a potential voter not to vote. This is a problem that needs to be addressed by the United States government in order for voter participation to increase. Perhaps one of the primary reasons why Americans don’t vote is because they don’t see the value of their vote. In 2008, 1.2 million Americans didn’t register to vote because they did felt their vote wouldn’t make a difference (Plummer). They felt there was no need for them to cast their vote since they felt their opinion would have no effect on the outcome of the election. Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt discuss the idea of the value of a vote in their article, Why Vote? In order to illustrate their point that the possibility of a single vote determining the outcome of an election is very, very “very. slim,” they described the work of economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter (Dubner and Levitt). Mulligan and Hunter more than 56,000 Congressional ”analyzed and state-legislative elections since 1898” and what they found was that the more “of than 16,000 Congressional elections, […], only one election in the past 100 years - a 1910 race in Buffalo - was decided by a single vote” (Dubner and Levitt). Of the state elections analyzed only elections were decided by a single vote” (Dubner and “seven Levitt). Obviously for state legislature elections the value of each vote is greater since there are less total voters. The average margin of victory for national congressional elections was a 22% margin (Dubner and Levitt). It is clear that close elections are not as common as the media makes them appear to be (Dubner and Levitt). In John Goodman’s article, So Why Do People Vote?, he too discussed the work of Mulligan and Hunter. He illustrated their work by assigning a cost to voting. The odds that one individual’s vote is the deciding vote in a congressional election are 1 in 89,000 (Goodman). This means that if the expected benefit of your candidate winning the
a potential voter not to vote. This is a problem that needs to be addressed by the United States government in order for voter participation to increase. Perhaps one of the primary reasons why Americans don’t vote is because they don’t see the value of their vote. In 2008, 1.2 million Americans didn’t register to vote because they did felt their vote wouldn’t make a difference (Plummer). They felt there was no need for them to cast their vote since they felt their opinion would have no effect on the outcome of the election. Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt discuss the idea of the value of a vote in their article, Why Vote? In order to illustrate their point that the possibility of a single vote determining the outcome of an election is “very. very, very slim,” they described the work of economists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter (Dubner and Levitt). Mulligan and Hunter ”analyzed more than 56,000 Congressional and state-legislative elections since 1898” and what they found was that “of the more than 16,000 Congressional elections, […], only one election in the past 100 years - a 1910 race in Buffalo - was decided by a single vote” (Dubner and Levitt). Of the state elections analyzed only “seven elections were decided by a single vote” (Dubner and Levitt). Obviously for state legislature elections the value of each vote is greater since there are less total voters. The average margin of victory for national congressional elections was a 22% margin (Dubner and Levitt). It is clear that close elections are not as common as the media makes them appear to be (Dubner and Levitt). In John Goodman’s article, So Why Do People Vote?, he too discussed the work of Mulligan and Hunter. He illustrated their work by assigning a cost to voting. The odds that one individual’s vote is the deciding vote in a congressional election are 1 in 89,000 (Goodman). This means that if the expected benefit of your candidate winning the
BPB_Paper3_VotersandtheAmericanDemocracy.docx