No Selective Incentives, no integrated Lou's List

During Tuesday's lecture, Professor Coppock mentioned that UVA faculty leadership had historically been terrified to even acknowledge Lou's List, despite its popularity among students and faculty. UVA finally adopted it last Fall, but as an official university service, it somehow is not as good as the version Lou operated by himself. This made me wonder why large institutions use unpopular internal systems when better alternatives exist. A boring explanation is that UVA maintains over 100 functional specialists to manage its compliance requirements, and the specialists recommend generic safe enterprise software like Oracle Peoplesoft.

A far more interesting explanation is Olson's theory of collective action. He argues that small organized groups have an advantage over larger groups because their members have stronger incentives to pursue a common interest. Larger groups, by contrast, struggle to organize due to the free rider problem, unless they offer selective incentives to encourage participation. Oracle has millions of dollars at stake in securing institutional contracts, giving it a strong incentive to lobby for government technology spending. Students and faculty, despite being far more numerous, are classified as a latent group because while they have vast collective power, they also have little individual incentive to organize around university software decisions, despite the inconvenience each member faces.

Maybe if our students and faculty had a better selective incentive to rally behind, Lou's List would have been integrated into UVA's official services sooner, and without the issues present in Hoos' List. Unfortunately, the better course registration experience apparently was not a strong enough incentive on its own.

The Industries Most "Interest-ed" in Congress

 The crypto and banking lobbies have been at odds for months. Last year, the House of Representatives passed the CLARITY Act, which would “clarify” the federal regulatory structure for cryptocurrencies. Among other provisions, the bill would permit crypto exchanges to give holders of stablecoins (i.e., a type of cryptocurrency pegged in value to real currencies) interest to attract customers, threatening the market share of banks that accept and pay interest on deposits. As such, the banking industry opposes any bill that permits exchanges from paying interest on stablecoin, and has mounted a semi-effective campaign to stall CLARITY before it passes in the Senate.

Perhaps the efficacy of these lobbying efforts can be explained from an Olsonian perspective. The young, fragmented crypto industry operates as a privileged group, where several dominant firms (e.g., Coinbase, Binance; the “benefactors” in this case) have vastly outspent other firms on congressional lobbying endeavors. These firms have had a more pronounced role in the legislative process, but are inhibited by the free riding of smaller firms, and will thus achieve T < T*. On the other hand, the banking industry operates as an intermediate group. Although some banks (e.g., JPMorgan-Chase, Bank of America, etc.) have a significant, noticeable impact in DC, community or local banks often have an outsized, also noticeable voice in the legislative process, given their role in representatives’ constituencies. The communication and coordination channels of banks have existed for centuries, and each bank has the incentive to reduce non-bank competitors from entering the market. As such, cohesion can be more easily achieved in the banking industry and the cost of organizing is diminished, despite the massive number of banks in the United States. It appears the banking lobby has emerged victorious on this issue, since interest payments on stablecoin have been restricted in recent Senate versions of CLARITY. Although Olson predicts smaller groups will be more effective in general, this issue reveals that the underlying thread is simply the capacity to coordinate effectively.

Rent-Seeking Across Party Lines

In high school, I worked at a garage door company that is the dominant firm in the Rhode Island market, which also has a few smaller competitors that service mostly smaller jobs. For the purposes of this blog post I'll call it ABC Garage Doors. ABC regularly makes political contributions, mainly to gubernatorial races in the hope for benefits like favorable labor rules, lower taxes, and increased access to government contracts. These favorable benefits can be thought of as the transfer of wealth Peltzman describes and the money spent doing so as rent-seeking.

Interestingly, ABC often contributes to both Republicans and Democrats, often within the same race. In Peltzman's model, K is defined as any spending by beneficiaries "in campaign funds, lobbying, and so on" to win support and reduce opposition. Giving to both candidates seems less about spending money to reduce opposition and more about purchasing political access regardless of who wins.

RI regulations prohibit corporations from donating so ABC's owner donates himself. Although it is required for campaigns to publicly report any donations exceeding $200, there is likely less negative press on ABC than larger corporations (which often fund through PACs), so the owner supports both candidates publicly and attends both parties' campaign events.

