Paradox of Democracy

Originally this was to be a reply to Luke's comment in Nick's post, but it turned into a tangential rant about the apathetic state of American voters, so I will turn it into a complete post. This should be fun for you political junkies...

Luke: The paradox that you faced reminds me in many ways of the paradox that many Americans now face concerning the upcoming presidential election.

You say that, at one point, you regretted going on the field trip because, had you gone to your classes instead, they would have been 'depleted' and hence turned into study halls. If one or two people think that way, that will be exactly the case. But what if all the Lukes out there decided to do the same thing? The classes would no longer be depleted, and the teachers would decide to teach. Your choices and actions both influence and are influenced by the system.

Anyone who lives in a democracy such as ours faces the same paradox. The substitute teacher that we had in physics class the other day said that he would refrain from voting in the upcoming election because his vote could not possibly make a difference. As one voter, he is right, he cannot significantly affect the system. Yet what if all the voters in the country got the same idea into their heads? The system would collapse.

The same thing can be applied to any broad based social movement. Many, many people that I know (myself included) go around clamoring that America is in need of some sweeping reforms. But nobody I know really tries to do anything about it (myself included). Sure, we may go to demonstrations in Scoville Park, or even march in protest of the political conventions, yet no large scale social movement on par with the Civil Rights movement or the Anti-Vietnam War movement materializes. Yet many people wish that one would. Quite possibly, there are enough people harboring such beliefs that, if they all acted on them, some major change could be accomplished. Yet everybody is 'just one person,' and their actions alone can accomplish next to nothing.

Now it's time for Mark to make some weird connections. In calculus class, we learned that an integral is the sum of an infinite number of infinitesimal areas under a curve. That's probably a bad definition, and if anyone understands it I will be amazed, but whatever... if you know what an integral is, follow my reasoning, and if you don't, go ask a math teacher (if you are really curious). But anyways, the point is that each individual area has a value that is infinitesimally small, yet when they are all added up, a reasonable number, such as 12 or 84/3, emerges. That is sort of like the political system: as individuals, we are infinitesimal areas under points, yet as a group we are a solid area under a curve.

Anyways, a more pertinent connection would be this: James Madison, in his Federalist #10, addressed the issue of faction in a democracy so large as America. Before his treatise, the accepted political theory stated that democracy, or even representative republicanism (a more accurate term) could not work in a country so large as America because the voices of the minority would be stifled in the face of such an overwhelming quantity of the majority. If I recall, the gist of Madison's counterargument was that the interests of individuals are diverse and spread across the board, so that most people will get their way most of the time.

Maybe that worked for Madison, but our country now is home to some 300 million people, and it truly does seem absurd that one voice out of 300 million can matter; at least, the insignificance is a hurdle that some people just cannot clear. This seems to me to be a fact of human psychology, and maybe the old political theorists were right. If this apathetic political attitude is to be assuaged here in America, local governments may need to be given more control. But I've rambled on for far too long about something that doesn't even relate to the topic. If, however, anyone wants to add their take on states' rights or whatnot, go right ahead.

Comments

[Nick L]

-Mark
Are you taking AP Government because we talk about the issue of voter apathy a lot? You seem to say that apathy requires more government control. If I missed you point after all that, sorry. And while I agree with you; I think the reason voters are apathetic is that they feel no control.
Like today Mertz and I had a discussion of Special Interest groups and their place under the vision of Madison's Fed. 10. That these groups represent a minority faction giving people a voice. The presence of these groups throughout American history has given the minority a voice so if that’s why you are saying voter are apathetic, then I would disagree with you. However, the Special Interest problem in America is interesting. While they play a part in giving Americans a voice, they also seem to stifle it. Special interest can pull the politicians away from public opinion with incentives like money and positive press during the campaign. It is this disconnect that makes voter apathetic.
Furthering the divide is the lack of strength in political parties. As they become more and more drawn toward the center the uninformed electorate cannot tell the difference. It is only the political elite that can, thus only the elites are polarized any longer. As this article we had to read called the Imperial Middle suggests the rest of the electorate doesn't even vote on issues, rather on appearance.
So I would say Mark to solve your problem, we need to reach out to those who believe that their vote doesn't count and eliminate the paradox all together. Instead of seeing John Edwards dodge the issue of Gay Marriage, he and Kerry should take a strong stance in support of it, as much of their party agrees with. It is not until politicians begin to take stances everybody can differentiate, the system will continue to struggle.
Sorry that was kinda long.

