REPLY Zimbardo lecture (SD6445)

[SDMAIL Tom Cavin]

Posted by  Tom Cavin <cavin at MIT.EDU>

Hi John,

I'm not quite so sour on politics in general, but I really do think there's
something wrong with the system.

My current thinking goes something like this:

  1.  US elections basically use a plurality vote in which each ballot is
      marked for only one of the running candidates, and the person with
      the most votes at the end wins.  (This isn't what we first had in the
      constitution before amendment and it's far from the only possible
      ballot method.)

  2.  In a plurality election, the total number of ballots does not matter.
      The only thing that matters is which candidate is ahead of all the
      others.

  3.  As a consequence of (2) any tactic that improves the relative
      position of one candidate over any others is effective.  In
      particular this can include negative campaigns (which tend to reduce
      the total number of votes cast) when the campaign hurts an opponent
      more than it does the "mud slinging" candidate.

  4.  All candidates start off thinking/hoping they can do a good job in
      the office.  (This is something I am holding as an axiom, although it
      should be noted that any individual's definition of "good job" is
      highly variable.)

  5.  Naive candidates may start out stating their position on issues
      independent of what the voters want.  More sophisticated candidates
      will try to avoid stating any positions in order to provide less of a
      target for negative campaigns.  (A negative campaign can be directed
      at any identifiable position.  As an example consider John Kerry
      vs. George W. Bush on the topic of their respective war records.
      Truth is one of the first casualties in a negative campaign.)

  6.  Also as a result of the effectiveness of negative campaigns, the only
      candidates who can survive in a plurality election tend to be those
      with enough of a war chest to counter negative ads.

  7.  The defense against negative campaigns is to limit the information
      about a candidate to "the message", which is as amorphous as possible
      to avoid offending any group.  Thus very little of substance is
      discussed during a campaign.

  8.  A long term effect of repeated negative campaigns is depressed voter
      turn-out.  This increases the relative strength of sub-groups with
      clearly identified and articulated interests, and increase the
      importance of otherwise relatively minor issues.

  9.  One of the reasons to start a "third-party" candidacy is to bring in
      information or raise awareness of issues that are not being
      addressed.  However in a plurality election, any votes cast for the
      third party candidate will come from the two major parties, and will
      most likely come from the major party that is most sympathetic to the
      third party position.  This is the "spoiler" effect, and is a strong
      deterrent of third parties.

The net effect of all this over several campaign cycles is low voter turn
out, vacuous campaign messages, distrust of elected officials, and a
reduction of discourse in the general population.  Moreover:

 10.  Since there is little chance for a third party to get a message out
      about an unaddressed issue, candidates quite rationally think they
      need to be elected in order to make a difference.  If they are
      elected, they can "clean things up", "make things better", "fix the
      system from within", etc.  This sets up a situation where a candidate
      might be willing to compromise on less critical issues in order to
      win the election and make progress on their major goals.

 11.  When a candidate is focused on their main objectives, but is not
      aware of all the complex ramifications of the larger system, they can
      get caught in the situation where they have promised something minor
      in order to gain support (votes, funds or endorsements) and only
      later realize (or never realize) this minor point is in conflict with
      their main goals.

 12.  The need for campaign funds makes candidates particularly susceptible
      to the influence of big business or wealthy individuals and groups.
      (When Bill Gates was called to testify before a congressional
      committee, he was flanked by both senators from Washington; one
      Democrat, one Republican.)  The wealthy don't even have to articulate
      their needs.  They can support all candidates equally, and then each
      candidate will need to avoid offending the wealthy because if they
      ever do, they'll lose a good chunk of their campaign funds.

The net effect here is big money in campaigns and elected officials who
need to start fund-raising for the next campaign the moment they take
office.  This leads not only to vacuous campaigns but also vacuous
government, because officials are too busy raising money to actually do
their jobs.

(To some extent, this later point may not be a bad thing if you assume the
elected officials are inherently unqualified for their positions.  However
I think there is a real need for government in order to address issues that
transcend individuals and sub-groups.  It's often better for a government
to do nothing than to do the wrong thing, but it's sometimes necessary for
it to do the right thing.)

With low voter turn-out, vacuous or negative campaigns, and lots of money
in politics, there are a few other things that come into play.

 13.  There still needs to be someone to vote for the candidates, so who is
      left after all these effects are taken into account?  Clearly it will
      be people who will respond to simple, sound-bite messages, or people
      who have an agenda that the candidates are addressing.  Another group
      will be those who are fearful of "the greater evil" and will
      therefore vote for "the lesser evil".

