[jknz]

> Voting for good policies is a public good. When a voter is one among three hundred millions of citizens, only 1/300,000,000 (on average) of the benefits of the vote befall the individual voter.

Typically, voting results are highly skewed towards 50/50, say in most elections in democratic regimes with fair elections. This was the case for Brexit or the popular vote in the US 2016 election for instance.

For an election whose expected result is close to 50/50, each voter is highly influential; intuitively, if all but one voter are decided and produce a 50/50 draw, the last undecided voter has complete power. Since a lot of fair elections are approximately 50/50, undecided voters have far better influence than 1/300,000,000 for a population of 300,000,000.

In an approximately 50/50 election with few undecided voters, it is quite cheap to swing the results by bombarding the few undecided voters with ads.

Mathematicians use this concept coined "influence" of a variable, or "influence function" to analyze properties of random boolean functions in percolation for instance.

[savanaly]

I don't think that 1/300 million part was about the likelihood of influencing the election, but rather about what percentage of the gains go to the person (not more than the percentage that that person represents of the population, presumably).

Even if you had guaranteed ability to affect the outcome of an election, supposing you knew that by spending many hours researching the correct policy to vote for you could save each person in USA $1, it would not be worth it for you to spend the time figuring it out. Although from a social perspective it would be a worthy thing to spend time on.

[StanislavPetrov]

One of many reasons that offering false, contrived, binary choices in a world defined by its complexity is always a losing proposition.

[mjevans]

That's actually a strong argument for requiring a 'super majority' to decide any major decision.

[mcguire]

Then no decision would be made, which is a decision.

When was the last time someone got a supermajority with more than a small number of voters?

[baddox]

Presumably different referenda would be put to a vote if a supermajority were required, namely, ones that are less controversial.

[RugnirViking]

To be fair in some situations where it is not internal political pressure that caused the vote in the first place, large majorities can occur; see the falkland islands referendum on joining argentina