From ABC's perspective, this strategy is rational because it reduces the risk of backing the losing candidate and preserves relationships with whoever holds office. However, resources spent rent seeking could otherwise be used productively. Contributing to candidates with diametrically opposed positions also raises questions about whether these donations reflect genuine political preferences or primarily an attempt to secure favorable treatment.

How Large AI Companies are Protecting Their Own Profit

A recent Reuters article, highlights an interesting contradiction within the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. OpenAI President Greg Brockman donated $25 million to a political group "Leading the Future" who spends millions of dollars to support congressional candidates who oppose regulations that “unduly constrain or delay AI development” in the US. This is particularly interesting because Brockman has also publicly supported AI safety measures and government oversight. Meanwhile, Leading the Future supports establishing a national regulatory framework that would prevent individual states from implementing their own AI restrictions. This situation poses an important question: are large AI companies such as OpenAI genuinely interested in responsible regulation, or are they more interested in ensuring that regulation works in their favor?

This is closely connected to George Stigler's theory of economic regulation, which argues that industries use government regulation to advance their own economic interests rather than the public interest. In this case, large AI companies have an incentive to influence the regulatory environment in ways that protect their existing market positions and limit competition. For example, companies like OpenAI have the financial and political resources to navigate complex federal regulations, while smaller AI startups would struggle to compete if compliance become too expensive. At the same time, established companies may oppose regulations that restrict their own operations or slow their ability to bring products to market, especially with many of them wanting to go public in the near future. By influencing which regulations are implemented, and at what level of government, these companies can potentially create barriers to entry, reduce competition, and preserve their market share.

To add, In Tullock's terms, this is classic rent-seeking: using financial and political resources that could have been used somewhere else to secure advantageous regulation rather than competing solely through innovation and better products.

Can Antitrust Be Captured? Stigler's Theory and the Sherman Antitrust Act

Stigler 71 tells us that regulation exists because firms want it to. Firms can use regulation to maximize profits, so they bid on regulation and draft it alongside lawmakers in an attempt to do so. For more typical forms of regulation like the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it's easy to pick out the benefits for firms. Most often, regulation allows them a legal outlet to restrict entry and monopolize a market, meaning they can produce where MR=MC. This is where the firm produces in their dream, ideal world. But how, then, do we reconcile the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which seems antithetical to firms' efforts to produce where MR=MC, with the theory of regulatory capture? Stigler would likely argue that it can be reconciled through its enforcement.

According to Stigler's framework, it's not just in drafting and passing new laws that regulation can be captured--so, too, can it be captured through enforcement. In the context of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the enforcement of antitrust law can be influenced by the very businesses it seeks to regulate. This may occur in several different ways. For one, businesses could influence the industries or companies which receive the most legal scrutiny. Second, it may come through regulatory exceptions and favorable interpretations of the law. Lastly, it could also come through businesses using antitrust law as a strategic weapon to disadvantage their competitors. Stigler would say that this doesn't necessarily make the act ineffective; rather, he would challenge whether the act automatically advances public interest.

Is Big Pharma On Your Side?

In my internship last summer, I worked for a pharmaceutical company’s lobbying team that gave money to both Democrat and Republican Members of Congress. The company signed these checks with the hope that members would vote in their interest. While I, of course, believe that the company I work for acts in the public’s best interest, critics of pharmaceutical companies generally view their lobbying unfavorably. However, Congressmen of both parties met with our team over the summer, which Peltzman would assume was an attempt to maximize the votes they will eventually receive. In these meetings, I observed my team educating and convincing members that certain policies (like the Clear Labels Act) would not only harm company profits by raising production costs, but also harm consumers. In this way, the company tried to align members' incentives with our own profit-maximizing incentives. We argued that a vote-maximizing politician should side with our interests because the bill would harm consumers.

In Peltzman’s model, f is the probability that a beneficiary of a policy supports the politician. Our lobbying meetings were intended to persuade legislators that voting in our favor would increase the likelihood that their constituents would support them electorally. I argue that this case was not necessarily a case of capture by special interests or rent-seeking, since the intended outcome had positive social value. Instead, some lobbying efforts can be seen as instances of experts educating politicians on issues that affect their constituents in ways they may not realize. Assuming this information is accurate and unbiased (likely somewhat unrealistic to assume), the resources devoted to the cause are not wasteful. While our company is clearly motivated by profits, our interests are compatible with the interests of consumers (at least in this case). My experience demonstrates how, in the Peltzman model, politicians balance competing interests, but do not always have to make trade-offs between business and consumer interests. 

