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Wednesday, Apr 06, 2011 - 02:09 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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A Voting Time Save Mine


Unlikely (Source: The Sunday Times, April 3rd)


There has been a short exposition on the utility (and often, lack thereof) of voting on this blog, as well as a heads-up to the ThreeBallot voting system. With the elections looming, it seems an opportune time to revive the subject, and we begin with a (possibly overexposed) anectode from Freakonomics:


Two economists met each other at the voting booth.

"What are you doing here?" one asks.

"My wife made me come," the other says.

The first economist gives a confirming nod. "The same."

After a mutually sheepish moment, one of them hatches a plan: "If you promise never to tell anyone you saw me here, I'll never tell anyone I saw you." They shake hands, finish their polling business and scurry off.


Even without this little story, it should be intuitive that a single vote almost never makes the difference (counterexamples usually come from situations where the total number of votes was very small to begin with); in some cases (like that of the United States), it may be that even the outcome doesn't matter that much anyway, since the major platforms tend to be close (as explained by the Hoteling principle) and are all beholden to big business and special interest lobbies.

Of course, political parties don't want their people to think this way. This does make sense if their support base is, as a group, known for poor turnouts (such as the youth, for Democrats). As it happens, the Singapore government has kindly taken this problem out of our hands (as with many other things), by making voting mandatory (though this is not a problem if one is sure that one never wants to vote again).

Let's return to the anectode, however, and add on to it:


Upon returning home, one of the economists realises something.

"Hmm, this is a university town - in fact, one with a particularly pervasive Economics department. Nearly everybody here has been trained in the discipline!"

And indeed, when the votes were counted, only four were to be found - from the economists and their two newly-arrived wives. Amusingly enough, since they had voted for different candidates, the election had to be reheld.

The result did however shake the community, and more significantly the foundations of their pet subject, to its core. "But what of our theory of voting?" they cried.


As it stands, this theory of not voting relies on a few (almost always valid) assumptions - most importantly the one that a relatively large number of people will, for some (irrational, to economists) reason or other, vote.

The basic economic representation of voting is as follows:


R = pB - C + D

where

R = the reward gained from voting in a given election (if negative, the voter will not bother to turn up)
p = probability of vote "mattering" (assumed to be essentially zero by the two economists mentioned above)
B = "utility" benefit of voting; differential benefit of one candidate winning over the other (doesn't matter if p=0)
C = costs of voting (time/effort spent)
D = citizen duty, goodwill feeling, psychological and civic benefit of voting (possibly also benefits from avoiding withdrawal of wifely duties, for the two economists above)


Modern political parties have generally focused on D, since directly alleviating C is often illegal, and they can't do much about p. D is, in some instances, naturally quite large, leading to options like internet/postal voting counterintuitively reducing turnout. In such situations, people wanted to be known for doing their civic duty, much more than they wanted to actually do it; therefore, when afforded the plausible deniability of voting from home, some of them refrained from doing so despite the far higher convenience and thus lower costs.

To the best of my knowledge, most such arguments still assume that C and D dominate pB; what if, as in the situation above, (nearly) everybody is a rational economist?

In this case, as described above, the turnout will be near zero - but in that case, p is rather larger than zero, and the whole premise for not voting is invalid!

What a rational economist might do, then, is to appear at the polls with some small probability A - for example, if A is 0.01, ten thousand economists would vote, out of a population of a million. While this may seem a small fraction, the outcome would be equivalent to the true result from the whole population about 99% of the time, if the sample were representative (this is basically how opinion polls operate).

The reasoning about A and its relation to the other variables (especially where D - C is negative but finely balanced), I leave to someone in need of a thesis.


Woman of Tin, Man of Brass

The biggest pre-election side-issue so far has been the candidacy of a Ms Tin Pei Ling, just one year my senior in HCJC. Unhappy at her perceived easy ride into Parliament, some netizens have taken it upon themselves to pry into her private life, including posting photos from her Facebook.

I have a couple of opinions on this. Firstly, it is true that it may be slightly mean to pry and insinuate, and frankly if the worst thing that has come out of all this is her posing with a branded handbag, she's acquitted herself pretty well. Also, Parliament could do with some (capable-enough) eye candy too - where were all the protests when Eunice Olsen got in last time round? I suspect that Ms Tin will end up playing much the same role as Ms Olsen regardless.

