Voting without law?(Symposium: Law, Economics, & Norms)

As now, when here's the fixed Assembly Day, And morning come, and no one in the Pnyx. There in the Agora chattering, up and down Scurrying to dodge the cord dripping red

--Aristophanes, The Acharnians(1)

INTRODUCTION

In ancient Athens, election officials corralled voters with a red-dyed rope, herding them from the marketplace to the Assembly's voting area at the nearby Pnyx.(2) Athenian officials in later years simply paid voters to attend the Assembly's In contemporary Italy, those who fail to vote face the prospect of having their names posted by the mayor on the communal notice wall and of being branded a nonvoter in official papers.(4) In (where else but?) California, a voting stub obtained after casting a ballot has entitled voters to a free half-dozen "Yum-Yum" doughnuts or a discounted spinal adjustment by a chiropractor.(5)

Carrots and sticks have been employed to increase voter turnout since the birth of democracy, in reaction to what rational choice theorists have termed "the paradox of voting":(6) given the infinitesimal chance that one's own vote could affect the outcome of most elections or the stability of the electoral system, it often appears rational to abstain from voting. The paradox facing rational choice scholars is that many people do vote in the absence of visible carrots or sticks, although not in the same numbers in comparable elections or across state or national boundaries.