Whether You Vote Is Public Information

I recently saw an ad in Virginia with the following statement: "Who you vote for is private information, but whether you vote is public information." I thought that 'voting' and 'public information' being used in the same sentence was a little off putting, but if we think about this like an economist, it is easy to understand why this was the intended reaction of the ad. 

We should all be familiar with Johnson's theory on rational abstention. As a quick refresher, the marginal benefit of an individual vote affecting the election is infinitesimally small and is outweighed by almost any cost, such as time spent going to the polls. Therefore, abstention is rational. However, millions of people still vote. They vote not to change the election, but to avoid the social pressures, embarrassment, or informal costs associated with abstention. 

This ad implies that whether or not you cast a ballot matters to other people, and thus there exists a real cost to abstention. If you follow this link here, you can order a list of everyone who voted in Virginia. Interesting, right? You could use this list to shame people for not voting. 

This ad is a brilliant and economically sound way to increase voter turnout, helping to mitigate the damaging effects of abstention. 

A "Fine" Price to Block New Entrants

Meta was recently ordered to pay $25 billion for deceiving users about data privacy. Before reading Stigler '71, I would have viewed this ruling as the legal system protecting the public interest by punishing a misbehaving company. Now, I view it more cynically: Stigler states regulation is "acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit," and Meta used this regulation to pay a short-term cost to beneficially hinder long-term competition by blocking new entrants.

Meta earned $52.48 billion in profit through September this year and had a valuation of $1.8 trillion. This regulation is ex post, as Meta already has a large user base and vast amounts of data that provide network effects, economies of scale, and market dominance. Meta can eat fines that would bankrupt new entrants trying to gain market share using the same tactics. No company wants to pay $25 billion in regulatory fines, but for Meta, that cost would certainly be worth protecting its $1.8 trillion market valuation.

Even if Meta publicly whines about regulation and litigates against it, one indication of whether it is willing to bear these costs to shut out new entrants is whether it has historically advocated for regulation on its industry. Mark Zuckerberg has done just that, but surely he desires government regulation for the sake of the public interest, not Meta's private interests, right?

Waste(ful) Management

For most, the intricacies of solid waste management qualify for rational ignorance. This was true for New Hampshire voters until 2018, when Casella Waste Systems proposed a new 70-acre landfill at the "center of the Ammonoosuc River watershed, half a mile from Forest Lake, located in one of the most wildlife-rich areas of NH." As Dalton's small (933) local community voiced their concerns, chief of which was lake contamination from leachate, the state media caught on. Such reporting uncovered a network of lobbying efforts on behalf of New Hampshire waste management companies, and a textbook example of rent-seeking. 

New Hampshire's undeveloped land (nearly 50% of the state) has made it an attractive target for landfill development, with approximately 2 million tons of waste disposed annually across the state's nine operating landfills. These numbers don't seem extraordinary, until put into perspective. Massachusetts (New Hampshire's neighbor) only has 19 landfills for a population seven times that of NH. Massachusetts isn't a benevolent recycling-friendly neighbor but rather constitutes approximately half of New Hampshire's landfill waste. This underground (pun intended) inter-state waste system, that jeopardizes the health and well-being of many NH communities, is the result of $250,000 worth of lobbying expenditures over the past three years. Such covert business for the sake of increased profits, was perpetuated by former NH Governor, Chris Sununu, who received $2,000 each from Casella Waste Systems and Waste Management during his 2022 general election campaign. Even the state capital's Mayor, Jim Bouley, and his son, Jackson Bouley, embodied Gurley's "revolving door," both serving as lobbyists for Casella Waste Systems for three years. 

A widely-circulated Dalton, NH, resident's quote: "don't let the financial interests of private industry outweigh what this small community wants and needs," speaks to the negative social value of the rent-seeking protecting this multi-billion-dollar state industry. With Chris Sununu in a comfortable Casella-sponsored retirement and the new leadership of Governor Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire will begin to take the lobbyists' trash out.

Are You Qualified to Pick My Couch?

