Post #16000 by albaby1 on the US Policy board

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I'm sure many people vote that way, either "D" or "R". For them, it's 30 seconds marking the ballot. I'd love it if they removed the "R" and "D" from the ballots. Then people would have to pay a bit more attention (though it might not make that much difference).

Oh, no - we shouldn't do that. For nearly all voters, paying virtually no attention is the rational thing to do for federal races. The voting pool is so incredibly large that there's virtually no chance that your single vote will have an impact on the outcome, and the "D" and "R" heuristic captures nearly all of the information a vote needs to decide their vote. Most voters are rationally ignorant when it comes to candidates.

There are some voters (like most of us on this board) that derive enjoyment from following political matters. Most voters don't, and there's little benefit to trying to get them to do more. They almost certainly won't, and for the few that do you'll be inflicting more cost on them than it's worth.

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