Cuomo's Donors vs. Airbnb

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law on Friday targeting short term apartment rentals. Anyone caught advertising a short-term rental apartment on a home-sharing site can now be fined up to $7,500. This is a transparent attempt to harm Airbnb's flourishing business, in a similar vein to the laws targeting Uber in many cities across the U.S and the Texas liquor laws Professor Elzinga described. According to the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, "The politicians are responding to hoteliers and unions that claim that mini-Donald Trumps are buying up properties and renting them as 'illegal hotels.'" But per the Board, this doesn't add up. "The real complaint is that Airbnb is unwelcome competition," says the Board, thus "This is a classic restraint of trade."

If the Journal's Editorial Board's suspicions are correct, then this is a clear example of rent-seeking. Hoteliers are spending resources to undercut competition and rig the game, rather than try to get better at it by improving their business. This will create negative social value, but it's totally rational behavior. If it's cheaper for entrenched interests like the Holliday Inn to simply donate to malleable politicians that will gut Holliday's Inn most disruptive competitor, rather than for Holliday Inn to actually innovate to find ways to cut its own costs, then Holliday Inn will prefer the former tactic. This highlights the importance of Tullock's paper. Not only does the new law create a dead weight loss, there are even more costs: all the resources rational firms diverted from productive avenues to instead lobby the New York state legislature for a new law to protect their business from competition. 

McMullin: Utah's Condorcet Winner?

In a fascinating recent article, FiveThirtyEight detailed the head-scratching situation in which Utah, a traditionally deeply red state, currently finds itself: deadlocked between Trump and Clinton, with Evan McMullin closing ground quickly.  In fact, McMullin is doing so well in Utah that the FiveThirtyEight Nowcast assigns a 9.7% probability of McMullin winning Utah if the election were held today--a number the author claims is far too conservative, given the facts that McMullin is Mormon, Trump finished third in the Utah Republican caucus, and that McMullin is already beginning to leverage Romney's leftover email list infrastructure from 2012.

I believe it's quite possible that McMullin is Utah's Condorcet winner.  According to FiveThirtyEight, Clinton and Trump both enjoy support from 26% of the electorate, McMullin enjoys 22%, and the rest of the electorate prefers another candidate.  What if McMullin were to go up pairwise against Clinton or Trump?  Well, in 2012, Obama only received 25% of the popular vote, with Romney reaping a hefty 73%.  2012 Obama voters tend to be 2016 Clinton supporters, so it's quite possible that her current 26% represents the loyal Democratic Utahn core. Would she receive much more than this if she went head-to-head against a Mormon candidate with traditional conservative values?  Likely not; McMullin would win Utah. Because Trump was Utah's third choice during the primaries, and because McMullin is already doing uncharacteristically well as a third candidate, I think it's very likely that McMullin would beat Trump in a pairwise election as well.

All that's left to see now is if Utah's county-by-county voting will yield the Condorcet winner on November 8.

A Sweet Deal That Leaves Costly Cavities

I'm writing about US sugar production. Believe it or not, I'm not the first. I didn't find it, but I'm sure there's an article from some paper complaining about it when it was "temporarily" instituted in 1934. Regardless, I believe examining this example from Stigler's perspective can help us to understand the durability of such poor policy. In some ways, the sugar industry is climbing an uphill battle at maintaining this domestic advantage. According to one paper FOR the American Sugar Alliance, less than .1% of America's employees and about .1% of America's economy comes from the US sugar industry. Additionally, the median per capita income of those in the industry is likely low and the occupation is located in rural areas. However, the US sugar industry does have an extremely cohesive oppositional presence to the reduction or elimination of these subsidies. While not every politician supports this (A 2013 Senate amendment to scale back the program garnered 45 votes), 46 percent of House members received money from American Crystal Sugar in the 2014 election cycle. With an estimated $1.9 billion annual cost, there is clear incentive and means to fund whoever needs be funded in order to perpetuate this cycle. This combined with the long-standing tenure of the sugar lobbying presence and the high number of candidates supporting these measures, makes it is difficult for voters to understand and effectively vote in their best interest on this particular issue. Maybe confectioners will make headway in reducing their input costs, but given their working relationship with the sugar industry, they may ultimately decide against confronting the status quo.

