Your stupid.  At least according to U. Chicago Economist Steve Levitt.

DUBNER: So Levitt, how can you in your life, when you wander around, tell the difference between a smart person and a not-so-smart person?

LEVITT: Well, one good indicator of a person who’s not so smart is if they vote in a presidential election because they think their vote might actually decide which candidate wins. . . . there has never been and there never will be a vote cast in a presidential election that could possibly be decisive.

Presumably he believes that utterance increases his reproductive fitness.  I guess some mates find it sexy when a man signals his brilliant intent to defect from the social norms and undermine the commonwealth.  Though I suspect it’s just a maladaptation – the alpha male behaviors repurposed for dominance in graduate seminars.  Possibly membership in his tribe requires that he sing from this particular hymnal.  The  Omeratà  always requires that one not cooperate with the authorities; prisoner’s  dilemma  and all.

The little dose of voter  suppression just adds spice to this foolishness.

Just to be clear there is a powerful rational economic reason for voting.  No doubt we all believe that our fellow citizens, our society, will be better off if our guys win.  What’s that worth to me (not to them, but to me)?  Let’s put a tiny value on that.  Say a dime for every US citizen and a penny for every world citizen.  That’s about 73 million dollars.  So even if I set aside my strong believe that it is a sacred duty to engage in the democratic process the act voting is, effectively my purchasing a lottery ticket who’s prize is a 72 million dollar gift to charity.

I’m not surprised that Paul Ryan is selfish twit as well.  I’ve long suspected that some politicians run for office entirely as a  business  raise money, pocket money.  Which would seem to be the only rational  explanation  for why Ryan is spending time raising money in states that don’t matter.  He is not trying to win, he’s building a nest egg.

It must be hard running a political party where the core value is that individuals should be  maximally  selfish.  Though I guess if what your selling is regulatory capture of the banking and resource extraction industries and the abandonment of the weak in exchange for lower taxes then it is pretty good branding.