[Michael M.]

Mark--Your representation of the electoral system as being analagous to an integral makes perfect sense. I would like to add that when people do not vote, that "integral" is missing something. Instead of equaling 12, it equals 11.999, with a blank space where the other .001 should be. If one does not vote, then his or her views on America are not represented in the decisions of the people in the election. So what if one vote might not have a direct impact upon an election. Your opinion still matters. Also, elections CAN come down to one vote. Wouldn't you feel stupid if it was yours?
While I cannot vote, because I am only 16, I encourage everybody who can to do so in local, state, and national elections, whomever you support. It's important.

[Alex K!]

Ach!- lousy Mark, I thought the only thing I was going to have to think about tonight was that Euro DBQ. The "integral" paradox you bring up is of course the cornerstone of the debate over voter apathy. And since I've never liked the South, I don't believe that ceding control to the states is an effective way to reduce this apathy. Mike said that elections in fact can come down to one vote. Okay, maybe in Florida, but the problem is nation-wide. There are two ways to remedy this: get just the right proportion of people to vote so that individual votes do become important, or change the system to make single votes more significant, clearly the superior choice. There are a handfull of states now that split their electoral college votes proportionally based on voting in the entire state. Applying this system to every state would actually make everyone's vote count because candidates wouldn't have to fight in a few particular states for all their votes, but rather try to get as many votes as they can in every state. This would also drastically change the way campaigns are run. Presidential candidates would no longer be able to concentrate their campaigning in a few crucial "swing states" but would have to create a broad-based message to appeal to as many votes throughout the country as possible. Illinois voter participation would probably skyrocket if Bush and Kerry were forced to campaign here as well. In fact, because the candidates would be so stretched, even more of the campaigning responsibility would fall into the hands of PACs. The growth of PACs would thus increase the number of political activists, making America a country that actually cares about politics.
So, I'm basically saying that the solution to voter apathy is increased competition. The same theory can be applied to House races by doing away with the ridiculous practice of re-districting. I'm not sure about the Senate though, I'd be interesting to hear an idea that would get Illinois republicans to think they should even bother to vote in the senate race. Anyway, that's my two cents on the "integral paradox."

[Mark S.]

As of now, there are exactly two states that split the electoral vote based on the popular vote: Maine and Nebraska. Nebraska, though, has never actually done this, and Maine has not done so since 1828. After the debacle that was the 2000 electionk, though, progress is being made. This year, residents of Colorado will vote to determine if their fine state will become the third in the nation to adopt the split-electoral college procedure. By 2008, we might have four, or even five, states operating on this procedure.

But the electoral college debacle is still kind of missing the point. In physics class the other day, we had a substitute teacher who did not vote in anything because, the way he saw it, both parties were the same, and his voice was too small to matter anyways. On the first point, I agree with Nick--we need parties who have clear cut and diverse ideas to choose from, not just different faces. Politics should be about issues, not personal attractiveness.

But as far as the second point goes, I'm worried, and I'm still not sure what to do. How can one person in a country of 300 million actually make a difference on a national scale. When I think about it logically, I get stuck in tortuous analogies to calculus class, and they just end up confusing me more. Therefore, I just fall back on the idea that I will do as much as I can to make my voice heard and see what comes of it. But so many people don't do that; they just say, "What's the point?" And I don't really have any good logical arguments to convince them of their error.

Next semester, I get to take AP Government, and then Mr. Mertz can shed some light on this subject for me. Until then, all of you can substitute for Mr. Mertz and reply.

[Mr.B.]

fwiw, I found this blog via a link from weblog-ed.com.

Well-spoken, folks. I'm heartened to see young people grappling with issues because they realize that they are important for reasons that extend beyond the next exam.

