How do people assign responsibility for the outcome of an
election? In previous work, we have shown that responsibility
judgments in achievement contexts are affected by the probability
that a person’s contribution is necessary, and by how
close it was to being pivotal (Lagnado, Gerstenberg, & Zultan,
2013). Here we focus on responsibility judgments in voting
scenarios. We varied the number of people in different voting
committees, their political affiliations, the number of votes
required for a policy to pass, which party supports the policy,
and the pattern of votes (creating 170 different situations). As
expected, we found that participants’ responsibility judgments
increased the closer the voter was to being pivotal. Further,
judgments increased the more unexpected a vote was. Voters
were assigned more responsibility when they voted against the
majority in the committee, and when they voted against their
party affiliation.