A Public Good Turns Private

Lately, I hopped on the Banksy bandwagon, finding the street artist's anonymous and spontaneous creations really interesting.  This month, the unknown artist has taken up residency in New York City, releasing one piece of public art every day.  This exhibition is called "Better Out Than In" and is already gaining a lot of attention.  His art is sometimes chiseled from walls and sold for thousands of dollars to fans and enthusiasts. 

This week however, random people  that lived near one of the pieces charged $20 for enthusiasts to take pictures. 

"The amateur curators used cardboard to shield the well-known British graffiti artist’s piece in their East New York neighborhood and will remove it only for a price."

The two conditions for a public good are that they are non-rivalrous and non-exclusionary.  Usually, Banksy's art meets this conditions as one person looking at a public wall with art doesn't detract from another's viewing, and it is (usually) not possible to charge someone to look a public wall.  However, Banksy's work has been changed into a private good as people living near the work have made it exclusionary, to those only willing to pay $20 to see it. 

Shutdown: A Condorcet Winner?

     This article in the Washington Post and its accompanying article on Yahoo.com show that 21 Republicans would vote for a clean continuing resolution which would re-open the government and fund ObamaCare. Attached is a chart I made in excel highlighting each winning coalition that kept the government running, eventually brought about its shutdown, and would hypothetically bring about its reopening.  Since we are only looking at whether the government will open or close we only need to look at the second letter.  However, looking at both letters tells an interesting story.
       First, lets look at the pre-shutdown vote tally.  Here, all 432 voting members of the House (there are currently 3 vacant seats) would vote to keep the government running independent of a vote on ObamaCare.  That makes sense, the government indeed was running.  It also tells us that 232 members would vote to defund ObamaCare independently of a vote on whether to keep the government open.  That too makes sense.  We know that numerous times the House has voted to defund ObamaCare.  Here, we see that the clear Condorcet winners - independent of each other - are to keep the government open and defund ObamaCare.  Between the last CR fight and October first, this was the state of the House.
      The second tally tells us a more interesting story.  The vote to shutdown brought these two issues together and Congressmen now had to vote on them together on whether to pass a CR that funds ObamaCare and keeps the government open or defunds ObamaCare and effectively closes the government.  This resulted in a forced, manufactured majority in regards to shutting down the government.  There were 21 Congressmen that were split on this vote and given the opportunity to vote on them separately we would see a continuation of the first chart and a natural majority for open government (Blue Highlight).  Instead, they had to vote on them together.  Given that at this point they valued defunding ObamaCare more than they valued an open government, (remember at this point you can only compare NN>YY) this manufactured an illegitimate majority of votes to shut down the government, and resulted in a non-condorcet winner in regards to shutting down the government. This was not their first preference, but given the preference table they were given, NN or YY, they chose to shut down the government.
     Democrats are currently working on a measure to bring a clean CR (YY) to the floor.  Given that 21 moderate Republicans now favor YY>NN,  this would again result in a manufactured majority, this time leading to the illegitimate funding of ObamaCare.  Here we see how rules of the game effect the outcome and lead to non-condorcet winners an inefficient allocation of public goods.  Here is a relatively clean example of how combining bills together can force Congressman to vote in ways they normally would not.  One can only think of how many inefficiently allocated public goods are dolled out in omnibus transportation bills through logrolling.

New Emphasis Put on Absentee Voting in Charlottesville

On September 30th, NBC29.com posted a video addressing the concern in Charlottesville of a lack of voter turnout for the upcoming election. On Tuesday, November 5th, the General Election for state and local offices will take place. Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Member House of Delegates, Commonwealth's Attorney, Sheriff, Commissioner of Revenue, Treasurer, two Members of City Council, and 3 Members of the School Board will be on the ballot. Clearly, the results of the election will affect many in the Charlottesville community. With the upcoming deadline to register of October 15th quickly approaching, voter registrars are making a last push to encourage eligible voters to register for voter registration forms and for absentees ballots.