Rent Seeking in Wallonia

The EU and Canada are currently discussing a trade deal, CETA, that would eliminate 98% of tariffs between the two regions.  However, recently the vote on this deal was postponed because of opposition from Wallonia, a French-speaking region in Southern Belgium, who believes that CETA will disadvantage its local farmers as they will have a tough time competing with imported Canadian products.

Tullock believes that rent-seeking occurs when resources are diverted by attempts to seek rents derived from activities that have negative social value. In Wallonia, thousands of people are protesting, votes have been delayed, and negotiations have been complicated because the Wallonians have been attempting to preserve their tariffs.  These rent-seeking activities waste time and money, and while they may protect individual farmers, they do not increase total social value.  In this case, the tariffs are already in place, so the Wallonians simply want to preserve them, but even this wastes resources.  While some Wallonians may be better off from the tariffs, overall, the EU and Canada would likely benefit from more free trade and increased competition, as trade creates value. 

With less competition, the Wallonian farmers can charge higher prices, but Canada's entrance into the market would increase supply and therefore lower prices.  So, consumer surplus would increase, but profits for Wallonian farmers would fall. Therefore, it is rational for the farmers to seek tariffs to protect their own profits, even though it hurts consumers and Canadian producers. 

합리적 무지

Almost 20 years ago, the state of California passed a law that severely restricted bilingual education in public schools. They argued that students were lingering in their native language, which put them behind when they had to learn and use English in higher grades. If the state could somehow create a barrier to students using their bilingual skills they thought that this would help the merging into American society, but this is quite the contrary. For example, once a Korean student in Los Angeles switched from a dual language program to an English-only honors program, he lost his ability to write and speak Korean, which meant he couldn’t speak to his Korean speaking family. Activists are working to overturn this law and implement a unified program where half of teaching is taught in a foreign language such as Korean, Spanish, or Vietnamese, and the other half English.  

In our class we’ve discussed the Rational Ignorance model that shows that there is an optimal level of ignorance. In this case the state of California back in 1998 argued that there is an optimal level of ignorance of say the Korean language for the native Korean speaking student, and most of the time should be devoted to learning English. But with the help of activists this type of thinking has changed. This change may be hard to accomplish because due to an increase in marginal costs like time, training, and wages for teaching staff, it may seem that it’s optimal to have more ignorance with a foreign language, but the present level of ignorance regarding the foreign language is showing to provide negative externalities for the student like loss of culture and identity, and the alternative provides positive externalities. With an extended bilingual program, students can succeed with achievements like graduating high school with a seal of biliteracy and broaden the way people can communicate within their community, in business, and with their families.

Rent-Seeking: the DNC and donations from lobbyists

As discussed in class, rent-seeking occurs when resources are spent to obtain rents which derive from some activity that has negative social value. The issue itself is not the rent, but the rent-seeking, as it rediverts resources and produces a deadweight loss.

Mueller briefly touches on the issue of rent-seeking as it applies to political donations, lobbying, and government representatives voting on pertinent legislation. He reviews particular studies that find a correlation between political action committee contributions, and the way congressmen vote on protectionist legislation. Mueller writes that the studies “found a positive and significant effect of the size of political contributions from the interest group, and the probability that a congressman voted in favor of the protective legislation” (351).

Incorporating funds from lobbyists and PACs has been a contentious issue for the Democratic National Convention. In 2008, Obama introduced a restriction that “banned donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees,” according to this Washington Post article. Yet in February of 2016, the DNC reversed that decision, and ended the ban on donations from lobbyists and PACs. The Wall Street Journal projected that through June, registered lobbyists alone donated $7 million to Clinton’s campaign.

Given that lobbying is an example of rent-seeking, it will be interesting to see the cumulative effects of the DNC’s decision. As businesses divert more resources toward obtaining rents, a greater social welfare cost will be imposed upon society.

