Endogenizing the Median Voter: Public Choice Goes to School.

This paper investigates implications of the relationship between voter self-selection and the behavior of politicians. Voter self-selection arises in elections because only a portion of eligible voters actually vote. It is likely to be more pronounced whenever the implied net benefits from a given electoral choice are disproportionately distributed across voters. Public choice theory predicts that incumbent officials will manipulate this self-election pursuant to the maximization of their personal objective functions. This paper provides evidence from school bond elections that politicians influence voter self-selection via manipulation of election parameters. Copyright 1997 by Kluwer Academic Publishers