On the flip side, if all she has to deal with is getting her less-flattering Facebook photos plastered all over the Internet, Ms Tin has gotten off very lightly for a wannabe politician. Brass knuckles and cul-de-sacs somehow come to mind here, not to mention the comprehensive dirt-digging and hatchet jobs in Singapore's political past, remarkable due to their confinement to certain unlucky factions. Live by the knuckle-duster, die by the knuckle-duster...

Now on to the election proper, and a dilemma. One one hand, you have the incumbent, with a proven track record, but who may have gotten a little sloppy, not to mention intransigent. While they remain very good in certain respects, there is the concern that, if returned to power, they will simply ride roughshod over the not-so-good parts.

On the other hand, you have the challengers. They've always been something of a rag-tag bunch - tomato cans, in boxing parlance. Their qualifications usually don't quite match up, as the incumbents are never slow to point out. However, their willingness to contest a lost cause, and put themselves under intense scrutiny, does prove a certain dedication.

The incumbents have pointed out that the most capable should be voted into power, and it is hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together if there is an "accident". That may be true. However, when the most capable team ends up being perceived to be not exactly responsive to feedback after retaining their mandate, what recourse is there? In the end, the only way the electorate can signal that they are seriously pissed is through the ballot box (unless they go the quitter route and emigrate, which is another issue)

One of the problems, so to speak, with the one-man-one-vote system is that it implies wholehearted support - when you cast a vote for Party A, Party A may happily trumpet that you are 100% behind them - when it may simply mean that you dislike them less than Party B.

Is there a way around this? One solution would be to give each person a large number of votes instead, so that the quantity of votes given to each party can more accurately reflect his level of approval. While this does not indicate his sentiments on individual hot-button issues, it is still an improvement over the crude one-vote system. For example, using an examination mark analogy, a voter might give a party 70 marks (votes) for its performance, but withhold or award the remaining 30 marks to the opposition.

This is, however, complicated, and will probably not be implemented anytime soon. The good news is that it can be adopted on an individual level - an intended 70/30 split in the multi-vote system can be simulated by generating a random number according to that distribution, and casting the single vote depending on that number. The bad news is that this method might theoretically skew the results, if not followed by enough people. The ugly news is that, as explained above, that single vote almost certainly doesn't matter at all.

So, the big question: are the incumbents so fragile that they will become non-functional through an injection of actual opposition opinion (which, to be honest, has been quite tame), but do the challengers deserve it? Decisions, decisions...

I feel that local politics is seriously crying out for a charismatic figure who can ruffle some feathers, while having a sufficiently clean personal life so as not to fall to the first wave of reprisals (which will be nothing as mild as Facebook stalking); the sort that will ask the difficult questions, poke the sacred cows and dig at indisputable weaknesses, but with an easy wit, a sense of timing, the canniness to pick battles well (looking at a certain Dr. Chee here), and enough credentials and influence such that he cannot simply be ignored (which is probably easier to avoid in this age of new media).

The sort that if, say when going up against a candidate freshly-returned from overseas, will casually snipe at his not having served National Service, and if called out for talking out of order, apologize by saying that yes, National Service is unimportant and insignificant, it should not have been mentioned, and smoothly move on to the next point.

But let's get real - such a talent would be earning big bucks, without assuming any attendant risks, in some other career.



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Next: Going Back


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Trolleys And Votes
Take A Seat Long Read
Modulo Two
Super Tuesday Past
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3 comments

anonymous said...
"I feel that local politics is seriously crying out for a charismatic figure who can ruffle some feathers, while having a sufficiently clean personal life so as not to fall to the first wave of reprisals "

OH MY GOD...ARE U THINKING WHAT I THINKING? ARE U? ARE U??


April 6, 2011 - 14:17 SGT     
anonymous said...


April 6, 2011 - 17:09 SGT     
anonymous said...
WHO THE FUCK ANONYMOUS

ok i should put that on my blog later


April 6, 2011 - 21:04 SGT     

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