Energy Oligopoly in Virginia develops from FERC regulations

The much discussed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, designed to improve the reliability of gas delivery, is reaching the final stages before construction.  As the number of customers for Piedmont Natural Gas and Virginia Natural Gas continues to grow, the 550 mile long pipeline will allow for price stability and will ensure that customers will have continuous access to the natural gas to heat their homes and businesses, especially on the coldest day of the year. While at first met with fairly strong opposition, recent polls have shown a strong voter support for the pipeline.

So what's the holdup? In order to begin construction, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline must first be approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC). As environmental assessments have already been completed, the final decision is left to the FERC. This committee was created to determine if there is a need for this additional infrastructure and whether this pipeline is an economic solution to the demonstrated need.

Tullock would argue that this additional step is unnecessary in the market economy and wastes resources by diverting them to get approval for this project. While the Virginia natural gas market is more similar to an oligopoly than a monopoly, the same rent-seeking problems exist. In order for companies to expand and grow, they must devote significant resources to "obtain rents," or permits, that allow them to expand. These permits have a negative social value and create dead weight loss because the resources and capital spent on obtaining them could have been put into the economy instead, thus creating additional growth. While I understand the need to regulate energy to create a safer community and to protect the environment, there is already strong demonstrated support from the market for this pipeline, leading me to think that Tullock would argue the additional analysis from the FERC is unnecessary.

Corruption in the Crescent City: Tullock on Rent-Seeking

     New Orleans has a colorful political history to say the least. Remarkably, the previous mayor is the first in the city's history to go to jail for corruption. C Ray Nagin, who was in office from 2002-2010, is now federal prisoner number 32751-034. Ray Nagin was found guilty on 20 of 21 charges of fraud, bribery, false tax returns, conspiracy, and money laundering resulting from kickback schemes in cooperation with city contractors. Among his misdeeds, Nagin gave preferential contracts to city contractors who included his son's granite company in their bids for municipal work; he was sent on extravagant vacations in order for firms to secure million dollar contracts, and he also received outright bribes.
     The welfare loss due to the unjust distribution of city contracts is concerning. Instead of putting together the best bids possible and therefore the best city projects as possible, crony capitalism led to those with the right connections receiving the bids. This is harmful to the taxpayers whose money isn't being used as efficiently and who will be using these public goods. However, this is not the sole loss as Tullock is clear to point out in his paper. The costs of the bribes themselves and the effort put forth by the contractors to secure the windfalls from the extravagant city contracts add significantly to the welfare cost. The plane tickets from New Orleans to Las Vegas, Hawaii, Chicago and many places in between add up, as do the luxurious meals and hotel stays. Furthermore, the efforts put forth by Nagin and the politicians around him to be in a position to receive bribes contribute to the welfare loss. The corruption and bribery under Nagin's watch led to less qualified applicants receiving city contracts and a welfare loss resulting from rent seeking, particularly harmful in Katrina's wake.

Carbon Tax as a Solution to Fossil-Fuel Negative Externalities

Bill McKibben, a leader environmentalist who has written extensively on the impact of global warming, has long argued for some kind of price on global warming pollution. Specifically, McKibben is trying to push for a carbon tax price because it isn't fair that the "fossil fuel industry is allowed to put out their waste for free, using the atmosphere as an open sewer." He sums this up as a massive negative externality imposed upon the world, having been caused by the fossil fuel industry. McKibben's solution is to simply tax carbon directly since many alternative schemes (cap-and-trade systems, etc.) have not worked effectively. This removes the "arbitraging games and artful dodges that have helped undermine many schemes" to combat emissions and global warming. Another proposal that he favors even more is the "fee-and-dividend" approach: it sets a price on carbon, and then rebates the revenue straight to the citizens by sending them a monthly check. It's a mind-boggling proposal where it will increase what we pay at the pump, which is good, because then we ride bikes more; yet, the check will cover the increased cost. Everyone’s made whole, and if you push up the tax you push up the rebate too. McKibben quotes it as a "kind of perpetual motion machine, a virtuous cycle."


