Comments on: What Voting Signals

By: Voting Signals and GTD « RAD Thoughts

Voting Signals and GTD « RAD Thoughts — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:01:15 +0000

[...] 14, 2009 Robin Hanson over at the Overcoming Bias blog has a post about What Voting Signals. He links to a NY Times article that describes a change in Switzerland in which every [...]

By: Elections et point focal « Rationalité Limitée

Elections et point focal « Rationalité Limitée — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:20:23 +0000

[...] idée est la suivante : on peut concevoir que l’acte de voter comme étant partiellement un moyen pour l’individu de se signaler. En votant, l’agent se signale auprès de ses proches qui vont l’observer voter, mais [...]

By: Geoffrey Falk

Geoffrey Falk — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:26:47 +0000

That’s a positive effect, if an insignificant one, not “Participation fell dramatically”….

Falling standards, or same old NYT?

“Standards fell dramatically.”

By: Constant

Constant — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:20:05 +0000

the NYT did severely misrepresent the paper

Falling standards, or same old NYT?

By: TGGP

TGGP — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 05:48:18 +0000

I recall in John Lott’s “Freedomnomics” an analysis of what policies reduced turnout. One of his conclusions was that before the secret ballot large numbers of people were basically being bribed to vote in certain ways but afterward those agreements were impossible to monitor.

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:29:23 +0000

I added to the post.

By: Hal Finney

Hal Finney — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:11:15 +0000

I just googled "vote by mail participation rate" and this was the first hit: Voting by Mail - Political Participation and Institutional Reform.

Oregon is the first state to exclusively vote by mail. In this new system, all ballots are mailed to the voter’s home, eliminating the polling-booth. To determine voting by mail’s impact on turnout, I analyze changes in Oregon’s voting rates and socioeconomic factors, national and regional voting trends, and other states’ turnout rates. I find that Oregon's turnout is up by 10.1 percent of registered voters when compared to previous elections. I show that other suggested reasons for this turnout increase are not the cause of Oregon’s change in voting rates.

By: Psychohistorian

Psychohistorian — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:11:06 +0000

Your data are flawed.

The digital example does not seem generalizable; they completely eliminated balloting stations, so the issue may have been more people not knowing how to vote / that there was an election. An election official explicitly mentioned that ignorance may have been a cause of low turnout. It’s also possible that there are a lot of older / non-tech-savvy voters in the area. It may be that the election was not advertised as well because there were no real places to vote.

The Swiss example is just blatantly misrepresented:
“In a difference-in-difference framework, I study the impact
of optional postal voting on Cantonal turnout. The effect is small (an increase in 2 percentage
points), and not statistically different from zero,” from the actual paper. That’s a positive effect, if an insignificant one, not “Participation fell dramatically.” There’s more detail, and there is some support for social pressure, as small communities with inconvenient voting times saw no meaningful increase in turnout. I didn’t see any negative changes exceeding a few percentage points, though I admittedly skimmed the paper. But, at the most, this paper suggests that the demand to vote is relatively inelastic with respect to the immediate inconvenience costs of voting. Also, social pressure appears to play a role, but it is unclear if this is properly described as signaling.

Methinks you need a lot more (and better) data before you conclude too much from this.

By: JH

JH — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:57:59 +0000

Do people actually run into many of their friends and family at the poll? I can see it in small towns, maybe, but not larger metropolitan areas. Is there are negative correlation between population and participation? People in smaller, rural areas are the ones who most likely have to answer to mom if they don’t vote.

By: Grrrr

Grrrr — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:51:09 +0000

So induced voters end up believing more that their democracy works. Even in the Soviet Union.

I don’t think the Soviet Union voting counts here. Given the total deficit of many kinds of rather basic foodstuffs, the voters were enticed to the voting stations simply by a network of kiosks beside the booths selling low-priced salami and the like on the voting day. Worked like a charm.