On Voter Incentives To Become Informed

Before an election, two candidates choose policies which are lotteries over electionday distributive positions. I find conditions under which there exist mixed-strategy probabilistic-voting equilibria which are independent, treating voter groups independently. When voter efforts determine the quality of their signals regarding candidate positions, voters can have strong incentives regarding their visible efforts made before candidates choose policies. Also, scale economies in group information production can make voters prefer large groups. Even with zero information costs, however, voters can ex ante prefer ignorance to full information. Optimal ignorance emphasizes negative over positive news, and induces candidates to take stable positions. ∗I thank Mike Alvarez, Matt Jackson, Steven Knack, John Ledyard, Richard McKelvey, and Thomas Palfrey for comments on earlier versions of this paper. I especially thank Kim Border for help in thinking about proving existence. I thank the New Millennium Program Office of the Jet Propulsion Lab of NASA for financial support. This paper is a chapter in my 1997 Caltech Ph.D. dissertation. †[email protected] http://hanson.gmu.edu 704-993-2326 FAX: 704-993-2323MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030