His reasoning resonates with our reading "Public Finance and Public Policy" by Gruber. Specifically in Chapters 5 & 7, Gruber outlines Public-Sector remedies for externalities. Gruber details the argument for corrective taxation in which there is a tax to the perpetrator of the negative externality that can effectively internalize the externality and lead to the socially optimal outcome. The perpetrator in this case would be the fossil-fuel industries who have allowed to spill over high pollution at no cost. For the "fee-and-dividend" approach, McKibben is using Gruber's concept of subsidies as a solution to positive production externalities by making the consumers who drive less and produce less carbon emissions a "check" (subsidy) to incentivize them to save more and more.

Does Clinton Appeal to the Moderate Voter?

It is argued in Downs that in the primaries, one can see a bimodal distribution between the leftists and the rightists. Once a candidate is chosen on both sides there is a race to the median voter by both candidates. Whichever candidate can better appeal to the median voter receives the most votes and wins the election. One of the nuances of the transition from a party appeal to a general appeal is the appeal to the extreme voters. As an extreme voter you can either vote for the candidate that is from your party (although they no longer represent the platform you truly want) or to abstain from voting because you feel alienated by the new platform.

This article argues that the DNC divide from the primaries between Clinton and Sanders has left the  Sanders supporters (viewed generally as more extreme) feeling largely alienated from Clinton. A poll from YouGov released mid-September "showed that only 51% of Sanders supporters plan to vote Hillary". That is a substantial base of the democratic party, and one that could ruin Clinton's chance at the office if the supporters hold true to their poll vote. Even further, the author argues "the divisions between Democrats may be far more deep-seated and electorally consequential". To put it in Downs-ian graphical lingo, he sees there may be a rift that questions the idea of the unimodal median distribution, where voters vote for their aligned party candidate although they have altered their platforms for the moderate voter. This begs the question, is it time for a third party coalition to form for the extreme liberals? Only November will show if far-left voters will follow the Hotelling model and vote for Hillary, despite their qualms with her stances or if they will abstain in an expression of intolerance for the liberal party's acceptance of her moderate platform.  

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/02/despite-donald-trump-many-bernie-sanders-supporters-won-t-forgive-hillary-clinton.html

Tiebout is True: Northern Virginia's Population Growth

According to population data from the University ofVirginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, northern Virginia counties and the city of Alexandria drove more than half of the population growth for the state. The amenities offered by the northern Virginia area attract more citizens than the amenities offered by other regions in Virginia. This holds true in my own experience of moving in Virginia. My family moved to Reston, Virginia, an area in northern Virginia, from Dahlgren, Virginia, a very small town more south. The better public schools, proximity to D.C., and number of restaurants and things to do attracted my family to relocate. This long-term drastic growth of northern Virginia proves Tiebout’s model of consumer voters voting with their feet to match his or her preferences to a local government’s expenditure plan. Instead of Virginians changing their locality’s expenditure plan to match their preferences, they move to the area that already has the amenities they desires. 

There are some assumptions to Tiebout’s model that do not necessarily hold in real life, such as perfect information and no costs associated with moving. However, I found in my situation that in the long-term these assumptions do not interfere with the model itself. For example, while in the short-term the cost of moving stopped my family from moving, in the long run this cost proved less than the benefits we received from relocating. I believe that in the long term the assumptions of the Tiebout model such as no moving costs can be held true.

An Overseen Presidential Election in 2016

With the whole world on top of these coming US elections, I had forgotten Nicaragua’s [my home country] presidential elections are also happening this coming November. Do I just care more about the country in which I’ve been living for the past 3 years? Johnson would agree with me in that it has nothing to do with a lack of patriotism or moral responsibility. Through Johnson’s Rational Abstention model, we were able to conclude that the costs of voting are higher than the benefits, and that people vote because they derive some utility from voting and to minimize the maximum potential regret from abstaining. However, this theory assumes no other external costs/obstacles, like faulty institutions. Nonetheless, in Nicaragua, like many other Latin American countries, this obstacle has a lot of weight on many Nicaraguans’ decision to abstain from voting.


