"Rational" Irrationality?

At Hit and Run, Brian Doherty explains one of the key principles of Bryan Caplan's latest book:

This goes beyond the standard public choice concept of "rational ignorance" (where voters aren't educated on policy because it doesn't pay off personally for them to be so) to point out that, since people get some pleasure out of certain irrational beliefs, and in a voting process in which we have almost zero chance of affecting the outcome it doesn't particularly cost us anything to indulge them, people have economically sound reasons to not bother being rational when they vote.

I get that they're trying to use it in a strictly economic sense but why must we flatter this behaviour with a term like rationality? Can we not just refer to "those people" as oafish, ballot-stuffing busybodies? [comment section bonus links to the Onion 1,2]

Don Boudreaux has more on the collective action problem:

When the personal material cost, at the time of individual action, of expressing one's fantasies is near-zero, very little exists to check the expression of those fantasies. No matter how bizarre, inconsistent, or dangerous they might be if real-world attempts are made to act upon them, if a holder of such fantasies suffers no personal cost from advocating his or her crazy idea, lots of crazy ideas will be advocated. This fact is especially true for those crazy ideas that, when held and advocated publicly by certain people, fill those certain people with a personal sense of distinction, heroism, or self-satisfaction.

How many times do you overhear in casual conversation "y'know that oughtta be against THE LAW" and be thankful that the transmission process from representative opinion to regulatory fiat is as cumbersome and inefficient as it is?
# 8:57 AM