And ultimately I found one: leadership. Sure, my vote individually doesn't accomplish much, but by virtue of having cast it deliberately and with forethought, I gain a (very) small amount of moral authority, and lead by example. Every little bit of motivation helps other people get out to the polls. If a lot of us are leading by example in this way, it drags other people along who would not vote, and that does help the process work properly.

A lot of research in any field is second-rate - this actually seems pretty interesting.

The fact that standard economic theories imply that there's no rational reason to vote means, of course, that their models are incomplete because a large number of smart people do in fact perceive they have a huge reason to vote and do so (and unlike physics, the "general consensus" is important in economics).

The article in question pokes gentle fun at this, and then goes on to do some work to show what might be wrong. Perhaps you're not familiar with techniques in theoretical papers in the science (not just economics) but setting up a single, simple test model in your initial valuation of a theory or hypothesis is perfectly reasonable - you can critique the paper because you feel the test model is an outlier or just plain wrong, but it's not wrong to start arguing from a specific test case.

And their reply is cordial and also rational.

I think it's a win for them... best to concede gracefully.

Quite interesting to see the argument Mr Leonard has put forward to why it is not a good idea to look into the workings of our world. I know, it has become quite fashionable to proclaim 'I don't need an expensive study to tell me that.' This is usually uttered when a study's findings agree with the dear prejudices one harbours.

You can break down one of the more important findings of physics, Isaac Newton's discussions on gravity, to the soundbite 'Apples fall to the ground!' My guess is, many contemporaries of Mr Newton did that and asked themselves why someone would waste his time on such a matter.

Let's assume [wrongly, BTW, see below] voting is irrational. shouldn't we look into this fact, shouldn't we try to find out why it is irrational and why we do it regardless? If we then find out that there are rational foundations to irrational choices, shouldn't we all be interested in them?

But then, Mr Leonard himself gives us a good rational reason why we should vote: It's the basis of a free society to let the government be chosen by all the people. Unfortunately he fails to follow up with the consequence. If people do not vote they do not choose their government, they eventually forfeit the free society.

If that is not rational, I don't know what is. So, Mr Leonard claims that we do not need a rational reason for voting and then comes up with exactly that, a rational reason.

'Rational', though captured by economists, is not the same as 'money-making' or 'number-adding'.

"If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong."

I can't imagine needing any more rational reason to vote than this.

At least someone is paying attention to you.

Much like people stopping at stop signs, voting works better when when everyone who's qualified to vote votes.

If one is contemplating the rationality of voting on the basis of how much weight their individual vote carries, then one must complete the entire exercise. For example, if I believe that "my vote matters little compared to the overall vote" then I might be tempted to stay home and not vote. But the application of this supposition to the population at-large means that everybody, from an individual perspective, "might as well stay home and not vote". And using that as the basis, then the rational decision would be TO go out and vote since you would be the only one voting and thus your vote would swing the entire election. So it is safe to say, whether from an economic perspective or a human perspective, in both things are very inter-twined and inter-connected. Little actions influence great big results, and vice versa.