Current Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega (from the socialist National Sandinista Liberation Front party), changed the country’s constitution last year, for the second time, to run for re-election for his third consecutive period. Fortunately for Ortega, Nicaragua’s National Assembly “randomly decided” to destitute the now ex-candidate of the Independent Liberal party (opposition), Luis Callejas, together with 28 congressmen from the same party. The reason: A legal dispute against the Liberal party that started back in 2007 and that was “suddenly” brought up to court earlier this year; during the least appropriate time. Weird huh? Well, the list of random incidents keeps going. It was decided (there’s still a debate over who really made this decision) that the new candidate of the Liberal party would be Pedro Reyes a.k.a The Stranger. To be fair to Mr. Reyes, the Supreme Electoral Court accepted his request to dismiss the few congressmen left of the opposition party who did not accept his leadership. I know this post is already too long, but to end the list I want to put one more fun-fact out there. Ortega’s vice-president became ill earlier this year, which forced him to relinquish to his position, leaving the first Sandinista congresswoman as the new vice-president. Any guesses? None other than his wife, Rosario Murillo.


There’s no doubt 2016 was by far the luckiest year for Daniel Ortega. 

Beating the Presidential Elections

The coming presidential elections for Ecuador will happen in February 2017. This election is considered critical, as it could create significant economic and political impact for the country in the long run. Ecuador’s current president, Rafael Correa is the representative of the socialist party Alianza Pais (PAIS Alliance), considered to be from the left. This party has held office for the last ten years, and if reelected their power could be maintained indefinitely, thus, the importance of this election.  Many people disagree with the political ideologies of this party, which has given strength to the opposition. At the beginning of the presidential campaigns, there were many “strong” candidates running for office representing the major political parties, opposing the current president. However, now as the election time approaches, the opposition leader, Jaime Nebot, a political activist, suggests that the main opponents of Alianza Pais unite their parties, in order to gain the most votes and win elections.

The scenario presented can be directly related to Downs and the median voter theory. Nebot has made an intelligent suggestion, by saying that the main opposition candidates, Guillermo Lasso, Paco Moncayo and Cynthia Viteri, should combine their ideologies, and select one candidate in order to increase their chances of winning the elections. By having so many candidates in the elections, the votes are dispersed between the parties. Thus, according to Downs theory, in a multiparty system, the equilibrium allocation depends of the distribution, which cannot be clearly determined. Therefore, it is difficult to predict who the winner of the election will be. If the candidates are reduced, to two major ones, being Alianza Pais and the opposition, the candidate who reaches to the median voter will win. If the new party formed by these three candidates, unites their ideologies and political perspectives, then they will move towards the median of the population. If this happens, voters who do not support the government will have a unifying force to vote for a candidate, increasing the likelihood of winning the elections. 

What's Wrong With This Election??

I've never been one for the show Dirty Jobs, but after reading what celebrity Mike Rowe had to say to a fan asking him to encourage his fans to vote, I instantly gained a massive amount of respect for the guy. While agreeing with his fan that voting is fundamentally important, Mike goes one step further and acknowledges what so many people fail to: that the very voters celebrities encourage to head to the polls are also some of the most ill-informed people. This touches directly on the issue of rational ignorance. Without using those exact words, Mike Rowe addressed one of the underlying issues with our political system. With such a large number of voters, a fraction of those people will be well educated and well versed in the major issues at hand each election cycle. To encourage those who do not take the time to study economics, history, politics, and other relevant subjects, is to encourage ignorant people to make decisions for the whole country.

Not only does Mike address the idea of rational ignorance, but he takes the stance that voting is not a duty or a moral obligation but is instead a fundamental right. With that, he likens encouraging people to go out and vote without first educating themselves to encouraging people who know nothing about guns to go buy an AR-15. Does this seem responsible to you? He pushes back against celebrities using their visibility to send people to the polls by saying that kind of ignorance is how we have arrived at our current predicament with two downright lousy presidential candidates. This is because the rationally ignorant voter is just as likely to vote for issues/candidates that are against their self-interest as they are to vote correctly in line with their beliefs. Mike would therefore relax the assumption in the Downsian model of no abstentions, and even encourage people to abstain from voting if they wish to remain rationally ignorant. He sees abstaining from voting as a positive if the people who would otherwise show up to the polls choose poorly. Because of these poor choices, now it is a game of 'who do we hate the least' instead of selecting the most qualified person for the job.

