Thoughts on Online Voting

I can apply for loans, communicate with doctors, and do any number of other sensitive things online, but to vote I must go somewhere (which may be close to where I live but far from where I work) and wait in line, or send a bunch of stuff through the mail. These transactions costs are just as real as any other costs, so theoretically their elimination would be an unambiguous win for society.

The cynic might say that the nonexistence of online voting is deliberate. If online voting is allowed, the demographics of the turnout would be much different (i.e., more busy young people), which might be to the disadvantage of those in power. It's easy to see that the most passionately political people and those with the most spare time or the shortest commutes are overrepresented in the final tally. Whether this is good or bad is an open question.

New York City Bans Homemade Goods at Bake Sales

From Gothamist (via Marginal Revolution):

Months after it barred schools from holding most food fundraisers, the city says bake sales can go on—as long as no homemade treats with undisclosed calorie counts grace the fold-out tables. The new regulation, designed to combat ever-increasing childhood obesity, limits bake sales to "fresh fruits and vegetables, or one of 27 specific packaged items" that include low-fat Doritos, Nutri-Grain Cereal Bars (blackberry only) and Linden’s Cookies (butter crunch, chocolate chip or fudge chip cookies in two cookie packs) among other things.

This is, of course, to comply with New York City's mandate that food servers post calorie counts on their menus. An unintended consequence of this policy has been to add transactions costs to the operating expenses of feed servers. Large firms like McDonald's can easily absorb the cost, as it is split over its hundreds of restaurants in the city, but even hot dog vendors on the street must comply with the rules. Even smaller players--like parents making snacks for a bake sale--are pushed out of the market because they can't comply with the logistics.

Of course, at many bake sales, the participants will have little incentive to report such an offender, so perhaps the law will be largely ignored.

Clock Is Ticking on Cleveland OF Choo's Military Obligation

CC image from Keith Allison on Flickr.

There's a good discussion over at Yahoo's Big League Stew about Cleveland Indians outfielder Shin-Soo Choo, who is running out of time on South Korea's requirement that all able-bodied males serve two years in military before age 30. Baseball players don't have much of a shelf life, so Choo might take drastic measures--such as applying for U.S. citizenship or never returning to his homeland--to avoid his obligation.

This isn't the nation's most oppressive policy by any stretch of the imagination, but it sure is an idiotic one. All sorts of people, not just baseball players, are in the midst of crucial life-forming activities in their 20s--attending school, beginning their careers, starting a family--and the military service requirement couldn't come about at a worse time.

Even if Choo is eventually excused (as athletes sometimes are), the policy no doubt creates a distraction and an underlying worry for him, which could lead to poorer performance. This in turn could lead to less prestige for the nation and less money being sent home by Choo--far in excess of any value that the South Korean army would gain from having one additional soldier.

Republican Groupthink or Statistical Ho-Hum?

The sentiment among Republicans by demographic (via FiveThirtyEight).

FiveThirtyEight uses a Daily Kos poll to emphasize this conclusion:

On just about every question, the results showed essentially no difference based on age, gender, race, or geography -- once we've established that you're a Republican, these differences seem to be rendered moot.

Many people seem outraged by this finding, but I'm not surprised by it. For these same questions, once we've established that you're a Democrat, we would expect similar results (though of course very few will respond that they think Obama is a racist or should be impeached).

If an econometrician or other serious scientist proposed doing a regression to show the causes of support for sex education in schools (another question in the poll), including party affiliation as a factor would make sense, but including gender would not. There is no ex ante expectation that gender will influence one's beliefs on the subject. You can't construe your hypotheses after running your experiments. If you look at 20 treatments, odds are, at least one will show a statistical significance by sheer coincidence (see the file drawer effect).

The author argues that the Republicans:

don't have to worry about the constellation of constituencies that Democrats have: labor voters, Baby-boomer liberals, blacks, Hispanics, college-educated technocrats, libertarianish younger voters, etc. Their base is the same pretty much everywhere, and actuating a strategy that appeals to that base is not challenging.

Note that many of the purported Democratic subcategories would not be accounted for anyway when the poll only reports result by gender, race, age, and region. Also, if you subscribe to median voter theory, the extremes of the Democratic Party—and the various sources thereof—shouldn't even be an issue. In a two-party election, a Democratic candidate's platform should be aimed at the voters in the middle, as the liberal extremists will vote for him anyway.