Today is Election Day!

Go forth and vote. After you've voted, come back and read up on the latest craze: academics questioning voter rationality.

• First, The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin and Jim Lindgren traded several posts about whether voting is even rational in the first place. Economists apparently agree that voting is an individually futile act, because your vote, by itself, is unlikely to affect the outcome of an election. But if one adheres to rational choice theory, what explains peoples' inclination to keep voting despite its apparent futility? Check out the exchange here.
• After that, head over to the Cato Institute's Cato Unbound. This month's discussion attacks voter rationality in a different manner, arguing that the decisions voters make are based on bad information or no information at all, and that a democracy governed by voter-inspired policymaking is probably hurting us more than it helps.

Personally, I was kind of depressed after reading all that. I'm perplexed about the divergent implications of what I've read. First, it's irrational to vote, because your vote matters not at all. On the other hand, all of us voters together are collectively, and terribly, uninformed. Our votes, harmless by themselves, are quite destructive when aggregated.

Maybe I shouldn't have voted at all. I've always enjoyed voting, but if economists are to be believed, my decision to vote early last week wasn't a rational one. And I was probably horribly informed anyway, harming America with every selection I made.

Oh, well. One can't cry over a vote already cast. I'll know better next time. :)