Johnson, in his essay, "Voting, Rational Abstention, and Rational Ignorance," addresses this issue of a decline in voter turnout. He states that it was "around the turn of the century [that] the percentage of eligible individuals exercising their franchise began to drop [...] until only about one-half of the eligible population went to the polls during the 1980s" (Johnson 129). He also acknowledges a trend towards making voting easier, less restrictive, and more convenient. This is exactly what we see in this video. The voter registrars are making it much easier for the first time to be able to register for an absentee ballot online at the Virginia Board of Elections website. With the prediction of only a 40% voter turnout rate on November 5th, this push toward more convenient voting may (they hope) incentivize voters. Additionally, this low voter turnout rate may reflect what Johnson calls rational abstention theory - that is, that a rational individual would not vote, finding that the cost of voting will almost always be greater than the benefits obtained from voting, according to Johnson. Ironically, rational abstention theory is one of the most damaging theories to the democratic self-rule on which our country was founded.

A Factional Split in the GOP?

This article, recently published in The Economist, discusses factional splits in existing political parties. The author claims that it is nearly impossible to build a new party from the ground up in the U.S. as voters, despite their ideological preferences, will only vote for one of the two main parties for fear of wasting their votes. When a new party forms due to a factional split in an existing party, however, this wasted-vote risk is diminished, as the new party already has power in Congress.  As long as the splinter party has a coherent ideology and a large enough voter base, then, it stands a chance at winning subsequent elections. The author of the article believes that tea-party Republicans have what it takes to eventually form a competitive third party in the U.S., with a coherent agenda and a strong voter base that is likely to follow them.

This article is clearly directly relevant to Downs’ Median Voter Theorem. If part of the Republican party stands a chance at breaking off and forming its own party, this suggests that a significant contingent of voters must feel alienated by the current system. This implies an asymmetric distribution of voters, with a sizable number of voters concentrated towards one extreme of the distribution. This asymmetric voter distribution is currently not an issue for the tea party, as theirs is the dominant Republican agenda. As more conservative Republican voters near the median begin to feel alienated and begin to abstain from voting, however, Republican ideology may begin to shift back towards the center and tea party members will then feel alienated. In either case, a significant contingent of the Republican party is alienated, meaning there is good reason to think a split in the party could be successful. Voters that feel alienated are likely to abstain, meaning that more moderate Republicans are less likely to vote where tea party ideology dominates and vice versa. In order to be able to satisfy both contingents, it is possible that the Republican party may need to split into two, thereby leading to a significant change in the American political landscape. 

McAuliffe appealing to Moderate voters in Virginia's Gubernatorial Race

          Ken Cuccinelli isn't the only one displaying more moderate views in the Virginia gubernatorial race, Democratic candidate McAuliffe appears to be shifting his views too.  As this article from the Washington Post reports, McAuliffe did not support offshore oil drilling for Virginia in 2009, but starting in May he began to support offshore oil drilling.  His spokesman attributed his change of heart to "technological progress," but the median voter theorem offers another reason for McAuliffe’s change in stance.

          According to the median voter theorem, a candidate in an election by majority will adopt the platform most preferred by the median voter.  In the case of Virginia offshore oil drilling, a stance against offshore oil drilling would generally be considered on the liberal side of the spectrum and a stance in favor of offshore oil drilling would be on the other side.  Assuming McAuliffe is only looking to win votes, shifting his stance to being in favor of ‘responsible’ oil drilling enables him to pick up votes from the middle, while keeping the votes from his liberal base.

          Conservative groups have already accused him of flip-flopping on the issue, and the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter (an organization generally seen as very liberal) has expressed discontent with his and other politicians’ shifting positions.  If the assumptions in the median voter theorem hold, the shift will be to his benefit, but if the environmental groups get an unusually large number of liberal voters to abstain from voting, it could hurt his chances. Time will tell if moderating his position ultimately helps or hurts McAuliffe.