Regarding the 2000 election, keep in mind that the underlying problem was a set of election laws that were not equipped to deal with a statistical tie, where the margin of victory was within the margin of error. In every election you will have undervotes, overvotes, and spoiled ballots. Every election. However, few elections are as close as 2000, with a very weak incumbent facing a well-backed challenger, and the nation poised for political change. The Florida vote was a tie, and the law was not set up to handle that situation.

So it wound up in the courts. AS IT SHOULD HAVE. The system worked. There were no tanks in the streets, no soldiers on street corners. Think hard about that before calling it a "debacle" again, will you?

Regarding political parties, I encourage you to read Hugh Hewitt's recent book, "If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat". Hewitt is an unabashed center-right partisan, but the book is an instructive text in EFFECTIVE political activism regardless of your persuasion. Bottom line: Street theater and demonstrations are fun and exciting, but policy is wrought by majorities.

Can one person make a difference? Yes, given the right set of tools. Was it Archimedes who said, "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth"?

Consider "Buckhead," who shortly after CBS broadcast a scoop on Bush's ANG service, posted a note on a blog that the documents looked "a little suspicious." Within 24 hours the Tiffany Network was on the ropes, exposed as having used amateurish forgeries in an blatant attempt to smear the President. In only 24 hours, individuals - experts in fonts, military writing style, ordinary users of MS Word - turned CBS from the gold standard in news into a late night one-liner.

Think about that. The blogosphere can be a mighty long lever.

Good luck in your studies and your future endeavors.
--Mr. B.

[Mark S.]

Mr. B-

First of all, thank you for showing interest in our blog. The Internet, that marvelous invention of Al Gore, is a great place to exchange political views, and, as you have said, can be a valuable tool for the exchange of information, opinions, and beliefs that keep the electorate informed and functional in a republican system.

That said, it is interesting that you state that the 'debacle' in Florida was caused because the vote count was within the margin of error. To me, this seems to imply that your individual vote doesn't really matter--it will just get sucked up by the 'margin of error.' So basically, there are two scenarios for what could happen in an election: either one candidate clearly has enough votes to overcome the other + the margin of error, or it is 'too close to call.' Either way, my vote seems to be trivialized. All that my vote can do is sway the election from being 'decisive' to being 'more decisive,' which doesn't really matter, or 'too close to call,' at which point my vote is trivialized and the whole democratic process collapses before the power of the courts. If, on the other hand, it appears as if the vote in my state will be 'too close to call,' surely my vote alone will not change that distinction, and the election will once again be funneled into the courts system.

Is there a voting system that can get rid of this pernicious margin of error? Realists would most likely say 'no.' There will always be hanging chads, short circuits, blurry lines, lost paperwork, etc.--a goal of getting 200 million people to vote without a flaw seems as unreasonable as a goal of getting every single child in the nation to pass certain standardized tests by the year 2010. The problem, then, comes down to what should be done when an election is 'too close to call.'

Mr. B., you say that the vote in Florida was, for all intents and purposes, a "tie, and the law was not set up to handle that situation." Therefore, you say that the election ended up in the courts, "as it should have." The courts, though, exist in order to interpret the law. But if the law is "not set up to handle the situation," what can the courts do? There was no law for them to base their decision on, so basically their decision came down to, "which party do you like best?" Five liked the Republicans best, four liked the Democrats best. So the Republicans won. If there had been more Democrats on the court, Gore would have won. Either way, the decision would have come down to the political opinions of nine rich white elites, which seems to me more like oligarchy than democracy.

OK, maybe I'm being a little inflammatory, but I hope my point makes sense. We need laws to deal with situations like 2000 in Florida. We need a more accurate way to vote, so that the margin of error diminishes. We need the elections to be enforced better, so that political agendas do not make their way into the vote-counting process (which it appears they did in Florida; nobody has yet been able to explain the mysterious lack of African American votes counted in several key Floridian counties). We need to change the system that allows for all the manual voting machines in Florida to be replaced by electonic touch-voting machines (which are prone to short-circuits and leave no paper trail), especially when the machines are provided by a company which is a leading contributor to the campaign of one of the presidential candidates (can you guess which one?). I don't have the answers, but I'm confident that they are out there, and that there is a better alternative to this system.

