A specter is haunting American democracy: widespread voter ignorance. The specter is not a new one, by any means. But it is exacerbated by growing political polarization, which has accentuated the tendency of many voters to be highly biased in evaluating the information they do know. The problem of political ignorance is closely linked to another shortcoming of the ballot box: the near-powerlessness of the individual voter, who has only an infinitesimally small chance of affecting policy. There is no easy solution to these interlinked challenges. But they can be mitigated by empowering people to make more decisions by “voting with their feet,” instead of at the ballot box.

Decades of survey data – summarized in works like my book Democracy and Political Ignorance - show that most voters often don’t know even basic facts about government and public policy, such as the names of the three branches of government (most polls find less than half of adults can name all three), which officials are responsible for which issues, or the biggest expenditure items in the federal budget. Many studies also show that most voters often do a poor job of evaluating the political information they do learn. Instead of objectively evaluating the evidence about the costs and benefits of government policies and the performance of elected officials, they routinely act as biased “political fans,” overvaluing anything that supports their preexisting views, and ignoring or rejecting facts that cut against them. This terrible state of affairs is not the result of stupidity or lack of information, but of generally rational behavior on the part of most voters: a combination of “rational ignorance” (lack of incentive to seek out political information) and “rational irrationality” (lack of incentive to engage in unbiased evaluation).

Because of the very low odds that any one vote will have a decisive impact on electoral outcomes  (about 1 in 60 million in a U.S. presidential election), it is rational for individual voters to devote little or no time to acquiring information about government and public policy if the only reason to do so is to make a better decision at the ballot box. Many of those who do seek out political information do it for entertainment value or to cheer on their preferred political “team” rather than to get at the truth.

When I first started writing about political ignorance over 25 years ago, most scholars argued that we need not worry about the problem much, because voters could offset their ignorance by relying on information shortcuts (small bits of knowledge that substitute for larger bodies of information) or “miracles of aggregation,” under which the electorate as a whole makes good decisions even if most individual voters do not. In Democracy and Political Ignorance and other works, I have argued that information shortcuts and “miracles of aggregation” largely fail to offset ignorance and bias, and often even make things worse. Shortcuts are often misleading and require preexisting knowledge to work well. For example, the oft-used shortcut of voting against the incumbent if the economy is getting worse is only effective if 1) the incumbent’s policies are responsible for short-term economic trends (usually they are not), and 2) the opposing party’s policies are likely to be better. Miracles of aggregation are only effective under rarified conditions, such as when ignorant voters’ errors cancel each other out almost exactly.

Today, thanks in part to the rise of Donald Trump and his effective exploitation of political ignorance on immigration, trade, and other issues, most experts and political commentators agree that voter ignorance is a serious problem, even if they differ on how to address it. The 2024 election proved that, in some ways, I myself underestimated the problem. Previously, I had thought that information shortcuts would at least lead voters to reject politicians who had caused great harm in obvious, visible ways. But Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election – culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol – was not enough to persuade key swing voters to reject him in 2024. They instead prioritized the far less significant issue of price increases, and compounded that error with an ignorance-driven failure to understand that Trump’s agenda of tariffs and mass deportations would actually increase prices, rather than lower them.

While ignorance and bias have been a particularly severe problem on the right in recent years, they are not limited to any one side of the political spectrum. There is plenty of ignorance and bias among left-wing voters, as well, most notably when it comes to issues like the effects of price controls, and a tendency to believe that increases in prices are caused by “greed” or corporate conspiracies. Corporations are indeed greedy for profits. But greed – a constant – cannot cause price increases (a variable that, by definition, changes over time).  

Voter ignorance arises primarily from the insignificance of individual votes. This powerlessness is also problematic in its own right. Voting is often held up as the ultimate expression of political freedom. But a choice that has only a one in 60 million or even a one in 1 million chance of making a difference is not much of a choice at all. We would not say that a person has meaningful freedom of speech if he or she has only a one in 1 million chance of determining what views she can express, or meaningful freedom of religion if she has only a one in a million chance of determining what faith she wants to practice (if any).

There is no simple solution to the twin problems of political ignorance and the powerlessness of individual voters. But one that has great potential is empowering people to “vote with their feet.” People can vote with their feet between jurisdictions in a federal system, choosing which government policies they wish to live under. They can also do so through international migration. Most Americans either trace their ancestry to such immigrant foot voters, or are immigrants themselves. Foot voting can also occur in the private sector, when people use it to provide services traditionally associated with state and local governments. When people vote with their feet, they make individually decisive choices, not ones that have almost no chance of making a difference. For that very reason, foot voters generally seek out more information and do a better job of evaluating it than ballot box voters. If you are like most people, you probably spent more time seeking out evidence the last time you decided what television set to buy than the last time you decided who to vote for in any election. That’s because the decision about the TV set is one that has a high chance of being decisive, while that at the ballot box has almost no chance. I compile extensive evidence on the informational advantages of foot voting in my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.

There is much that can be done to enhance foot voting opportunities. Decentralizing more functions of government to the state and local level would create more space for policy diversity on a variety of issues and open up more opportunities for foot voting. In recent years, mobility has decreased due to widespread exclusionary zoning, which has made it difficult or impossible to build new housing in response to demand in many places where Americans would like to move – especially the poor and disadvantaged. We can break down that barrier by ending exclusionary zoning, or at least curtailing it through a combination of litigation and political action.

We can also enhance foot voting by leaving more issues to the private sector. Foot voting between private sector organizations – such as private planned communities – can enhance choice and lower moving costs, even as compared to foot voting between jurisdictions in a federal system. Limiting the scope of government can also mitigate political ignorance by reducing the range of issues rationally ignorant voters have to pay attention to, thereby ensuring that their limited knowledge is not so overstressed.

Finally, we can expand foot voting and political freedom by breaking down barriers to international migration, thereby enabling millions more people to escape poverty and oppression. For the many people living under dictatorships, foot voting through international migration is the only realistic mode of political choice potentially available to them.

There are limits to the extent to which we can expand foot voting. It is not the only factor to be considered in determining the scope and degree of centralization of government. But much progress can be made at the margins, in breaking down barriers to both domestic and international foot voting. At the very least, the issues of political freedom and voter ignorance should play a much larger role in debates over barriers to mobility than is currently the case. Similarly, foot voting should get much greater consideration in debates over how to address the menace of political ignorance.