[logfromblammo]

If your vote has less value to you than the time it takes to cast the ballot, it has zero economic value, and will therefore not happen, regardless of its nonzero absolute value.

A cynical potential voter may recognize that the net effect of laws and rules set up around the voting system is to alienate his or her opinion from the results of elections. In that case, declining to vote is a rational and reasonable decision. Most people judge the value of their votes by the perceived impact that their votes have on the results of the election. If you cannot detect a change in public policy as a result of your votes, your vote does literally have zero value.

In that case, you should be doing something else to effect a change in your own situation. I suspect that for most people, working during the time you would ordinarily spend voting then spending the profits on a lobbyist to directly influence an already-elected policy-maker for a specific issue that interests you would be more effective than casting a free ballot.

[eli]

> If you cannot detect a change in public policy as a result of your votes, your vote does literally have zero value.

So the person who casts the deciding vote in a race decides 100% of the election and everyone else 0%? That doesn't sound right...

I'm all for making it easier to vote, though.

[logfromblammo]

The person who casts the deciding vote probably won't know that they had done it, so that vote could also have zero value. All they know is that the voted for the winner.

Every vote in the entire election could have zero value, if none of the winners change their political stances as a result, and public policy is essentially unchanged from the period before the election.

That's why I see votes on a binding referendum to have more value than races for office between two essentially indistinguishable candidates.