Stigler's "Theory of Economic Regulation" ends with an analysis of the correlation between an occupation's licensing laws and its political influence. Besides the occupations that Stigler looks at in his paper, interior designers are another profession that can act as an example of how a profession can use regulations to reduce competition in that industry in the name of "public interest."

As interior design is a more subjective profession that relies more on personal style and requires less specialized knowledge or technical skill than other professions, the barriers to entry for this profession would be fairly low without formal restrictions. Instead, the regulations vary by state but could include four years of undergraduate education focusing on interior design, two years of design experience, and paying for and passing the NCIDQ exam.

Stigler argues regulation is "acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit," and the interior design field is no exception: designers in states with regulations have been found to earn wages 9-15% higher than those in unregulated states. However, the Council for Interior Design Qualificiation, which administers the NCIDQ exam, claims the licensing regulations are primarily to "ensure interior designers are qualified to protect public health, safety, and welfare," mirroring Stigler's first alternative reasoning for regulation in his paper. Although designers might have to occasionally make health or safety related decisions, such as making sure buildings abide by safety codes, they would most likely be under the supervision or guidance of an architect or engineer anyways, suggesting the real explanation for the regulations may be more than merely the desire for public safety. 

France on Fire

Young protestors looted and put France to the torch this past Saturday. No doubt, there were many Frenchmen like Nathan Mimoun who arrived at his electronics store to see that over 70,000 Euros of product had been stolen. Historian Sir Niall Ferguson, in a recent FP Article, argues that the source of the youth’s frustration and violence is that the French entitlement system is rigged against the youth and for their grandparents. Our understanding of public choice can tell us why France may seemingly be at war with itself over young versus old and why the costs to such a war might be high. 

First, we know from Milton Friedman that “the use of political channels, while inevitable, tends to strain social cohesion essential for a stable society,” specifically for political decisions made without unanimity. Buchanan and Tullock sharpen this point by saying that any rule short of unanimity lets a winning coalition impose external costs on the outvoted. In France, low births for the past quarter century have meant the median voter is increasingly old. This older voting base has made it politically difficult for France to enact any entitlement reform. While it can be hard to trace the origin of any social unrest, the argument, that the massive weight of state funded pensions and entitlements is crushing France’s youth and bringing them to the street, certainly makes sense.

However, it must be said that the French youth's looting is not harmless redistribution. According to Tullock, theft actually generates a great deal of welfare loss, for both sides spend resources on a zero sum transfer. For example, because of the looting, store owners like Mimoun will now spend resources, which could otherwise be used productively, on things like security cameras and armed guards. Additionally, the thieves spend resources on things like hoods and masks for an activity that ultimately generates no welfare. In all, this theft makes everyone worse off and certainly won’t help France solve its fiscal woes.

"Tolerating" Liars, Cheaters, & Stealers

At the time of its original founding in 1842, the University of Virginia's Honor System included a Non-Toleration Clause that required UVA students to report any Offenses they witnessed, with the reasoning that "to ignore these Acts committed by another student is to make one an accomplice and equally guilty of a violation of Honor". With the removal of this Clause in 1979, and the recent transition in 2023 to a multi-sanction system, the Honor Committee is often criticized for being excessively lenient towards guilty students, especially when compared to non-toleration, single-sanction systems at schools such as the Virginia Military Institute.

The Community of Trust (COT) can be characterized as a public good shared by all of UVA's community members; no individual is excluded from the benefits of acting with integrity and trusting one another, and one person's ability to act with integrity does not affect another person's ability to do so as well. Applying the non-toleration clause towards student integrity, a faculty member or student's decision not to report a witnessed Offense can be characterized as a free-rider problem; by electing to avoid the costs of reporting an Offense, the COT is deeply eroded. This problem is only worsened by a large n value (the COT has tens of thousands of members) and the existence of reduced social pressure towards acting with integrity among some students.

