In Against Democracy, libertarian professor and political philosopher Jason Brennan argues voting is bad for most people. Based on sixty-five years of data, he shows how completely and efficiently the voting public is misinformed on vital issues each election. The majority of voters are even ignorant of what party is in power, and, for example, during a presidential election, only a minority knew which candidate was more “conservative” or “liberal.” They vote with this lack of knowledge, and it negatively affects you and me. Brennan wrote they “impose these ignorant and irrational decisions on innocent people.” In other words, as Brennan says, voting is not a victimless crime. Brennan declares “The mantra ‘Get out the vote! Every vote counts!’ is dangerous. Most citizens are not doing us any favor by voting. Asking everyone to vote is like asking everyone to litter.”

Numerous studies demonstrate people consume political information in a biased manner. It is not only their choice of biased sources, but they do not process information the same way they would non-political information. They suffer from confirmation bias and reject facts conflicting with their preconceived ideas. In short, they are not able to reason about political issues.

When consuming data outside of a political situation, test subjects are fine, but the same data placed in a political context will cause them to automatically conform it to their biases. In other words, when it comes to politics, we refuse to accept facts contrary to our preferences. It is more important to be within our herd than to admit we might be wrong. …

In The Myth of the Rational Voter, libertarian Professor Bryan Caplan’s research also corroborates these views. As he discovered, “voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational–and vote accordingly…emotion and ideology…powerfully sway human judgment.” Caplan argues that since an individual is powerless to change an election, and because they receive no direct negative consequences from an uninformed vote, taking time to research and give a well-informed decision is not seen as worth their time and energy. As a result, most votes are based on emotion and ideology rather than facts and informed reasoned choices. …

Voters are willing to accept and defend actions of members of their party they condemn in others. When told the opposing party held a position they would condemn it harshly, but when it was revealed it was their party’s position, they did a 360, now defending it. Hypocrisy is innate in the thought of the typical voter. We would rather do less work and believe what we want than do more work and challenge our cherished views.

An alarming study showed that if nine people (who, unknown to the tenth, were shills working with the researcher) gave the wrong answer to an easy, straightforward question, the tenth, being the test subject, would give the wrong answer 75% of the time. Brain analysis showed these subjects actually believed their statements were factual; they were not just trying to fit in. This is precisely why mob politics (democracy) is the perfect political system to enable a population to accept falsehoods.