Mills Godwin's Downsian Switch

Mills Godwin Jr. served as Virginia's governor twice, from 1966 to 1970 and from 1974 to1978. He is remembered as a the father of Virginia's Community College system, the architect of the 1971 Virginia State Constitution and the institutor of Virginia's sales tax. What people often forget, is the massive political transformation he underwent between the two terms.

From World War II until the early 1970's, the Byrd Organization and the Democratic Party dominated state politics in Virginia. The Byrd Organization was a political machine that effectively controlled the election of state officials ranging from localities to the state level. Godwin's career blossomed under the Byrd Organization's support in the early 1950's, and he remained a prominent member of the organization until he became governor in 1966.

Following the supreme court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), numerous conservative state legislators balked at the idea of integrating and instead began a movement know as "massive resistance". The Byrd Organization fully supported massive resistance and Godwin followed suit. Despite massive resistance's early success, with the signing of the Civil Rights Act 1964 by President Johnson and the efforts by civil right activists, by the late 1960's and early 1970's school integration was inevitable. Massive resistance and the Byrd Organization were ousted in 1970 when Virginia elected its first Republican, non-Byrd, pro-integration candidate since the Civil War - Linwood Holton. Holton won the election by garnering African American support and exposing the corruption of the Byrd Organization.

The following election, in 1974, Godwin ran again and won. This time as a Republican, a non-Byrd candidate and an advocate of integration.

This massive political realignment can only be explained by the economist, Anthony Downs. As Downs says "parties (and candidates) formulate policies in order to win elections, rather than win elections in order to formulate policies." In this case we can clearly see Godwin's political platform reflecting the Downsian hypothesis. Linwood Holton's success ushered in a new era of politics. With the growing number of African American voters starting in the 1960's, candidates could no longer stand by segregationist policies without jeopardizing their chances of winning. As Downs proposes in his essay - assuming candidates are vote maximizers, they have the tendency to adjust their policies towards the median voter. In this case, we see that the distribution of voters and the median voter are evolving. Therefore, we see candidates, like Godwin, altering their platform to maximize votes.

Swiss Bliss or Swiss Miss? Rational Abstention or Irrational Irrelevance ?

      I spent last semester studying abroad in Geneva, Switzerland, so when we started talking about low voter turn-out rates in Switzerland, I immediately wanted to know more. I did think it was odd that during my time living in Geneva there was almost no mention of Swiss politics, with the favorite political conversation being about Donald Trump. I saw no political advertisements in newspapers or around the city and I left knowing no more about the political system than when I first arrived. Johnson tells us that “ the only country with a voting turnout lower than the United States is Switzerland." Only about 40% of people in Switzerland vote. 

      This article, while not refuting that fact, explains that “'selective voters'” constitute the bulk of the electorate, simply picking and choosing which votes to take part in” and thus showing that disinterest is not the sole determining factor, but it is rather disinterest in or ignorance of some issues. Per this article, Switzerland has seen a decrease over the years, but in contrast to the US, they are asked to vote three or more times per year. Another reason voter turnout is so low is attributed to the fact that the political parties are not as polarized and conflicting as they are here, and that the same “four main parties have held the seven cabinet seats for more than half a century under a power-sharing agreement.” It seems that even though in my opinion Switzerland is the ideal place to live, (a fact that is backed up by Forbes which places Switzerland as the 3rd happiest country), the lack of interest in voting is a problem that is being remedied by online voting. It remains to be seen whether or not this will make a difference and change things for the better. So in summary, the reasons the Swiss don't vote are perhaps the high frequency of being asked to vote, the consistency of their political system and a strong interest in some issues over others. I would ask, is it really that bad that people aren't voting? Rational abstention and rational ignorance about some issues are very real but clearly they are working for the country, so why are they seen as something that needs to be fixed? 

                                         

Brexit and Tiebout

In a well-known, controversial vote held in June, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union - a decision universally known as "Brexit." The "leave" camp passed by a vote of 52% to 48%, with a voter turn out of over 70%.

