Volume 26, Number 1
November 2023
DISCUSSION

The Case for Voting to Change the Outcomes Is Weaker Than It May Seem: A Reply to Zach Barnett

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Volume 26, Number 1, November 2023, Pages 204–216
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v26i1.2915
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Abstract

Because you are highly unlikely to cast the deciding vote in the next elections, it is often said that you don’t have a reason to vote in order to change the outcomes. In a recent paper, however, Zach Barnett forcefully argues that this is a mistake. He shows how it follows, from rather conservative assumptions, that in many real-life cases the expected social value of voting is higher than its cost. Barnett is successful, we believe, in showing that the commonly held belief—that voters do not have a reason to vote in order to change the outcomes—is way too hasty. However, Barnett is—we argue in this paper—too quick on one key premise, and once this is noticed, it becomes unclear how often Barnett’s reasoning can point to a justification of voting to change the outcomes. Barnett’s reasoning, we conclude, may apply to significantly less real-life scenarios than he suggests.
Copyright © 2023 Amir Liron and David Enoch
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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