Why Vote?

Ilya Somin defends not voting if you are politically ignorant:

If you abstain from voting, you might worry that the rest of the electorate will take advantage of the situation to bias policy in favor of their narrow self-interest and against yours. But the evidence strongly suggests that most people’s political views are only weakly correlated to their self-interest. When voters support bad policies, it is usually out of ignorance rather than selfishness. There are some important exceptions to this generalization(e.g. – opinion on gun control is highly correlated with gun ownership, even after controlling for many other variables). But it does hold true for most major issues in the modern US.

Timothy B. Lee argues in favor of voting:

Letting your personal revulsion at the bad things your government does deter you from voting is an error exactly analogous to the pacifist who refuses to take up arms when faced with a hostile invading army.

Obviously, it would be nice if you could persuade the world’s aggressors to voluntarily renounce violence. But in the real world, the only thing that stops a violent aggressor is a willingness to use deadly force for defensive purposes. The pacifist stance is only viable when one lives in a society with others who are willing to take up arms in self-defense. Likewise, "principled" non-voters have the luxury of not participating in the political process because millions of others are doing the hard work of making democracy work, thereby staving off the much larger injustices that tend to occur in non-democratic political systems. We’re a wealthy and peaceful society, so we can tolerate a large number of such freeloaders. But there’s nothing virtuous about refusing to do your part.

Andrew Gelman sticks up for voting as well.