The campaigning for Goa Assembly polls ended yesterday and the focus has now moved from the candidates to the voters. Every election is an opportunity to reaffirm the tenets of our democracy. It is the means by which we transmit our collective expression of self-governance as well individual expression of ideological beliefs. Since our young days, we are encouraged to imbibe the virtues of voting in elections, and that it constitutes one being a dutiful citizen. Yet if the moral precinct for voting is so strong, why is that we often observe voter apathy, or worse, low voter turnout?
If experience is anything to go by, one will often hear the argument that an individual vote makes little difference in the larger scheme of the election. When the margin of victory for candidates is in the thousands, a single vote offers little hope for change in election outcome. The odds that your vote will influence elections are very slim, so why vote?
Indeed economists have even rationalised this sentiment. Voting extracts a cost – in time, effort and loss of productivity. Perhaps the same time can be utilized towards more constructive engagement (e.g. medical research) that would improve human lives, as opposed to a bleak chance to influence an election. As the economist Patricia Funk writes, “A rational individual should abstain from voting.”
Fortunately, people continue to vote. One can posit some explanations as to why citizens vote even when it seems like an irrational thing to do. First is we may believe that our votes do count and will affect the outcome. Second is in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets or make bets. For a small investment, one buys the right to fantasize how you’d spend your winnings – the same way one can vote and fantasize about how that will affect policy. Or perhaps we are simply socialized to believe that voting is good for the society.
Digging deeper into the third explanation, one finds strong evidence to suggest that this works. By being seen as handing in the vote, one hopes to gain social esteem in the eyes of our peers or social benefits on being perceived as a cooperator. Social image plays a significant role in explaining turnout, even if people are not consciously aware of it. Indeed, this operates out of self-interest, a characteristic that will satisfy economists. When we add another behavioral dimension – free rider’s guilt – we push the envelope of self-interest further. The expectation of being asked by one’s peers whether one voted or not, motivates the person to go vote, assuming the prospect of lying is costly. Since social norm dictates that voting is a fundamental duty, very often that is the same logic that pressurizes us to go vote.
But it is also important to remember that voting does more than simply serve our function of self-interest. From the point of a view of a candidate, a single vote captures an abundance of data for a candidate to process post the election. This information, which is comprised of not just of outcome (winning or losing) is impressed into the candidate’s actions and assessments well beyond Election Day.
One data point is the electoral margin of victory. If the candidate wins by a large margin, it’s a signal to the polity around that he is here to stay. This position offers the candidate a stronger capacity to push his agenda, even though the absolute power remains the same across all winners. So as a voter if you feel a candidate’s capacity should be enhanced or moderated (assuming you already believe he is going to win), by voting for or against, one can influence that outcome. This capacity to advance an agenda is constantly kept in check by the margin of victory, which in turn affects the margin of power.
Second data point is that voting, or its lack thereof, affects the way legislators respond to their role as public representatives. Quite simply put, if the voters believe their vote barely counts, they would not put in the effort to become politically informed as they understand its benefit to be negligible. Voter apathy makes the job of a legislator easier as there is less pressure for them to perform. It’s small wonder that voters claim that candidates only come back to them for votes during election season. Holding your public representative accountable by being politically informed and thereby signaling, whether though social media, or representations, will tilt the function of the legislator to perform.
History has shown us that expansions of human suffrage have often been violently opposed by those in sections of privilege, adding weight to the argument that voting is a strong tool that maintains the balance of power between the ruling and the ruled. In the 2012 Goa Assembly elections, the voter turnout was almost 82%. This goes to show that our body politic is in good shape. However this shouldn’t make us complacent in light of Election Day tomorrow. Undeniably, the social and political consequences of voting are real even though they may be hard to measure at an individual level. This concession still doesn’t make one obligated to vote. But just like one pays health premiums in spite of, say perfect health today, one should consider voting as an insurance premium to be paid today. Indeed, when voting is understood as a social signaling tool (irrespective whether it elects a particular candidate), one begins to see its value addition to society through the medium of self-expression.
(The author is a policy analyst. Follow on Twitter @rohitrrs.)