While, of course, there are numerous views regarding the advantages and disadvantages of this decision, Tiebout likely would have said that the vote should not have even occurred in the first place. If UK citizens were unsatisfied with the revenue-expenditure patterns of their government, the best option would be to vote with their feet and move to another "community," or in this case, country. Tiebout's argument is based around the fact that individuals have heterogeneous preferences, and so providing goods in a heterogeneous fashion eliminates forced conformity. Tiebout asserts that the governments' revenue-expenditure patterns should be taken as given and individuals should move to the locality in which that system best meets their preferences; in this case, the best option would have been for unhappy individuals to move to a different community.

Downs and McMullin

In "The Statics and Dynamics of Party Ideologies," Anthony Downs distinguishes between two types of new parties: The first is designed to win elections, and the second to influence already existing parties. The first is concerned with the present, the second with the future; Downs describes this second type of party as forming simply to blackmail existing parties. Given this criteria, how do we categorize Evan McMullin?

The New York Times reported last Friday that McMullin -- a former GOP staffer and independent candidate running as the only "true conservative" in the presidential race -- is quickly gaining in the polls in Utah. McMullin began his campaign as essentially a protest candidate, someone able to give Republican voters a candidate they can vote for without feeling like they have to take a shower immediately afterward. However, McMullin has focussed his efforts almost entirely on winning Utah in the hopes of throwing the election to the House by depriving both Trump and Clinton of 270 electoral votes; this is an unlikely but plausible scenario if Trump wins enough swing states (see attached map for one scenario). The fact that his team does have a strategy for winning the White House would suggest McMullin's candidacy is more than just protest or blackmail.

In my view, how McMullin fits into Downs' party categories depends not on if he wins the White House (he won't--Clinton is poised to win in a blowout), but on what path the GOP takes after the election. Contra Trump, McMullin is a typical Republican in that he's an advocate of free trade and the TPP, and a staunch critic of Trump's isolationism and Muslim ban. If after November 8th the GOP reverts back to its traditional positions of free trade and interventionism, McMullin will forever be known as a protest candidate--i.e. one who springs into action only if his party drifts too far from its original ideological position. However, if the GOP embraces Trumpism and becomes an Americanized version of France's National Front, I think McMullin and his backers will see no choice but to officially start a new party committed to the GOP's former principles. The first option seems more likely, but the second is more fun to think about.

Why the Borda Count Makes Sense for MLB MVP Election, Not for U.S. Politics

In class we mentioned a few of the rare real world examples of a Borda Count. One of these examples is the Major League Baseball election of the Most Valuable Player. The Borda Count is used in many such sports elections, but this system makes far more sense in sports than it does in politics. Although the Borda Count is the voting system with the highest Condorcet Efficiency, it has some practical pitfalls in the political realm. The United States has one of the lowest voter turnout rates of any country in the world, due at least in part to the high number of opportunities we have to vote. With so many elections, Americans can often plead rational ignorance. The Borda Count, like other forms of Ranked Choice Voting, requires voters to know enough about every candidate to rank them in order of preference. A Simple Majority Vote, by contrast, allows voters to be more selective in their engagement. The MLB MVP is elected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWA), a selection of national and beat reporters from across the country. It is part of these writers' jobs to be well informed on the statistics of the best baseball players in the country, so, unlike in the case of American political voters, MLB voters have a high incentive to be informed.

The other issue often raised about the Borda Count is strategic voting: the incentive for voters to put their candidate's rival or biggest threat at the bottom of their rankings, even if this candidate would not actually be their their last choice. In American political elections this is a real danger. It is not hard to imagine Republican voters ranking a Democratic nominee below a third party candidate, or vice versa, even if that third party candidate is clearly unqualified for the job. Again, MLB voting differs. Sportswriters do not have an explicit stake in the outcome of an MVP vote. While an American political voter may risk seeing his taxes raised or rights infringed upon, the sportswriter is simply trying to reward the best player in the league. Sportswriters also tend to have a level of objectivity, a willingness to vote for a candidate that they don't like personally but respect professionally, that is rarely achieved in American political voting.