Democracy Should Be Strengthened by Expanding 'Foot Voting' Over Traditional Ballot Box Voting
Source: Ilya Somin. "NYU Democracy Project Article on How to "Strengthen Democracy by Empowering People to Vote with their Feet"." February 18, 2026. reason.com
The Gist
The author argues that American democracy has serious problems because most voters don't know much about politics and don't have good reasons to learn, since their individual votes barely matter. Instead of trying to fix voting, we should let people 'vote with their feet' by choosing which places to live and which services to use, because people make much better decisions when those decisions actually affect their own lives.
Conclusion
American democracy can be strengthened by empowering people to make more decisions through 'voting with their feet' (choosing jurisdictions and services) rather than relying primarily on ballot box voting
Premises
- Most voters are rationally ignorant about basic political facts and policy issues due to the infinitesimally small chance their individual vote will matter
- Voters who do acquire political information often evaluate it in a biased, irrational way because they lack incentives for accuracy
- When people 'vote with their feet' by choosing where to live or which services to use, they make individually decisive choices that directly affect their lives
- People invest more time and effort researching consequential personal decisions (like buying a TV) than political decisions because the former are actually decisive
- Foot voting can be enhanced through decentralization of government functions, elimination of exclusionary zoning, expanded private sector alternatives, and reduced barriers to migration
- Limiting government scope reduces the range of issues voters need to understand, making their limited knowledge more effective
Assumptions
- Individual decision-making with direct consequences produces better outcomes than collective decision-making with diffused consequences
- Political ignorance is primarily a structural problem rather than a character flaw
- Competition between jurisdictions and private providers leads to better governance and services
- People's revealed preferences through mobility choices are more reliable indicators of their true preferences than their voting choices
- Decentralization and privatization are generally preferable to centralized democratic control