ARACELY ZAVALA

04/25/2021

RATIONAL VOTING
What is Rational Voting? Rational voting helps voters become more aware
of who they are voting for and of who they are
Rational voting is a using logic to vote for a electing. Many times, voters often blindly vote,
candidate a voter feels will best fit their personal base information off political ads, or even rumors
interests and will be good for the country and/or they’ve heard. This can then lead to bias
state. As stated by Lee, voters' decisions are opinions, lack of understanding, and other
rational if their voting behavior is based on voters' problems. Rational voting not only helps the
intention (intention-behavior consistency), and if community but also the country as a whole. Every
their intention is based on voters' evaluations of vote counts.
the performance or capabilities of the candidate
(candidate evaluation). Many Americans vote
choice is often determined by their political party
identification, whether that be Republican,
Democrat, Independent, or a member of another
party. Voters’ perceptions of candidates’
personalities’ (for example, their intelligence,
trustworthiness, and ability to be strong leaders)
also can determine who voters vote for.
How to be a Rational Voter? Checking Sources

1. Identifying all options A crucial step to starting candidate research is

2. Checking sources
3. Conducting research
4. Understanding candidates’ campaigns
5. Analyzing options
6. Coming to a final decision
Identifying All Options
When getting ready to begin the voting process
it’s crucial to start by creating a list of all
candidates. It’s important to keep in mind that
oftentimes the media can only focus on the most
popular candidates, however, it’s important to
look at everyone who is running. By creating a
list, it gives voters’ all the possible candidates
they can vote for that they feel will be best. While
sometimes voters may like specific qualities for
one candidate there may be another candidate
with the same quality, making it important to know
all candidates running.
looking at where to get political information. There
are many websites that can be biased and may
share false information. These websites are often
used to gain voter support for certain candidates.
Therefore, it’s important to make sure the
websites and/or source voters are obtaining
information is credible and reliable. The news
source should include both pros and cons or both
sides to a story to not being leaning more towards
one side rather than the other.
Trusted Sources:
 The Hill
 The Economist
 National Public Radio (NPR)
Unreliable Sources:
 Fox News
 CNN
 Buzzfeed
Conducting Research

When conducting research, it’s important to not solely look for the good or bad in each candidate.
Throughout the news many may hear good things or bad things about a candidate, however, it’s important to
conduct research before creating judgment. What we hear and see on the news or social media may not
always be true and is often falsified.

When looking at each candidate, don’t simply look at one site and believe everything that is said. Make sure
to look at multiple sources to ensure the information given is correct. Especially when researching we may
agree or disagree with some viewpoint, but it’s important to not jump to conclusions and automatically check
them off as a yes or no. It’s better to look at many different sources then giving an opinion when fully aware.

Understanding Candidates Campaigns’

Each candidate uses a campaign to explain their views and plans to voters all across the country. They’re
used all the time for all forms of elections. They allow for candidates to speak out about how they want to
better the country and try to persuade voters to vote for them in the upcoming election. To be a rational
voter, it’s recommended to watch and read as many if not all campaigns for each candidate to get a better
idea of their plans for the future. This then helps break down the list of candidates and helps voters see the
candidates with good plans and/ or bad plans.
Analyzing Options

Once getting to know each candidate along with their views and plans for America, it’s time to analyze all the
options. This is one of many important steps to choosing the candidate that you feel will be best. Taking time
and looking over each candidate comparing them to each other is the best way to go along with this. In each
candidate voters may not always agree with everything a candidate is saying, however, it’s important to
create a pros and cons list for each candidate to see which one you’re mostly agreeing with or disagreeing
with. You need to go over both the good and bad qualities of each candidate and choose the best option
even if you disagree with some.

Coming to a Final Decision

Final step is making the final decision. Now that that you’ve been able to research and understand the pros
and cons of each candidate it’s time to make the decision of which was the best candidate.

Everyone has different rules and expectations when it come to viewing candidates. What you think may be
right another person may view it as wrong. However, using your right to vote is a way to make your voice
heard and can make an impact on the entire election. All votes matter as it’s determining the future of a
country/state.

Not everyone uses their right to vote and sometimes if they do, they blindly vote. This is not a good idea as
conducting research on each candidate is important and can impact the future of many. The more people
who end up voting the more accurate the election can be and the better chances it is to get a candidate you
voted for.

References

Lee, I.-C., Chen, E. E., Yen, N.-S., Tsai, C.-H., & Cheng, H.-P. (2017, October 12). Are We Rational or Not? The
Exploration of Voter Choices during the 2016 Presidential and Legislative Elections in Taiwan. Frontiers in
psychology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5643908/#:~:text=Voters'%20decisions%20are
%20rational%20if,the%20candidate%20(candidate%20evaluation).

Krosnick, J. (n.d.). The Psychology of Voting. https://pprg.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/10-The-psychology-of-

voting.pdf.

ICPSR. (n.d.). Voting Behavior. https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/instructors/setups/voting.html.