Douglas_Knight comments on Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Academian 05 November 2012 01:02AM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 07 November 2012 03:55:00AM 1 point [-]

Even if a poll of all eligible voters is more noisy or just worse than a poll of typical voters, compulsory voting changes the game from the point of view of the politicians. In the US, convincing people on your side to vote seems to be a lot more effective than convincing people to switch sides. Compulsory voting changes the relative value of the two strategies, perhaps making voter turnout irrelevant. I don't know if such a change would be good or bad, but it sounds big to me. I also don't know what campaigns in actually existing compulsory voting regimes look like.