In a comment to this post below, stAllio! makes the point that local elections are where votes really count... and of course we all know this but don't seem to do anything about it. But this might provide another way of looking at Quiggen's idea for social preferences. A rational voter will see that her vote has more of a chance of being decisive in a local election, and weighing that against the effect a given outcome will have on her. The fact that we're less likely to vote in local elections suggests that the increased chance of influencing the local result is at least counterbalanced by some decrease in the value of the outcome. That decrease might result if local elections are simply less relevant to our lives as individuals than national elections, but I doubt this is even the case to begin with. More likely there's something else weighting the national elections, like increased media attention -- or Quiggen's social preferences.
April 21, 2005
Diminished participation in local elections also has to do with either not being directly affected by the outcome of most of the elections and possibly not understanding the function of the jobs being elected.
What exactly does the Cook County Recorder of Deeds do for me? Why do I care who the Bursar is? If I don't have kids in the schools, how do the school board elections affect me?
People generally want to vote for Mayor if their town has one, but I'd bet elections where a Town President or Town Manager heads the ballot with essentially the same functions as a mayor are more lightly attended.
Yeah, this is kind of a strange thing to talk about because there are so many other potential factors. I don't have any idea whether local elections are really more relevant to my life than national ones; I guess intuitively I think they are. But these concepts are so vague and undefined that it's pretty much impossible to make any kind of conclusive statement.
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