Why did the University of Virginia Honor Committee elect to remove the clause then? Even when the Committee passed this clause, the decision of collective action was truly made among the broader COT. In the context of this Clause, external costs are the costs one endures from unreported Offenses, and decision-making costs would be the effort required for everyone to agree with the Non-Toleration Clause by actively Reporting witnessed Offenses. While mandatory reporting did strive to reduce the external costs, decision-making costs increased substantially, considering all the time and effort of getting people to agree by acting in accordance with the Clause, as well as subsequent enforcement costs of investigating and adjudicating instances of students choosing not to Report a witnessed Offense. This would render the Honor System's institutional costs of enforcement extremely high, and considering that the removal of the Non-Toleration Clause did not affect the number of Reported Offenses in the long term, the tradeoff of external costs seems to have been outweighed by the high decision-making costs. Thus, with such a large portion of the COT expressing reluctance towards the Non-Toleration Clause, the Committee reformed the System, but continues to consider the additional costs we all endure by not mandating Reporting.

MVT and the Political Horseshoe

The polarized American political scene appears to refute the median voter theorem. Joe Rogan once described American politics as a TV show, mocking the radical parties that dominate American legislature. Joe Rogan is irrelevant to this discussion; however, his comment is hilariously true of bipolar American politics. Despite the radical political scene in America, both left-wing and right wing extremists seem to meet in the middle over certain issues in a phenomenon known as the political horseshoe. My question is: can the Median Voter Theorem (MVT) explain the junction of the left and right wing parties?

The MVT requires a one dimensional policy space. Lets assume that the only relevant issue in a political election is the candidates' stance on anti-trust laws, and that all voters exist on a spectrum of weak to strong support for anti-trust laws. Voters are normally distributed, and the median voter distrusts monopolies and would subsequently support legislation to minimize their market power. This is a realistic assumption given YouGov polling data. In this election, there is a far left and a far right wing candidate, and a simple majority vote will determine the election. Since both candidates are vote maximizing, the MVT predicts that far left and the far right politicians will converge on the median voter who supports antitrust laws. In practice we do see strong bipartisan support for antitrust laws. For example, the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 received one vote against in the senate passed in the unanimously in the house. 

Its important to note the limitations of this application. The biggest limitation is that political stance on antitrust laws is not the only determinate factor in elections. There are many more issues, and several of them violate the one-dimensionality rule, like immigration. In this case, it may merely be a coincidence that the MVT predicts the convergence of two political parties. Bipartisan support over antitrust legislature may result from aligned party values rather than a fight over the median voter. Regardless, it is still an interesting and important analysis because economic policy has massive implications.

You Can Sell a Whole Neighborhood???

I don't get shocked by a whole lot while I'm catching up on the news, but I did get pretty caught off guard by this proposal: one real estate developer and former HOA president of a neighborhood in Loudoun County, Mital Gandhi, has proposed that himself and his 142 other neighbors should sell their entire neighborhood for data center development. He was a staunch opponent of data center development in Ashburn that has since decided that since data centers have already surrounded their neighborhood and disturb the quietude, residents might as well find a way to benefit. In the proposal, each resident would receive roughly $4.4 million for selling their home to data center developers, which is about double the value of their home. The catch is that this must be a unanimous decision. Getting 143 families to agree to selling their homes, as it turns out, is a tough ask. 

This deal has not gone through yet because of how many holdouts there are. Some families have children that are in school and want to delay the project, and others are emotionally attached to Ashburn, VA. Regardless, because of their emotional attachment to their home, the external cost curve is high. However, the larger problem has been the costs of consensus. Coordination to secure agreement between all 143 families is high. Many holdouts are trying to negotiate a higher piece of the cut for themselves, which adds to the collective cost curve. I would argue that n* in this scenario despite all of the debates is right where it should be for a decision of this magnitude. This has the potential to uproot families at inopportune times and impose very costly externalities on some should it go through without consensus. Unanimity in cases like this ensures Pareto optimality. In the meantime, all residents will continue to hear the pervasive hum of the data centers that currently surround their community. 

Can Your Vote Be Bought?

