IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v27y1976i1p101-107.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The electoral college and the rational vote

Author

Listed:
  • James Kau
  • Paul Rubin

Abstract

We have shown first, that if the electoral college was abolished the theoretically measured power of voters would increase and second, that in presidential elections the measure of voting power used does in fact have a highly significant impact on the decision as to whether or not to vote. Thus, the analysis predicts that the abolition of the electoral college would have a significant impact on voter participation. From a policy viewpoint, if we view participation in elections as desirable, this could be used as an argument in favor of direct election of the president. From a scientific viewpoint, we are able to make a strong and unambiguous prediction about the results of a (possible) future event from theoretical considerations. If the electoral college should be abolished, it will be possible to test our predictions. In addition, we have provided a further test of the rational behavior view of electoral participation and have shown that this model applies to presidential elections. Finally, we have shown that the theoretical measure of voting power does predict actual behavior. Copyright Center for Study of Public Choice Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 1976

Suggested Citation

  • James Kau & Paul Rubin, 1976. "The electoral college and the rational vote," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 101-107, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:27:y:1976:i:1:p:101-107
    DOI: 10.1007/BF01718952
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF01718952
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF01718952?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yoram Barzel & Eugene Silberberg, 1973. "Is the act of voting rational?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 51-58, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. William Brown & Gary Santoni, 1980. "Economic competition and political competition: A comment," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 27-36, January.
    2. John Carter, 1984. "Early projections and voter turnout in the 1980 presidential election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 195-202, January.
    3. Thomas Schwartz, 1987. "Your vote counts on account of the way it is counted: An institutional solution to the paradox of not voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 101-121, January.
    4. Christopher Hanks & Bernhard Grofman, 1998. "Turnout in gubernatorial and senatorial primary and general elections in the South, 1922–90: A rational choice model of the effects of short-run and long-run electoral competition on relative turnout," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(3), pages 407-421, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Londregan, John & Vindigni, Andrea, 2006. "Voting as a Credible Threat," Papers 10-04-2006, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    2. Leslie Seidle & David Miller, 1976. "Turnout, rational abstention and campaign effort," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 121-126, September.
    3. Hummel Jeffrey Rogers & Lavoie Don, 1994. "National Defense And The Public-Goods Problem," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2-3), pages 1-26, June.
    4. Jan Hansen & Carsten Schmidt & Martin Strobel, 2004. "Manipulation in political stock markets - preconditions and evidence," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(7), pages 459-463.
    5. Tikva Darvish & Jacob Rosenberg, 1988. "The economic model of voter participation: A further test," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 185-192, February.
    6. Francisco Arcelus & Gary Mauser & Z. Spindler, 1978. "The right to vote no: revising the voting system and resuscitating the F-Y voter," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 67-83, December.
    7. Gordon Brady, 2014. "Cognitive dissonance, iron triangle and rent seeking: sequester and the fiscal cliff," Chapters, in: Francesco Forte & Ram Mudambi & Pietro Maria Navarra (ed.), A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 17, pages 400-412, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Cebula, Richard & Unemori, Mary, 2005. "Potential Impact of Referenda and Initiatives on Voter Turnout: Evidence from the 1998 General Election," MPRA Paper 60064, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Acuña, Andres, 2011. "Determinants of Chilean youth voter registration: Evidence for the Bio Bio region," MPRA Paper 34746, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Frank, Bjorn & Pitlik, Hans & Wirth, Steffen, 2004. "Expert opinion leaders' impact on voter turnout: the case of the Internet Chess Match Kasparov vs. World," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 619-635, September.
    11. Peter Calcagno & John Jackson, 2008. "PAC Spending and Roll Call Voting in the U.S. House: An Empirical Extension," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(25), pages 1-11.
    12. Aaron Edlin & Andrew Gelman & Noah Kaplan, 2007. "Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and How People Vote to Improve the Well-Being of Others," NBER Working Papers 13562, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Stephen Hansen & Thomas Palfrey & Howard Rosenthal, 1987. "The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 15-33, January.
    14. Castanheira, Micael, 2003. "Victory margins and the paradox of voting," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 817-841, November.
    15. John Londregan & Andrea Vindigni, 2006. "Voting as a Credible Threat," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 18, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    16. Richard E. Wagner, 2012. "Deficits, Debt, and Democracy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14477.
    17. James Bennett & William Orzechowski, 1983. "The voting behavior of bureaucrats: Some empirical evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 271-283, January.
    18. Cameron Guage & Feng Fu, 2021. "Asymmetric Partisan Voter Turnout Games," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 738-758, December.
    19. Manfred Holler, 1983. "Collective action, rational man and economic reasoning," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 163-177, June.
    20. Garey Durden & Patricia Gaynor, 1987. "The rational behavior theory of voting participation: Evidence from the 1970 and 1982 elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 231-242, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:27:y:1976:i:1:p:101-107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.