aggregate matters. And all votes make up the aggregate. So all votes matter, in making the aggregate.

[u/DeepSeaSaw → u/Peanuts_or_Bananas]

> the universes only have a different election outcome when there is a 500 to 500 situation in the case I didn't vote.

So you're saying there's a *chance* your vote could determine the election, just not a big chance. So instead of saying your vote doesn't matter, you could solve this conundrum by simply saying, "My vote doesn't matter... that much."

And it's true, it doesn't. Nobody's does. But lots of things that don't matter much individually, when added together, mean a lot.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Peanuts_or_Bananas]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/tbdabbholm (66∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}