     Ahead of midterm elections, President Trump has promised all U.S. adults $5,000 if republicans win the midterms, but does being paid $5,000 outweigh the costs of voting? For the sake of this analysis, I will be focusing only on the marginal benefit based on promises, not on the expected future utility stream under each candidate. We know that there is no financial promise being made by other parties running against Trump, so the marginal financial benefit of voting for Trump would be $5,000 for adults. Based on our discussion in class, we also know that the probability of being the decisive vote in Virginia is 1/10,000,000. Using these values, the expected benefit of voting for Trump purely based on the financial promises would be $0.0005, a number that is much lower than the marginal cost of voting. In a different state that historically votes blue, the probability of being the decisive voter is even lower, so the expected benefit is even lower. 
                 While President Trump’s promise seems like a large sum, the expected value for the individual is much lower than the perceived benefit of the offer. If Trump is trying to target people who typically would not vote, this low of an expected benefit might not bring them out to the polls. This number could be swayed, however, if people miscalculate the probability that their vote will be decisive, increasing the perceived value of the promise.
                 On the other hand, we know that people do not always behave predictably when it comes to voting. In terms of straying from the Rational Agent Model, people consistently vote even when the costs of voting exceed the expected benefits of voting. For example, they could have a strong sense of civic duty or be highly influenced by social pressure. In these cases, social pressure could play a major role, especially if people view the $5,000 incentive as being paid out. On a similar note, people who vote for civic duty might be insulted by the offering if they consider their vote something very important that cannot be bought out or they could see the offer as “undemocratic.”

UBE's Mess of an Election

Pursuant to Section 7 Part C of the University Board of Elections Rules and Regulations, student election winners are determined through a Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) System. The justification for utilizing this system is "to ensure the election of the candidate preferred by the most voters, avoid runoff elections, promote positive campaigning, and encourage greater voter turnout". However, looking at the 2024 First Year Council President Election results may provide evidence challenging the bold claim UBE makes that their system ensures the election of the candidate preferred by the most voters. 

In the 2024 FYC President election, the ballot was initially a First-Past-The-Post, or plurality, system of voting due to a procedural error. In the event that this was the standard voting system of the UBE, Patrick Jo would have been elected the First Year Council President. However, due to the procedural error of the UBE in producing a ballot that was not consistent with the RCV system, they chose to "rectify" the situation by employing an RCV for the top two candidates.

In the pairwise election, I was thus named the successful candidate, demonstrating that Patrick Jo would not have been the Condorcet Winner, as he would not win every head-to-head candidate pairing. However, it is still possible that I was not the Condorcet Winner (and would not defeat every other candidate in a head-to-head vote),  and that the decision to remove all the other candidates from the Runoff Election prohibited voters from revealing their true preferences for another candidate. If the UBE was truly trying to get as close as possible to electing the candidate most preferred by voters, they may elect instead to employ the Borda voting system going forward, which produces the Condorcet winner more often than the RCV system.

Concerning many during this election process was the UBE's decision to rectify their procedural error through a second round of runoff voting between the top two candidates. Prior to the publication of the top two candidates, some candidates felt that the additional time and mental exhaustion costs of a runoff were not worth it, and preferred to simply accept the results of the plurality system of voting, while other candidates wanted to stick it out to have the best possible chance of being elected President. Because a majority decision between candidates to not participate in the runoff election was essentially necessary to convince the UBE not to hold the second round, the majority decision (sticking it out through a second round of voting) imposed costs on the candidates in the minority who were exhausted and preferred not to continue campaigning.

Florida’s Pig-Headed Constitutional Amendment Process

 Since 2006, Florida has required 60% of the vote to amend its state constitution. In most states, the legislature proposes and passes amendments to their state’s governing charter, and then submits the proposal to voters for final approval. And until twenty years ago, Florida was in the vast majority of states which required a simple majority for the enactment of constitutional amendments. Sentiment towards the policy began to shift in 2002, when an amendment passed prohibiting the confinement or tethering of pregnant pigs. Although the sympathy of voters is perhaps admirable, business interests were outraged. The Florida Chamber of Commerce began a campaign to raise the threshold to 60%, arguing that trivial amendments such as these not only “disrespect [the] democratic process,” but also harm underrepresented industries within the state. One swine farmer was awarded $500,000 in damages after the amendment passed, and countless others expressed frustration with the amendment. A referendum to increase the threshold to 60% passed just four years later.

