How Elections Really Work

George Rebane

When the overwhelming fraction of voters consists of people indifferent, ignorant, or just plain stupid, how does a republican form of democracy work?  Why doesn’t it just collapse right away as such people cast ballots?

Political scientists have studied this remarkable stability of democracies, and have noticed that somewhere in the 20th century something was beginning to break down – voters around the world were voting for policies that clearly were not best for them or their country.  To understand what was happening, we need to back up a bit.

In 2007 Bryan Caplan wrote The Myth of the Rational Voter – Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.  In this impressive essay, Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason, reports on studies showing that the ‘Miracle of Aggregation’ has broken down.  Saddled with voters of moderate motivations and means, this ‘miracle’ is what apparently kept democracies going for almost two hundred years.  Then with the advent of mass broadcast media in the 1920s, things began to change.

The basic principle behind the Miracle of Aggregation (MOA) was that the ignorant, indifferent, and stupid people - comprising the overwhelming mass of say, about 19 out of 20 – pretty well split themselves at the ballot box on issues and candidates.  Their votes were generally not based on any consistent, coherent, or compelling thesis, and therefore they divided themselves equally over the presented alternatives.  The remaining voters, according to the MOA, were the diligent and intelligent voters who cast their votes based on arguments grounded in defendable reason.  So if the big mass split themselves evenly, the smart voters who did their homework would determine the usually beneficial outcome.  This result is shown in the top seesaw of the figure where 96% of the voters lack the three Cs mentioned above, and the remaining 4% are blessed with such qualifications.

With the advent of mass media, everyone could have access and be exposed to campaign ‘literature’ that didn’t even require a modicum of literacy to understand.  Now everyone would be exposed to messages, short (preferably) or long, delivered by authoritative personages or even favorite entertainers and athletes.  Everyone could feel that they could see into the essence of the issue and decide the right way to vote.  And such convictions became stronger as the media messages were repeated day in and out.

Politicians, using some back-up from academia, quickly learned that if they could just sway the ignorant and mentally lame, they would easily overwhelm that bothersome minority of voters who kept asking those embarrassing questions and demanding substantive answers.  It wasn’t long before ‘Madison Avenue’ began to equally serve candidates and cereal companies because they could demonstrate the effectiveness of what now has come to be known as the properly positioned sound bite.  To torpedo the MOA, go directly to the masses – ‘don’t think, just emote and vote'.

By the 1930s such voter communications became the grist of electioneering – all that it needed, according to the psychologists and statisticians, was money.  For when you had money, and lots of it, you got the desired effect shown in the bottom part of the figure (percentages exaggerated, but not too much).  In short, with sufficient media coverage you could overwhelm your opponent by causing a massive shift in the more or less mindless mass, and make the small fraction of intelligent voters irrelevant in the election. 

In recent decades the US Government Department of Education has provided what may be the definitive nail in the MOA’s coffin – Literacy in the Labor Force: Results from the National Adult Literacy Survey.   Here we learn the real stats of our literacy limitations and get a hint of how almost totally innumerate we are.  Numeracy is the collection of tools that a (non-technical) person needs to be able to understand numerical data, do arithmetic, comprehend logical arguments, and interpret graphical displays of information in everyday media.  And our political and legal cadres understand these deficits very thoroughly.  Today ALL issues are dominated by numbers which serve to roll the eyeballs of the innumerate.

So now we have some science and academic weight behind what we have suspected for years.  The MOA’s death explains why cash has been king in politics and tomorrow will be emperor – because that is what you need in abundance to sway the sheep and today the sheep determine the election outcomes.  If the politicians only had to present arguments of verifiable fact and defendable reason, then it would cost a comparative pittance to prepare issue position papers, media spots, and real debates with considered answers (not stand-up one-liners in real time).  The whole thing could be published on the web, and be available at the schedule and to the depth that each voter can handle.

RIP Miracle of Aggregation.

Comments

[Russell Steele]

George,

Interesting post, I know we have talked about this subject in the past and, yes I still need to read Caplan's book. As you know we have been traveling in Canada for almost a month and now we are back in the US. What is bother me is the US wait staff, stores, restaurants and service station seem to be very close to brain dead and quite surly. Most (not all) do not think ahead, are slow to respond to a problem or issue, and have great difficulty with numbers. We perhaps might not have noticed it, if we not been in Canada where most of the wait staff seems to be quite sharp and many are multi-lingual. Even those that only spoke french, were sharp enough to figure out what we wanted. I am not sure if it schooling or on the job training in Canada. Are we dumbing down our US school systems to point people are having a hard time functioning in a work environment. Cannon fodder for sound bite politics.

A big part of the CARB out reach is to the children, when we can not dumb down are are using twisting there minds with junk. More cannon fodder the emotional arguments, the poor penguins, and furry polar bears. CARB Scoping Plan

Reaching Children through Schools
Setting California on track to a low-carbon future beyond 2020 is the definition of a
multi-generational challenge. This means that climate-related education in schools
will be a central element of California’s Plan. By 2010, California will develop
climate change education components to the State’s new K-12 model school
curriculum as part of the Education and the Environment Initiative (AB 1548, Pavley,
Chapter 665, Statutes of 2003). In the meantime, State outreach will continue
through the Cool California web pages (www.coolcalifornia.org) and the continued
support of student educators through the California Climate Champions program.
Expanding the knowledge and opportunities of young people to participate in
promoting their own and their communities’ environmental health will be an
important theme for all these efforts..

More cannon fodder, more sheep for the Al Gores of the world.

[George Rebane]

State sponsored "climate related education" hearkens back to the days of the USSR - you bend the twig early enough and the tree grows to wherever you want. It has now started here. Ever wonder why the MSM have never picked up on this notion of convincing the compliant and confused?

[Jeff Pelline]

My prayers go to these so-called "ignorant, indifferent or just plain stupid" or "brain dead" service people (aka fellow human beings) who are needed to rescue pompus RV drivers whose vehicle poops out on the side of the road.

[George Rebane]

Jeff, all of our prayers go out to such people because in a pluralistic democracy they will determine our future. It is your charter and commission to educate those whom you can. These folks seldom if ever grace blogs like mine. Too many big words and multi-sentence paragraphs.

[Russell Steele]

Speaking of being pooped out on the side of the road. We had another very positive Les Schwab Tires experience today. We had some unusual tires wear on one of our Airstream tires. We stopped at a Les Schwab store in Twin Falls to have the trailer tires rotated. In the process, they discovered one of the tires treads had separated. In 30 minutes we had a new tire and were on our why. This is the third time we have had a great experience at Les Schwab while traveling. They hire smart people and then train them in customer service skills. What an interesting concept.