A caution re interpreting of my argument in two-level elections:
One might read the above piece as an argument that voting is generally worthwhile. But note that the two-level structure of many elections (at least in countries without PR) does dampen the value of voting for many voters. e.g. if you are in the 10%+ of the US population who live in California, then not only are you very unlikely to cast a decisive vote to win the state’s electoral college votes (since the probability that the underdog wins is very low), but it is very likely that in the situation where California comes down to a single vote, the rest of the country has skewed overwhelmingly to the Republicans, making the Californian electoral college votes irrelevant. Similar situations hold for safe seats in the lower house in the US, UK or Australia.
It might still be that in some sense two-level elections function on average like a single level election, but even if so, that could be because there are some people in marginal seats/states with disproportionate chances of changing the outcome, while many or most people have very little.
So while my adjusted formula above does apply in two-level elections, the intuitive interpretation that it supports a moral case for voting for the superior candidate may not apply.
A caution re interpreting of my argument in two-level elections:
One might read the above piece as an argument that voting is generally worthwhile. But note that the two-level structure of many elections (at least in countries without PR) does dampen the value of voting for many voters. e.g. if you are in the 10%+ of the US population who live in California, then not only are you very unlikely to cast a decisive vote to win the state’s electoral college votes (since the probability that the underdog wins is very low), but it is very likely that in the situation where California comes down to a single vote, the rest of the country has skewed overwhelmingly to the Republicans, making the Californian electoral college votes irrelevant. Similar situations hold for safe seats in the lower house in the US, UK or Australia.
It might still be that in some sense two-level elections function on average like a single level election, but even if so, that could be because there are some people in marginal seats/states with disproportionate chances of changing the outcome, while many or most people have very little.
So while my adjusted formula above does apply in two-level elections, the intuitive interpretation that it supports a moral case for voting for the superior candidate may not apply.