The idea that because the physical process of voting is inconvenient and each vote usually matters very little, the rational person should not vote. The idea that because the physical process of voting is inconvenient and each vote usually matters very little, the rational person should not vote. See Saari (2001, Section 4.2) for a discussion of Simpson’s Paradox in the context of voting theory. Representative democracy is a form of government in which, instead of having every individual vote on every issue (direct democracy), individuals instead elect a small number of representatives to vote in their interests. The Condorcet paradox (also known as the voting paradox or the paradox of voting) in social choice theory is a situation noted by the Marquis de Condorcet in the late 18th century, in which collective preferences can be cyclic, even if the preferences of individual voters are not cyclic. Paradox of Not Voting Timothy J. Feddersen A t least since Downs’s (1957) seminal work An Economic Theory of Democracy, rational choice theorists have appreciated the “paradox of not voting.” In a large election, the probability that an individual vote might change the election outcome is vanishingly small. Yet large proportions of populations vote. Yet large proportions of populations vote. Donald G. Saari , in Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, 2011 4.2 Geometry of Strategic Behavior. On Nov. 3, the day of the election, the counties that broke for Trump had a collective rate of 38 new infections a day per 100,000 people, compared to 27 in those that supported Biden. The paradox occurs if one studies voters and other political actors in the same way … Arrow's impossibility theorem is a social-choice paradox illustrating the impossibility of having an ideal voting structure. Other voting paradoxes include popular voting paradoxes, paradoxes in plurality voting, and many others. A voting paradox arises when the outcome of a case is the opposite of the resolution of the individual issues within the case. This leads to the “paradox of voting”(Downs 1957): Since the expected costs (including opportunity costs) of voting appear to exceed the expected benefits, and since voters could always instead perform some action with positive overall utility, it’s surprising that anyone votes. There are many different types of voting paradoxes, such as the Condorcet Paradox, credited to Marquis de Condorcet, in 1785. For instance, eight Justices believe a statute is constitutional under the Due Process Clause, and five 3.4 The Multiple Elections Paradox The "paradox of voting" suggests not only that rational people will not vote but also that the probability of one's vote altering the outcome is extremely minute: "saying … A voting paradox occurs when the result of a vote is contradictory, or opposite of the expected outcome. The paradox occurs if one studies voters and other political actors in the same way … One last comment about this paradox: It is an example of a more general phenomenon known as Simpson’s Paradox (Malinas and Bigelow 2009).