Comments on: Voter competence under compulsory voting

By: muzick

muzick — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 19:27:19 +0000

It did seem as if these were material issues not ethereal or esthetic ones, but I guess that depends upon to which god mr. retsu is referring… this may require a vote, before we tread further here, to see which god will represent whom.

By: Curtis Crawford

Curtis Crawford — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 16:24:09 +0000

To improve voter competence, what about adding to reregistration for every election a good multiple-choice exam to test one’s level of information concerning current public issues?

By: muzick

muzick — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 01:39:13 +0000

Brett – I appreciate the idea of having each person reregister for each election… it gets the internalization process under way. I also like the idea of eliminating party voting. Here in Chicago one is forced to choose a party during the primary stages of a mayoral election, yet can cross party line when *actually choosing. It removes my ability to vote against the worse of two evils (wink). Perhaps “votes against” could be part of all elections… and I’ll bet you it would raise the participation level of “competent” voters, and not just in Chicago. My idea is that an election results should be voided if less than 51% of the all the registered voters weren’t a positive vote (allowing for *negative votes). If not, try again… until one gets 51% positive affirmation. This would include a new reregistration for each try, raise the bar for “competency” and approach what was earlier referred to as “likelyhoods”. The extra full one percent is a little insurance against the other variables. The inauguration date would have to be a bit flexible, but the elections would still be regular…. a bit of a trimming for not having the immediate full confidence of the voters.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 03:19:12 +0000

Ok, serious suggestion this time: Require everyone who wants to vote to register all over again for each election, fairly well in advance. 1. People who don’t think about voting until the last minute probably won’t be competent voters. 2. It helps with fighting absentee ballot fraud, too. And I was quite serious about the eliminating straight party votes. Also helps with absentee ballot fraud… Or at least punishes it with repetative stress disorder.

By: Xavier

Xavier — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 02:51:10 +0000

Brett: the problem with forcing people to write in the candidtate’s name is that it would give a huge advantage to candidates with easy to spell names. It would also be a big advantage for encumbants. I agree with the general principle of forcing voters to meet some standard of competence, but that’s not the way to do it.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 01:32:50 +0000

Also, we’ve got one of the least corrupt policital systems in the world. Do you have, like, any evidence for that? For evidence the other direction from just what’s in the news: in most countries I’m familiar with, someone being offered $100K on the floor of the House to change their vote would be viewed as a major scandal, but here it’s apparently just one of those things.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 00:42:11 +0000

You want voter competence, require the voters to do something to prove that they’ve made some minimal effort to study their options: Make all the positions write in, with no straight ticket vote. You can’t vote for somebody unless you know their name. Sure, the number of valid votes cast would be pathetically low, but “universal sufferage” doesn’t require that everybody, or even many people, vote. It simply requires that they be ABLE to vote, if they wish.

By: Jonathan Goldberg

Jonathan Goldberg — Sun, 07 Dec 2003 23:17:02 +0000

It was enscribed: You don’t need to presume that increasing turnout causes incompetence in the individual voters. Simply reflect that competent voters will be more likely to vote than incompetent voters, so that if you boost turnout or (in the limiting case) make voting mandatory, the average competence of the voters goes down. Actually, what happens in low-turnout elections is that those who vote are those with a strong ideological motivation. It’s doubtful that this means they also exhibit what I (at least) think of as competence. For instance, right-wing Christians have a high turnout; that’s why they’re so important in primaries.

By: Ken

Ken — Sun, 07 Dec 2003 20:06:29 +0000

You don't need to presume that increasing turnout causes incompetence in the individual voters. Simply reflect that competent voters will be more likely to vote than incompetent voters, so that if you boost turnout or (in the limiting case) make voting mandatory, the average competence of the voters goes down. "It may, but in the U.S. at least, with a) two relatively non-ideological parties that continally push one another toward the center (Bushism notwithstanding), and b) a fairly corrupt political system in which wealthy donors exercise huge influence over policy making, not voting may not reflect apathy, ignorance or lack of virtue. Why vote when it makes so little difference either individually or collectively?" Bushism is centrist - Bush has brought about regular increases in domestic spending, left regulation basically untouched, and backed a plan to add benefits to Medicare. Far right he ain't. Also, we've got one of the least corrupt policital systems in the world.

