SOLUTIONS TO SELF-CHECK QUESTIONS
17.1 Voter Participation and Costs of Elections
- All other things being equal, voter turnout should increase as the cost of casting an informed vote decreases.
- The cost in time of voting, transportation costs to and from the polling place, and any additional time and effort spent becoming informed about the candidates.
17.2 Special Interest Politics
- The costs of organization and the small benefit to the individual.
- Domestic cotton producers would lobby heavily to protect themselves from the competition, whereas the consumers have little incentive to organize.
17.3 Flaws in the Democratic System of Government
- True. This is exactly what occurs in a voting cycle. That is, the majority can prefer policy A to policy B, policy B to policy C, but also prefer policy C to policy A. Then, the majority will never reach a conclusive outcome.
- The problem is an example of a voting cycle. The group will vote for mountain biking over canoeing by 2-1. It will vote for canoeing over the beach by 2-1. If mountain biking is preferred to canoeing and canoeing is preferred to the beach, it might seem that it must be true that mountain biking is the favorite. But in a vote of the beach versus mountain biking, the beach wins by a 2-1 vote. When a voting cycle occurs, choosing a single favorite that is always preferred by a majority becomes impossible.
- The four Coca-Cola candidates compete with each other for Coca-Cola voters, whereas everyone who prefers Pepsi had only one candidate to vote for. Thus the will of the majority is not satisfied.
