Vote or... not, I guess

Someone recently emailed me this video, with the subject "A Subtle Urging to Vote".




I am going to vote tomorrow, if for no other reason than because my fiance will kill me if I don't. It's not that I don't feel strongly about the election or that I think there are no differences between the candidates. But, as economist Gordon Tullock explains, voting makes little sense when you do the cost benefit analysis.

Consider the benefit side, for a minute. My vote will only count if the outcome of the election would have been different had I not voted. This means I have to cast the deciding vote; otherwise the outcome would have happened even if I had stayed at home. So what are the odds that I'll cast the deciding vote? It depends on where I live:

The states where a single vote is most likely to matter are New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire and Colorado, where your vote has an approximate 1 in 10 million chance of determining the national election outcome. On average, a voter in America has a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the presidential election.

That's from research by Andrew Gelman, at Columbia University. So it's not that my vote doesn't count, it's just that it counts very, very little. And I'm not even lucky enough to live in a swing state.

So does this mean I think voting is a waste of time? Not really. While the benefit side is low (at least as far as expected payoff), the cost side is pretty low too, though perhaps not low enough. I'm lucky enough to live next door to my polling station. Others are not so lucky. Hopefully there will be more support for the idea of moving Election Day to the weekend so no one has to work it around their job.

We can't make the benefits any greater, but we can sure make voting less costly.

Vote and Die

Back in 2004, Steven Landsburg explained why many economists don't bother to vote:

Your individual vote will never matter unless the election in your state is within one vote of a dead-even tie. (And even then, it will matter only if your state tips the balance in the electoral college.) What are the odds of that? Well, let's suppose you live in Florida and that Florida's 6 million voters are statistically evenly divided—meaning that each of them has (as far as you know) exactly a 50/50 chance of voting for either Bush or Kerry—the statistical equivalent of a coin toss. Then the probability you'll break a tie is equal to the probability that exactly 3 million out of 6 million tosses will turn up heads. That's about 1 in 3,100—roughly the same as the probability you'll be murdered by your mother.

Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) provides a similar explanation. Many people retort, "if everyone thought that way, then no one would vote". But, of course, many people do vote. The real question is, given the limited impact of any one vote, how seriously (or "rationally") do people take this opportunity? Bryan Caplan has many interesting thoughts on this issue.

But now voting-agnostics have another line of argument: voting can kill. According to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association:

On the eight election Tuesdays, a total of 1,265 people -- drivers, passengers or pedestrians -- were killed during the hours that polls were open, equivalent to 158 per day or 13 per hour. On the 16 Tuesdays a week before and a week after election day, 2,152 people were killed in the same time span -- equivalent to 134 per day or 11 per hour.

Seems like Diddy may have gotten this wrong:

The Great Schlep

Does your grandma think Obama is a Muslim intent on destroying Israel? Sarah Silverman has some advice:


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

This is paid for by the Jewish Council for Education and Research.

What's a feminist to do?

By now the news of John McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin for his running mate is well known and the Republican camp is touting it as an enlightened pick that furthers the cause of the feminist movement. I've hear several right-wing pundits declare that although Palin is pro-life and a former beauty queen, as the mother of five and a female governor, she is a role model on par with Hillary Clinton for the "average female voter."

So far, I have seen no record that Palin's history of leadership has supported women in America. Particularly not to the extent that Clinton's investments in Head Start, healthcare, prenatal care and sexual health education supported women for nearly two decades. Palin's views on the choice movement alone suggest she is intolerant of the rights of women who disagree with her views on reproduction and morality. In fact this nomination has also been criticized as an insult to women.

What I have seen in the media is in-depth coverage of Palin's personal life. Reports that her 17-year old daughter is expecting and will marry the father of her unborn child surfaced today. The choices that teens make about their sexuality and their fertility are often debated (I'm recalling the media circus that Jaime Lynn Spears faced recently) in American culture. However, speculation around how Palin handles her own daughter's pregnancy has no place in speculation on how she will lead and advise our country's political policy. One would hope that faced with this public scrutiny she would understand the need for privacy and personal choice in reproductive matters.

More importantly, this is a chance for pro-choice feminists to use the incident as a platform to judge Palin not as a mother or a soon-to be grandmother, but respect her right to choose and advice her own daughter privately --judging her own her own record as a politician, which up until now is fairly unimpressive.

