The elderly now represent a major electoral group in advanced democracies, with pensions often being the most expensive cash benefit in advanced welfare states. Despite exten- sive literature on pension politics and reforms, causal evidence on how pension benefits affect political behavior is scarce. By matching administrative individual-level pension payment data with voter file records of public employees in Illinois, we exploit three benefit-expanding reforms to explore their consequences for electoral participation. Our regression discontinuity analysis shows that pension benefits do not mobilize voters in the short nor long term. Additionally, there are no significant differences along partisan lines or income levels, indicating that material resources have a limited effect on the electoral behavior of retired individuals. Contrary to conventional wisdom, increasing pension ben- efits does not enhance political participation.