Per the analysis of Buchanan and Tullock, the raised threshold sought to restructure the costs associated with the passage of constitutional amendments. In requiring a supermajority, the model suggests that external costs imposed by these collective decisions on Floridians have decreased, and otherwise affected pig farmers might have avoided the damages imposed by the amendment. In turn, the costs associated with building consensus have increased. Whereas a simple—perhaps naïve—majority might feel sympathy for pregnant pigs, requiring 60% means more expensive advertising campaigns and outreach efforts. Over a million additional Floridians in any given election must be persuaded to vote in favor of proposed amendments, many of whom are potentially negatively impacted (e.g., are pig farmers) and are thus much harder to convince than the first 50% of voters. Although constitutions should be immune to partisan ebb and flow, the failure of amendments which receive 57% of the vote (such as a pro-choice amendment in 2024) have sparked continued debate over the optimal placement of this threshold.

Colombia’s Power-Sharing Democracy

My grandfather often tells me stories of Colombia back in the 60s. One that particularly shocks me is that every four years, when there was an election, everyone already knew which party would win because it was simply its turn. After a decade of partisan violence and a brief military dictatorship, the Liberal and Conservative parties had agreed to stop competing and share power through a pact known as the Frente Nacional. For 16 years, the presidency alternated between the two parties, and Congress, the cabinet, and the courts were split 50/50. Elections still took place, and any citizen could vote, but only candidates from the party on turn could run. The median voter logic didn't disappear; it was constrained. Factions within the governing party had to compete for the whole electorate, so the winner tended to be the candidate closest to the median, but only within that party's ideological range. Voters outside that range abstained from voting, creating a bias and moving the median of actual voters further from the assumed median citizen. 

In the short run, the Frente worked. Before the pact, the two parties were trapped in a prisoner's dilemma: each was better off using violence to capture the state, since holding back while the other attacked meant losing everything, yet mutual violence left both worse off. The power-sharing agreement broke this dilemma and partisan violence fell sharply. But by solving one conflict, the system created a much larger one. Downs argues that new parties emerge when the distribution of voters' ideological views shifts, and existing parties leave part of the space uncovered. Colombia experienced exactly this shift: a growing number of farmers were migrating to the cities, and ideas from the Cuban Revolution and the Soviet Union were arriving through political propaganda, creating a new left-leaning constituency. In a competitive system, a new party would have entered that gap. Since electoral entry was blocked, the entry happened outside the system, through armed movements like the FARC. The Frente ended a partisan civil war, but in doing so it helped lay the groundwork for a new civil war that would last half a century.

Borda Count Voting: 2008 Heisman Case Study

The Heisman Trophy is awarded annually by media voters to the season's most outstanding college football player. Voting is conducted using the Borda Count method; voters rank their top three choices, awarding 3 points for first-place, 2 for second and 1 for third. Generally, this is highly uncontroversial as most years the winner receives an overwhelming majority of the first-place votes. For example, in 2025 Fernando Mendoza received 643 first-place votes while runner-up Diego Pavia received 189. However, the Borda count winner does not necessarily have to receive the most first-place votes. Consider the 2008 voting below:

Tim Tebow received the most first-place votes and finished third, outraging Florida fans and much of the college football-watching public. These fans were shocked by the system, assuming that Tebow would win the award having won a plurality of the votes. Unfortunately, complete ballots are not released publicly and we cannot determine the Condorcet winner for the award. We can clearly see however that Bradford received only 9 fewer first-place votes than Tebow and dominated him in second-place votes by a margin of 108. Bradford had broader support across the rankings, but it would be interesting to check for Condorcet efficiency with full ballot access. Mueller Table 7.4 tells us that in a 3-candidate voting system (oversimplified compared to this case) a Borda Count is 90.8% efficient at selecting the Condorcet winner compared with 79.1% efficiency for plurality voting. While Borda Count voting may seem counterintuitive in the 2008 case, it is likely helpful in the identification of the player with the broadest support.

How redistricting/political gerrymandering can change the median voter: Illinois' 10th Congressional District

Every ten years, the US conducts a population census, and from this census, congressional district lines are redrawn in each state.  In most states, lawmakers in the state legislature draft and pass the new district boundaries just like regular laws. Also, in many of these states, the governor can sign or veto the map. However, if a single political party controls both the state legislature and the governor seat, they can essentially choose the new district lines and control who falls in what district. Naturally, as any rational person/group would, that political party redraws the lines strategically to best ensure their preferences are met. In other words, to have as many candidates of their party as possible in the House of Representatives. When a party redraws electoral district boundaries to give themselves an unfair advantage, it is called political gerrymandering, and even though it seems like it should be illegal, it isn't and happens all the time. So, how do they do this? They take advantage of the median voter theorem. 