Did you know the word gullible isn't in the dictionary?

We voters are a generally gullible group. But there's something about Barack Obama that makes people willing to believe anything. And there's only so much one can do to dispell the myths: yes, he's a Christian; yes, he's an American citizen; yes, he believes in Israel's right to exist.

Now there's a new one to grapple with: no, Obama is not the Anti-Christ.

Apparently John McCain's attempts to woo the Christian-right has led to some confusion:

"...a not-insignificant number of Americans, after viewing John McCain's Web ad The One, with its Messianic overtones -- come away thinking that Barack Obama has been sent from Hell to Earth to turn its citizens against God. For inspiration, some of these people seem to be drawing from the fictional Left Behind series, which posits a dystopian future where the Anti-Christ comes to Earth as a charismatic politician.

The book's author's, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, have insisted they don't believe Obama is the Anti-Christ, although they can't resist taking a dig at the candidate in the process...

'I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the antichrist,' adds LaHaye, 'but from my reading of scripture, he doesn't meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the antichrist will be an American.'"

How does this happen? Well the media doesn't help. Rather than ignoring the story as unworthy of discussion, CNN's Newsroom broadcast a report on the issue, with the caption "Obama the Anti-Christ?" in bold at the bottom of the screen (to view the video, click the link above the proceeding quote).

But beyond the media, it may be our own brains that are playing tricks on us. According to neurobiologists Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt, the quirky way we process information causes us to believe some pretty unbelievable things:

Our brains tend to remember facts that accord with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it. In one Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were shown two pieces of evidence. One confirmed the claim that capital punishment deters crime, and the other contradicted it. Both groups were more convinced by the evidence that supported their initial position, a phenomenon known as biased assimilation.

This is one reason that propagandists can be effective simply by creating confusion. Unscrupulous campaign strategists know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked.

The human brain also does not save information permanently, as do computer drives and printed pages. Recent research suggests that every time the brain recalls a piece of information, it is "written" down again and often modified in the process. Along the way, the fact is gradually separated from its original context. For example, most people don't remember how they know that the capital of Massachusetts is Boston.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, leads people to forget over time where they heard a statement - and whether it is true. A statement that is initially not believed can gain credibility during the months that it takes to reprocess memories from short-term to longer-term storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications may gain strength. Source amnesia could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some time for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to affect his standing in the race.

In another Stanford study, students were exposed repeatedly to the unsubstantiated claim that Coca-Cola is an effective paint thinner. Those who read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports (rather than the National Enquirer), giving it a gloss of credibility. Thus the classic opening line "I think I read somewhere," or even reference to a specific source, is often used to support falsehoods. Similarly, psychologist Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues have shown that if people are distracted from thinking critically, they default to automatically accepting statements as true.

So the CNN story intended to dispel a ridiculous rumor may have simply propagated it.

Much as we'd like to believe that people stand in voting booths rationally weighing the pros and cons of different candidates, it is simply not the way things work. And worse, this is not a problem that can be solved by people getting "more informed"; that could exacerbate things.

At the risk of sounding pessimistic, we may have to accept this fact of democracy. Voters do not have a great enough incentive to rationally evaluate their political decisions; instead we allow the emotional, reactive part of our brains to take over.

Beyond that, we should encourage Journalism schools to heed Wang and Aamodt's advice for the media:

1. State the facts without reinforcing the falsehood. Repeating a false rumor can inadvertently make it stronger. In covering the controversy over a New Yorker cover caricaturing Barack and Michelle Obama, many journalists repeated the charges against the candidate - often citing polling data on how many Americans believe them - before noting that the beliefs were false. Particularly damaging is the common practice of replaying parts of an ad before debunking its content.

A related mistake is saying that something is newsworthy because "the story is out there." Reporting on coverage by a less credible source such as The Drudge Report, even with disclaimers, will inevitably spread the story. False statements should not be presented neutrally since they are likely to be remembered later as being true.

2. Tell the truth with images. Nearly half of the brain is dedicated to processing visual information. When images do not match words, viewers tend to remember what they see, not what they hear. Karl Rove has said that campaigns should be run as if the television's sound is turned down.

Television journalists should avoid presenting images that contradict the story. One recent CNN report on autism was accompanied by images of concerned mothers, vaccines, doctor’s offices, and autistic children - even though the voiceover reported a scientific finding that debunked a link between vaccines and autism. Another recent story featured a threatening swarthy face subtitled "Obama the Antichrist?" - a statement that CNN would presumably not claim to be true.