 14.  Candidates needs to have core support, and this is particularly
      critical if they are going to run a negative campaign.  One of the
      basic strategies in negative campaigning is to divide the supporters
      of your opponent.  Over time, this means the core support groups will
      tend to be ones that are considered indivisible.  Examples in US
      politics are the fundamentalist Christians on the right and gay
      rights or abortion activists on the left.

 15.  The need to maintain core support prevents candidates from addressing
      issues that might divide their support, even if those issues are
      important.  Re-thinking a potentially divisive issue can not be done
      unless there is a major venue for substantive debate and discussion.

Now all that is a quick and rough summary of the current system.  I don't
recall if it goes back 200 years, but it does go back to the amendments
passed after a particular election.  In our original voting system, the
states would vote for two candidates, each candidate's votes would be
tallied and the candidate with the most votes would become president.  The
candidate who came in second in the presidential election would become
vice-president.  The constitution explicitly stated that if more than one
candidate got more than half the votes, the one with the most votes over
all would become president.

The Jefferson/Burr ticket changed all that.  Thomas Jefferson and Aaron
Burr were part of the same party and ran a joint campaign with the idea
that Jefferson would win the presidency and Burr would come in second, thus
helping to stabilize government in the event of a death in office.  The
problem was their campaign was uniformly successful and they both got the
same number of electoral votes.  It had been the intent of the campaign
that Jefferson would be president, but there was no way under the
constitution to break the tie.  This crisis triggered the changes in how we
vote and formalized the party system.

Elections before that time weren't necessarily clean or positive, but they
did seem to have a bit more substance to them.

This has gotten much longer than I intended, but the main thing I'd like to
introduce after laying out the current structure is the idea of approval
voting as a replacement for our current plurality voting.

The idea of approval voting is rather simple.  We take the same ballot we
have now and simply vote for as many candidates as we like.  In essence, we
have a plebiscite on each candidate.  The winner is the candidate with the
most votes.  The major difference between this and plurality voting is that
a vote any candidate has no effect whatsoever on the vote totals of the
other candidates.  In theory, we could have an election where each of a
dozen candidates received 100% of the vote.

What is key here is how this would change the structure of the surrounding
system:

   1.  Since each candidate is running individually, they would need to
       earn votes by providing reasons for the voters to vote for them.

   2.  More fringe candidates would remain in the race because they would
       not be taking votes away from "major" candidates.

   3.  Negative campaigns would be less effective because they would have
       to attack more than one target and the voters won't necessarily
       reward the "mud slingers".

   4.  Third party or fringe candidates can articulate new issues that
       major parties would otherwise avoid.  If they play well, one or both
       of the major parties could adopt positions on that issue, leading to
       more gradual / less catastrophic changes in party positions.

   5.  Candidates would no longer need to be elected in order to have an
       effect on policy, thus promoting positive and informative campaigns.

   6.  Less negative campaigning would reduce the necessity of a large war
       chest, and thus reduce the effect of money in politics.

   7.  Candidates would not have to compromise to get elected.  If their
       position is strong, it can be adopted.

   8.  Pre-election polls would be more informative, allowing candidates
       (and parties) to get direct feedback from the voters about their
       real concerns.

   9.  Positive campaigns would need to unite people instead of divide
       them, leading to exploration of "win-win" or "multi-win" strategies,
       and more systemic thinking.

  10.  Clone candidates (those with very similar or identical positions)
       would be encouraged, causing there to be more candidates agreeing on
       major issues and possibly only incremental differences.

  11.  A candidate that had 51% of the vote could be beaten by a candidate
       with 70% of the vote.  We could even have a candidate with 90% of
       the vote lose because there was a candidate with 95% of the vote.
       This would only happen if we had an informed voting population that
       was able to understand and agree on what was right for everyone.

Part of my thinking in this is that it may not matter who the elected
official is.  According to Zimbardo, 90% of the time our actions are
situationally determined.  If the rosy scenario I painted for approval
voting is actually possible, we might have a government that is more
amenable to reason and that does not ignore "inconvenient truths" or other
important issues.

There's a bunch of other stuff that I haven't clearly articulated regarding
the role of the press and how this "minor adjustment" to the system might
bring about dramatic social change, but I'm now well over the length of a
reasonable email.

For those of you who have read all the way to here, my thanks for sticking
with me for so long.  Please let me know what you think and where you see
any flaws, inconsistencies, or lack of clarity.  My hope is that I'm either
on the right track in my thinking or that together we can find the right
track.  My big hope for SD is to find the key leverage point (or points)
that will let us turn our system around and get it moving in a more
sustainable fashion.  I think this might be one of the points, but I'd
really like to know what other, more experienced SDers think about this.

Best Wishes,

     --Tom 

Posted by  Tom Cavin <cavin at MIT.EDU>
posting date  Thu, 17 May 2007 22:56:26 -0400