Situation 1: — If Petya and Masha don’t each bring twenty buckets of water by tomorrow, our city is doomed; we will die. Petya and Masha bend over backward and bring the required number of buckets. The city is saved.
Situation 2: — If all of us in the city don’t haul enough water (which works out to about one 2-liter bottle per person), our city is doomed; we will die. The city dies.
This is the collective action problem, well known to every psychologist. I wrote about it when we were collecting the first 100,000 votes for a worthwhile bill.http://goo.gl/p93rlG
If a person feels personal responsibility, they are likely to act. But if they are asked to make a small contribution alongside thousands of others, they tend not to do their part—it seems too small, too insignificant.
This is a good cause, sure, but why should I personally bother bringing my 2-liter bottle when a bunch of the most active people will haul enough for themselves and for me too? My contribution is purely symbolic and nobody needs it. Look, that guy with the megaphone is yelling so loudly that hundreds of people are carrying water already—they’re doing just fine without me.
This is the typical way people think about collective action in every era and on every issue, from defending cities to elections.
Of course, I’m leading up to our #Twenty campaign and its first important action—collecting 100,000 votes to formally submit the bill.
We have already collected 66,000 votes; our initiative is the most popular of all those registered:
But, just like last time, what was bound to happen sooner or later has happened: the reserves of my personal appeals have run dry (last time, this also happened at around the 70,000 mark). The active Mashas and Petyas have already voted; all that’s left are those who think the way I described above (yes, yes—you should be ashamed, because it’s true).
The chart tells us plainly: posts alone will not achieve anything anymore.
Voting momentum has dropped, and there are only two ways to restore it—if you recognize this very trap of collective action.
You recognize this trap of collective action and understand that everyone’s contribution is in fact equal, and that your vote matters just as much as mine. When you vote, it is not “just one vote,” but “one whole vote.”
Ask the most conscientious people to contribute more.
We believe more in the second option, so the slogan of the signature-gathering campaign is now not “go and vote,” but “bring one more vote.”
Here is a simple but extremely important set of instructions. It was created by our analytics team, with input from psychologists, sociologists, and genetic engineers. It draws on work from Oxford and Harvard. This is a universal path to victory. Go there and do what it says.
Just think about it: there are already 66,000 of us. Every one of us has at least one relative, acquaintance, or friend we can ask to vote.
Registration on Gosuslugi (Russia’s government services portal), which is required for voting, is something everyone needs anyway. In Moscow, for example, many schools already give parents access to students’ electronic gradebooks only through Gosuslugi. So you cannot say that you are making someone register just for the sake of voting.
One important thing—perhaps the most important: people do what their acquaintances and friends do, and they listen to their advice. This has been proven many times over.
I often come across this line of thinking: it would be silly for me to promote Navalny’s initiative on my Facebook. I have 58 friends, and they all read him already; if he has not convinced them, then I certainly won’t.
In fact, it is exactly the opposite. Your influence on your own social circle is 146 times greater than mine. Navalny lives inside a computer and, for all anyone knows, may not even exist. But Kolya, Pavlik, and Mikhal Yakovlich—they do exist. People go to rallies, vote, and haul metal barriers onto barricades not for a campaign with Navalny, but for a campaign with Kolya, Olya, Pavlik, and Mikhal Yakovlich.
66,000 people have voted. Ninety percent of them (of you) have social media accounts. So instead of liking my post or sharing it, you need to write your own: I support the ratification of Article 20. I do not like crooks. I have cast my vote for the bill, and I ask all of you who read me to do the same.
If everyone does this, then tomorrow there will be 50,000 such posts across Russian social media, with a combined reach of at least 10 million people. We will not just immediately collect 100,000 votes—we will also inform 10% of the country’s voters about the campaign. And that matters; you remember the 10%.
In short. As Master Yoda would say: I call upon the most conscientious, those who have already voted. Let us get to work in the #Twenty +1 campaign.
Here is an inspiring image for you to share:
A reminder that the instructions on how to register are here.
Answers to the question of why vote on ROI at all.
Remember: the best day to vote for the initiative was September 25. The second-best day to vote is today.