Let's say that there is a very competitive two-party district with a normal distribution where the median, decisive voter is extremely moderate, and the median voter might swing either way. Now, imagine the party with absolute control of redistricting, Party A, redraws district lines so that the new district is more in line with Party A than Party B. Now, the median voter favors Party A. One may be thinking that Party B would simply move their ideology toward Party A, but in the real world, the MVT's assumptions do not always hold. Specifically, in the real world, candidates are dealing with many single-issue debates at a time and their mobility on policy isn't as fluid as the MVT states. So, Party A is simply moving the population distribution "closer to them" and almost guaranteeing to win the election.

One real world example that is very personal to me in the redistricting of congressional lines is the 2011 redistricting of Illinois, specifically looking at Illinois' 10th Congressional District. My uncle, former Congressman Robert James Dold Jr., won the 2010 congressional election in a 51.08%/48.92% election in a very competitive race. However, Illinois is an extremely democratic state, and in 2011, Democrats in Springfield proposed a new Congressional map that was drawn without any input from Republicans and was considered to be an attempt to undo the results of the elections held just six months ago. In the redistricting process, not only was my uncle physically forced out of his district, the district was pushed further north into more democratic neighborhoods and removing some of the swing voters that had allowed him to win in 2010. The democrats used the lack of absolute policy mobility to their advantage. They redraw Illinois' 10th Congressional District so that the median voter was now further left on a political ideology scale. Because of this, he was listed as the 5th most vulnerable Republican incumbents in 2012 as a result of redistricting. Even though my uncle was a very moderate republican, he still did not have the mobility to move his political ideology far enough to the left to account for the change of the median voter and in the 2012 election, he lost.

Ranked Choice Fishing

Over Fall Break I got to spend four days floating through Hells Canyon fishing the Snake River and hunting upland game birds in the canyon. On the trip we fished for Smallmouth Bass, Salmon, Rainbow Trout, and White Sturgeon. On the hunting side, we were primarily going after Chukar. At the end of the trip, I asked everyone on the trip which animal they most enjoyed pursuing. The results can be found in Table 1.

Table 1: Animal Preference Chart

	Jarrett	Derek	Omar	Jacob
1	Salmon	Chukar	Chukar	Sturgeon
2	Chukar	Bass	Trout	Bass
3	Sturgeon	Trout	Bass	Chukar
4	Trout	Sturgeon	Sturgeon	Trout
5	Bass	Salmon	Salmon	Salmon

 

With this data, I then analyzed the results using different voting methods to see if there would be any significant differences. Chukar wins in both a plurality and majority + runoff situation. But let’s now look at the results in various ranking systems. Tables 2-4 show the result.

 

Table 2: Results Using the Borda Count

Placement	Animal	Points
1	Chukar	17
T-2	Bass	12
T-2	Sturgeon	12
4	Trout	11
5	Salmon	8

 

Table 3: Results Using Coombs Method

Placement	Animal
1	Chukar
T-2	Trout
T-2	Bass
4	Sturgeon
5	Salmon

 

 

Table 4: Results Using Hare System

Placement	Animal
1	Chukar
T-2	Salmon
T-2	Sturgeon
T-4	Bass
T-4	Trout

 

From all these systems, Chukar was the winner. However, I wanted to see if Chukar is in fact a Condorcet Winner, and Table 5 shows that it is. In a head-to-head matchup, Chukar still beats all of the other options.

 

Table 5: Condorcet Matchup

Matchup	Result	Winner
Chukar vs. Salmon	3-1	Chukar
Chukar vs. Sturgeon	3-1	Chukar
Chukar vs. Bass	3-1	Chukar
Chukar vs. Trout	4-0	Chukar

 

The most interesting part of this is not which animal ended up winning. There was no difference between the methods there. However, it is notable the differences in the order. Most notable is that Salmon came in last in both the Borda Count and the Coombs Method yet secured second place in the Hare System. It demonstrates that the Hare System eliminated the option neither loved nor hated first, while Coombs and Borda got rid of the option most people enjoyed the least.