Voting Activity In America

Recently, Daniel and I took a survey to see how much Americans valued their right to vote. Basically what we did is we went around and asked ten people if they would give up their right to vote for money and if so, how much they would be willing to sell for. Although I did expect some people to sell, I was surprised to find that the majority of the people we surveyed were in fact willing to give up this very important right.




The first person we interviewed was Mitchell who clearly chose to sell...

It seems that he chose to make as much money as possible in this situation. However, when we asked Mitchell to explain his decision, he replied by saying " one vote can't do as much as 100 million dollars can." This certainly is a different perspective on the subject. 




Next we asked Kaylin...

Like Mitchell, Kaylin also decided to sell her vote for 100 million dollars. Her explanation however was that her "one vote wouldn't really make much of a difference." 




Catherine also chose to sell her vote...

She however did not require as much money to give up her right. Catherine said that she "knows her vote won't make a difference and besides she can pay people to vote for her." Although she was willing to accept $1,000 to give up her right to vote, Catherine explicitly stated that she would want more money for it (simply because it's money).





The fourth person we interviewed was Marcus...

Like the others, Marcus decided he would be willing to sell his vote. He decided 25 thousand dollars would be sufficient for him. When we asked why, his answer was that his "right to vote wouldn't change anything."




Minto was willing to sell his right to vote as well...

He decided his vote was worth ten thousand dollars. He explained his decision by stating that he "could use the money to buy a car with." Clearly he has some different priorities.




After Minto we asked Seoyoung...

She chose to sell her vote for ten million dollars. Her reasoning? She feels she "can do more by donating to a charity that will make a change that [she] wants and agrees with rather than voting for a politician who only promises change." I found this response to be rather interesting.




Daniel (who I was working with) had input on the subject as well...

Daniel is willing to sell his right to vote for five million dollars because he "could just buy a politician or someone to vote for [him]." 




After Daniel we asked Riley who was actually the first person to say no to selling her vote. She said that "people died and sacrificed so much for [her] right to vote and [she] wouldn't give that up." I thought this point was very interesting as well as valid.




Another person who refused was Zoe. Zoe said that she "want[s] [her] opinion to be voiced and [she] wants to be the one to voice it."




Finally we asked Taylor who also decided to keep her right to vote. She gave no reason other than the fact that it was "[her] vote and [she] wants to keep and value it."




In general, I found all of these responses to be rather surprising as well as interesting. As mentioned before, there was more people that were willing to sell their right to vote than what I had expected. Even more interesting than this however was the reasoning why. I found that a trend within the responses was that people believed their one vote really wouldn't make a difference. Out of the ten people that we interviewed, four people said this. 40%... that is a lot of people. Imagine all the people who don't vote simply because they feel they can't make a difference by doing so. What if all these people did vote? This could drastically increase the number of people that are voting in America. Perhaps one vote individually will not make that much of a difference, but when thousands upon thousands of people have this mentality, it really can have an affect.