Economists have long noted that voting seems to present a challenge to the idea that decision-makers act rationally. I don't mean that people don't make a rational decision when voting (although recent elections and referendums in the Northern Hemisphere may present some obvious counter-examples), but the decision of whether to vote or not seems to defy the cost-benefit principle.
Consider the costs and benefits of voting. A voter incurs a cost when voting, because they have to take the time to go to a polling booth, think about who they want to vote for, and complete the voting form. All of that takes time (as well as some cognitive effort, for those who do more than just blindly tick one of the boxes based on the colour of the party insignia), and that time has an opportunity cost. The voter could have been doing something else instead, and they give up the opportunity to do that other thing when they decide to vote.
What about the benefits of voting? The simplest argument for voting is that people vote because they hope that their vote is going to affect the outcome of the election. However, for the vast majority of people, their vote for a particular candidate is not going to mean the difference between that candidate winning or losing the election. So, the chances that a vote on its own makes the difference between winning and losing is vanishingly small, and because of that, the benefit of voting is also vanishingly small.
However, under an MMP voting system like that in New Zealand, it gets even worse. Under MMP, most candidates have two chances to be elected. First, they could be elected as the candidate who receives the most votes in a particular electorate. Second, they could be elected as a 'list MP', making up the numbers so that each party has a proportion of MPs that is roughly equal to its proportion of the party votes. The list is ordered, with candidates higher on the list having a better chance of being successful.
Now consider a local electorate candidate, from one of the two main parties, who has a high position on their party's list. They are almost certain to get elected as a list MP, if they are unsuccessful at winning their electorate. So, regardless of whether a voter votes for that candidate or not, the candidate will become an MP. In other words, the benefit of voting for that candidate is not even vanishingly small, it is zero! Voters might as well not bother with voting for an electorate MP, and simply complete the party vote section of their voting paper.
Consider the Hamilton East electorate. Labour candidate Jamie Strange is 42nd on Labour's list - he is almost certain to be elected as a list MP, if he doesn't win the electorate. So, voting for Strange is essentially a waste of time. National hasn't released its list yet, but National candidate and incumbent Hamilton East MP David Bennett was 24th on the list in 2017, and has likely improved his ranking since then. So, voting for Bennett is also essentially a waste of time. If you are a Hamilton East voter, your electorate vote only matters if you vote for one of the minor parties.
In contrast, an electorate vote in Hamilton West might actually matter, because Labour candidate Gaurav Sharma is 65th on the Labour list, and unlikely to get in otherwise. National candidate Tim Macindoe was 25th on the National list in 2017, and if you count from the top of this page of the National Party website, he is 23rd, so would probably get in as a list MP if not re-elected as electorate MP.
If you are sensing that I am somewhat frustrated with the MMP voting system, you would be right. The futility of voting for electoral candidates when those candidates would get in regardless of your vote makes a bit of a mockery of the system. Are voters for Jacinda Ardern in the Mount Albert electorate simply engaged in some anonymous virtue signalling? They certainly aren't making any difference at all to the composition of parliament. Neither will voters for Todd Muller in the Bay of Plenty electorate.
What would work better? In the original MMP referendum, one of the options was called 'Supplementary Member' (which is described here). Like MMP, each voter would have two votes - one for an electorate MP, and one for a party. The party vote would only be used to calculate the proportion of list MPs each party gets, rather than the proportion of total MPs. At least then, electorate votes would count.
Another alternative, which I am quite partial to, is to have a rule that no electorate candidates can be on the party list. The reason I like this solution is that electorate MPs who are high on their party's list don't actually have to work as hard to represent their constituents as electorate MPs who are low on their party's list, because they will likely be re-elected anyway. Having electorate MPs not on the list ensures that they have the incentives to faithfully represent their electorate.
Anyway, coming back to the original point, if the benefit of voting is the chance that a voter affects the outcome of the election, then voting fails the cost-benefit test. Does that mean that all voters are irrational? Perhaps not. There is a benefit of voting other than the simple chance that a voter affects the outcome of the election, and that is the 'warm glow' feeling that a voter may receive by knowing that they have completed their civic duty. As this 2017 paper by Henrique Barros (New University of Lisbon) notes, people vote because they value the act of voting itself, rather than because they think they will influence the outcome of the election. So, perhaps voting is rational after all.
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