3. Provide a compelling storyline or mental framework for the truth. Effective debunking requires replacing the falsehood with positive content. A good response to the McCain rumor, for example, would tell about his adoption of his adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget, thereby accounting for photographs of him with a dark-skinned child.

4. Discredit the source. Ideas have special staying power if they evoke a feeling of disgust. Indeed, brain pathways dedicated to processing disgust can be activated by descriptions of morally repellent behavior. The motives of the purveyors of falsehoods can provide a powerful story hook. A recent example is the press coverage pointing out Obama Nation author Jerome Corsi's motivations and past of racist Web commentary and allegations of Bush Administration complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

To avoid contributing to the formation of false beliefs, journalists may need to re-examine their practices. In 1919, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum. But by better understanding the mechanisms of memory, perhaps journalists can move their modern audience closer to Holmes's ideal.

It's Not Just the Other Guy Who's Irrational

As the Democratic nomination process mercifully comes to a close, here’s a pop quiz for all those news junkies out there: what’s the most important difference between the two remaining Democratic candidates? If you said “one has a uterus”, I suppose you get partial credit. But the most important difference between the candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is their views on healthcare mandates. Senator Clinton favors a requirement for all adults to purchase healthcare (which will be subsidized for those who cannot afford it) while Obama eschews such requirements. An overview of the research suggests that evidence for both sides is mixed (if you think I’m glossing over the issue, you can read further discussion from smart policy experts here, here and here), and that even without mandates, 97% of the population can be covered by either candidates’ plans. Aside from this relatively small difference, both candidates favor increased social spending, repealing the Bush tax cuts and a more internationalist and multilateral approach to foreign policy.

If Clinton and Obama are so similar, then how are Democratic voters making their decisions? After all, recent polls have suggested that 40% of Clinton supporters (and a smaller, but large enough percentage of Obama supporters) would be so disappointed if their candidate lost that they would prefer to stay home on Election Day, or even vote for John McCain. How can theory help us explain this?

Standard self-interested voter models state that rational voters (in the classical economics sense of the word “rational”) determine the candidate who best aligns with their interests; since the two candidates are so similar, voters should be indifferent between them. As one candidate (perhaps randomly) gains a lead in the voting, subsequent voters will begin to vote strategically, based on “electability” and their perceptions of what other voters will be thinking. In due time, a nominee would emerge. But according to Bryan Caplan, an Economics Professor at George Mason University, the self-interested voter model is wrong. People are rational, yes, but only when they are forced to be.

Here’s an example. Ask a Chicago Cubs fan about the odds that their team will (finally) win the World Series this year. He’ll give you a number, say 50% or more. Now ask him if he’d like to bet on that. He’ll probably sulk in his beer. When thinking in the abstract, we tend to re-enforce beliefs that jive with our worldview. Will I work out 5-times a week in order to lose weight? Of course I will! Is NAFTA to blame for manufacturing jobs lost in the US? Damn those Mexicans! But when we’re forced to pay the consequences of our decisions, we tend to think more rationally. Maybe the fact that you can barely drag yourself to the gym once a week suggests your lofty work-out goals are out of reach. Maybe all those economists who say the decline of manufacturing jobs as a percentage of total employment is because of technological change are on to something (BTW, manufacturing output has actually increased over the last twenty years. We’re producing more stuff with less people because we’re using more machines and less physical labor).

So how does this relate to Democratic voters? All participants in a democracy know in the back of their minds that they will not cast the deciding vote. With 100 million registered voters in the country, even if only 10% actually vote, the chances of your vote determining the outcome is so small as to be irrelevant. As a result, there’s less incentive to really analyze policies and make a “rational” decision. It’s much more emotionally appealing (and less psychologically costly) to vote based on one’s worldview—whether you think a black man or a woman “deserves” the Presidency more to make up for historical discrimination; whether you can relate to them on a personal level; which one you want to have a beer with (remember that?).

When people base their votes on their own worldview, rather than their rational assessment of policy prescriptions, then they tend to create large gulfs between even vastly similar candidates, and sometimes even vote for candidates whose policies they don’t even like. How else can we end up in a situation where a Harvard Law grad is seen as pompous and aloof, while a Yale Law grad is a “Working Class Hero”?