By: Russell L. Carter

Russell L. Carter — Sun, 07 Dec 2003 19:47:55 +0000

“The argument is that mass participation, combined with voter equality, drives down voter competence. The main reason for this effect is that individual votes matter less when more people vote.” Divide the voting population into 12 partitions, with membership assigned by month of birth. Rotate per-election eligibility through the partitions.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Sun, 07 Dec 2003 18:34:36 +0000

Economists say it’s irrational for anyone to vote, right? Hmm. I remember a rational choice theorist trying to put “When is it rational to vote?” into an exam. The economist on the committee scrutinizing the draft papers volunteered – “On the day of the election?”

By: Katherine

Katherine — Sun, 07 Dec 2003 18:19:43 +0000

Economists say it’s irrational for anyone to vote, right? Maybe we should give just enough financial incentive to make it rational, or a wash, for the average person. Or have something like California did for the recall, where you can vote at any precinct if you fill out an affidavit that you didn’t vote at your own precinct and stiff penalties for voting twice. (If this isn’t feasible now, technology should make it feasible in the near future.) My precinct is in the opposite direction of my job, so the whole process takes an hour and a half plus—and I live in a city. Or free pie. People like free pie.

By: micah

micah — Sun, 07 Dec 2003 17:41:30 +0000

. . . to judge them as incompetent we need, surely, some antecedent view of what they’re supposed to be doing. I tried to avoid saying anything about the meaning of “competent” in my initial post—other than to gesture vaguely at some level of voter deliberation. But I think people who vote for candidates simply because they are placed first on the ballot are clearly “incompetent” voters. Perhaps this sets a floor for incompetence? People who have no idea who the candidates are, who are voting randomly, or arbitrarily seem uncontroversially to fall within this category. Another point regarding voter incompetence and rationality. On Ortiz’s view (which I’m not defending here), since it’s irrational for most people to vote (because their votes won’t “matter”), it might be rational to be an incompetent voter (i.e, one who votes arbitrarily)—especially where voting is compulsory (although Ortiz doesn’t draw this implication). In a noncompulsory system, if some voters get expressive benefit simply from the act of voting itself (rather than from the content of their votes), or if the act of voting is an expression of political membership or patriotism, or if it just makes a voter feel good, then, on Ortiz’s view, (some) voters have reason to vote independent of any view about political choices. They are rationally incompetent voters. More generally, whatever you think “competent” means, there are lots of voters out there who will not meet the standard. If we’re interested in a more deliberative politics, I think we have to worry about how electoral systems (including campaign finance reforms) deal with this problem. Ortiz thinks that shallow solutions are the only option. I’d like to think otherwise, but the evidence is kind of depressing.

By: loren

loren — Sun, 07 Dec 2003 16:07:01 +0000

Chris: “people who are borderline incompetentent aren’t going to be very discriminating as between these very small probabilities.” Relevant to Chris’s comments above, there are a few distinct senses of (in)competence: 1. being rock stupid, incurably malicious, bad at estimating likelihoods—that sort of thing. 2. being rationally ignorant, but cognitively able to think through our interests, reflect on moral distinctions and the public good, make decent use of evidence to estimate likelihoods 3. not voting strategically when that seems to be the only game in town How might these distinctions matter? One possibility: “expressive” or “sincere” voting (i.e. voting for what we really believe or to make a point, rather than to get the best feasible outcome, given evidence and institutions) might be rational if our vote doesn’t objectively matter, and we’d be competent in senses 1 and 2, but not 3. Or if, as much evidence suggests, we tend not to estimate likelihoods as decision and game theorists used to say we did, then we might still be rational in sense 3 (vote strategically given our limited abilities to evaluate the evidence at hand), but seem perilously close to failing in sense 1, and the jury would be out about sense 2. Muddled thoughts (I have a fussy baby to go tend to, so am distracted), but this might make for some interesting reflections, dunno.

By: T. Gracchus

T. Gracchus — Sun, 07 Dec 2003 15:11:26 +0000

Some queries: 1. The claim that wide spread voter participation leads to less thought about votes is an empirical claim; is there evidence for this? How did Ortiz go about comparing the amount of time spent thinking about votes? And why would amount of time spent thinking about a vote matter very much? 2. What is a competent voter? Somebody who votes right, or somebody who spends enough time thinking before voting (how much is that?), or what? Not having read the book, I am curious.