And Gore clearly won the popular vote in 2000. There's no way, in light of that FACT, he should not have won the election.

[Colin F.]

This is coming from a political junkie that intends to vote in every Presidential and Congressional election and the Democratic primaries as well as soon as I'm 18 (stupid May birthday!) but I've never understood people that choose not to vote. I understand the statistics and the drawbacks to the electoral college, but I approach the issue from a completely different angle. Voting is the only real way for citizens to participate in the political process of republican government. If you don't vote, then you willingly sacrifice your voice and declare that you have no opinion about the policies that government should enact. Our electoral system is in need of reform, but I can never help but think that it would be more effective just to slap all of those non-voters around a little, especially the huge number of 18-30 year-olds that do not vote.

[Alex K!]

Allright, first about the 2000 election. The fact that the election had to be decided in the courts indicates a clear failure of the system. In fact, the Florida election could very rightly be called a debacle, because it went against our democratic principles. Okay, it's going to be hard for me to express this without my liberal slant, but consider that the decision for a recount rested on the opinion of a woman who was part of Bush's campaign team in Florida, and that the presidency was decided by nine men. This post will ramble on if I talk about my personal reaction to this, but let's consider the effect this has on voter apathy. Someone who already doesn't vote will look at the situation and be nothing but cynical, as Mark said, it will appear that their vote has no bearing whatsoever, that elections are decided by rich, white men. And the sad thing is that problem hasn't been resolved! What message does it send to apathetic voters when both Bush and Kerry are furiously collecting money for GELACs (General Election Legal and Accounting Compliance) because if they can't win the presidency with votes, they'll have to win it in the courts!
However, while Florida was a debacle in procedure and to apathetic voters, it may be just what this country's electoral process needed. The passage of the Help America Vote Act evidences that the government is acknowledging the problems of the current system. Of course, the act does not provide adequate funding and because it was only passed two years ago, it will leave nearly one third of the electorate voting on untested machines that, alas, leave no paper trail. This fact combined with the Florida debacle will have a profound effect on the voting process. After the "accidental" disenfranchisement of black voters whose names were "confused" with those of felons on voter purge lists (if you think I'm just some paranoid Taxachussetts liberal spouting off crackpot theories, you need to see the documentary "Unprecedented") and the battle in the courts, the democrats are up in arms. PACs are organizing million dollar voting drives and voters are registering in record numbers. This sentiment has inspired political activists to convince apathetic voters that they "need" to vote in this election and, judging by registration numbers, it's working. Also, the inequities of the electronic voting machines will cause both parties to be hawk-eyed for cheating.
What I'm getting it is that the system has failed and is still failing, but that might be a good thing. The problems are so drastic now, that people can't help but fight for a new system. To break the chaos, the government will have to create a system that works. So, basically, hunker down for a few crazy elections, and hopefully we will have a proper system in which to vote Obama in 2012.
This, however, still doesn't solve the question you posed Mark, how do we convince people that their vote counts? This has been racking my brain and I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no logical way. We can help people think their votes count if we have a system that accurately tallies them, but this still doesn't change the limited effect of one vote. The answer is one of those bizarre eccentricities of America, you have believe your vote counts because everyone else believes it too. Though your vote may have almost no impact, the collective votes of you and everyone else who thinks their vote will count and decides to vote will.
Given this complex explanation, is it any wonder that our voter turnout is so low? There is, unfortunately, no panacea for the voting system to make everyone's vote count, it is a system of blind faith.

(man, what a long post! who am I, Mark?)

[Sean M.]

Mr. B, I dissagree with you on your assertion that the political system in Florida worked. True, there was no violence in the streets after the election, but should a election in which 200 million people partisipated be decided by 9 select people? Even though the race was close in Flordia and the courts decided the outcome peacefully, there was clearly some foul play at hand (as Mark mentioned earlier, the mysterious dissapperance of ballots in the predomiately African-American districsts).