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Alejandro1 comments on Any existential risk angles to the US presidential election? - Less Wrong
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Do you dispute the claims in this Gelman paper about the probability of votes in various states being decisive in Presidential elections? Or the much higher probabilities of decisive individual impact in state and local races, and popular referenda/initiatives?
Lotteries are for personal consumption, and have negative expected value. Voting can be done as an act of altruism (in addition to other reasons), buying a small chance of very large impact, for which it can easily have a positive expected value. It would cost hundreds of dollars in political contributions at least to pay for the delivery of another vote to replace yours, so there is a large wedge between your opportunity cost of time and your productivity voting.
I agree with this argument, but note that it only applies if you actually believe that the differences between the policies that Obama and Romney are likely to implement do amount to a very large overall utility differential (and that you can know beforehand in which direction it goes). I suspect that Konkvistador does not share this premise.
Large enough to be millions of times what you would buy with a $50 charitable donation. That's not a terribly high bar for differences between candidates. And certainly one's vote is more influential in primary elections than general elections, and in swing states, and in lower turnout regions, etc. Policy differences can also be clearer in other races and cases, e.g. voting on single initiatives in California.