More on the dumbness of elections

[Just aimless bitching today, but yes, I did write an academic paper giving statistical evidence backing this stuff up. Except the paper focuses more on the leptokurtosis of the error term in probit estimates of voter turnout than on underwear.]

Miss JATMM of Mount Vernon, VA, points out that the last episode, about DC's taxation w/o representation, is indicative of the general hypocrisy of the political system: after all, when the Southern states felt underrepresented, they started shootin', and the Republican party has always pushed for more state's rights, and everybody all around has always been up for the `Equal representation' thing. Yet all this rhetoric evaporates when it comes to talking about DC getting the right to vote.

voter turnout v thong underwear So let me tell you what I've been working on, which I presented at the conference last weekend: evidence (but not proof) that voting behaves like a fashion statement. Some groups (e.g., yuppies) are all about it, and some groups (e.g., urban Blacks again) don't go for it. We can argue all day about whether higher turnout is a good thing or not---after all, low turnout means that only people who really care and have some amount of information will show up, and people are free to not vote if they choose not to. But spotty low turnout, where certain groups consistently show up and others consistently don't, distorts the outcome of even the simplest binary decisions.

As discussed previously, no measure of group will is true or infallible, but some are much more perverse than others. A big factor in that perverse-ness is when there are systematic distortions in voter turnout based on facts unrelated to the governing of the nation, such as those that would actually induce most people to show up to vote.

The probability of being the pivotal voter who has a true and honest effect on the election is nil, so turnout is based on everything else: either an irrational belief that one person can make a difference when he very probably won't, or voters who wish to express their opinion for other reasons, such as a sense that this is what civic-minded people do, or because they're bored or because their friends voted so why shouldn't they.

Adding to the problem, the theory says that there are multiple equilibria in such settings. Why do some groups display their thong underwear and some groups like to wear big hats? It's random and arbitrary, based on history, luck, and maybe the preferences of the group members. But it has an effect in the current world: if all of your friends are displaying thong underwear, you too will start to feel pressure to do the same, and may eventually find yourself lingering at the thong rack at the department store. Conversely, if the same you is in the typical office setting, you will feel pressure not to display your underwear, regardless of how strongly you feel that it should be freed from the constraints of your pants. The same people can have different levels of equilibrium thong turnout, depending on the situation---it's not at all inherent to the people themselves.

You may feel that it's a bit silly for me to be comparing turnout to underwear choice, but there are some important similarities. The first is that all costs for both expensive underwear and turning out to vote are your own; the second is that most or all benefits go to the people around you. After all, you can't see your own lower back, and most of the policy of this nation of 265,000,000 has nothing to do with you.

Why you choose to wear what you wear or why you choose to vote is a personal decision which includes any of a number of factors which are known only to you. But for many, one of those factors is how others treat them as a result of their actions. The important point here is that this treatment differs depending on the group: some groups find voting to be very important and reward those who vote, and some groups are indifferent or even hostile. This affects the final ballot count, and distorts the perception of `public will' in systematic ways.

In an alternate universe, only urban Black males tie sweaters around their necks, while yuppies wear five-sizes-too-large baggy pants. In an alternate universe, Blacks were historically allowed to vote, and the non-voting social norm that now pervades the cultures of Blacks, immigrants, and other historically disenfranchised groups never had a chance to take root. But a voting system here in the real world, where these groups have been disenfranchised, and do have a social norm different from the social norms of other groups, is a voting system whose outcome relies heavily on history, luck, and the whims of fashion.

Of course, the groups that are most likely to show low turnout are the groups that are generally economically disenfranchised (you get to work out which caused which), and are generally represented by the Labor party, or as we call it here in the U.S.A., the Democrats. This makes the entire process a partisan one: Reps want low turnout among these groups, and Dems want higher turnout. Which brings us to yet more hypocrisy of the political system. A good representative democracy may not have high turnout, but it has turnout which is representative of the people it, um, represents. Yet attempts to make turnout representative are not forthcoming among the Republican leadership.

Next time you're hanging out with your exceedingly patriotic pro-Bush pal, ask him/her why he/she believes that the 572,000 citizens of the District of Columbia shouldn't be represented in Congress while the 494,000 citizens of Wyoming should be. Next time you meet a Republican harping about liberal bias, ask them whether they're bothered that even the crappy measures we use to determine public opinion today are themselves biased against the poor and historically disenfranchised.