One of my
housemates writes for The Cavalier Daily. The other night, following an editorial
meeting, Bridget came home in a fit of rage about a proposed story idea. Nearly
the entire meeting was dedicated to a discussion about Professor Elzinga always
scheduling a midterm on Election Day. Conspiracy theories were being thrown out
left and right about Elzinga’s motivation behind this scheduling regularity,
everything from the day falling in the tenth week of class to Elzinga
purposefully attempting to keep students from the polls (disclaimer: I have no
idea if Professor Elzinga even schedules exams on Election Day each year, but
if he does, I definitely do not buy into these theories).
Let’s take
it as fact, for the purposes of this post, that Professor Elzinga does schedule
a midterm each first Tuesday of November. This means that, more likely than
not, students taking ECON 2010 will have a higher marginal cost of voting than
many of their peers who are not taking Professor Elzinga’s class. The increased
marginal cost is attributed to any number of things that affect students on the
day of a midterm: the study time lost if a student chooses to go vote, a lack
of concentration on the upcoming test, and potential for unforeseen conflict if
a student breaks their typical midterm preparation ritual. The only way that an
ECON 2010 student’s marginal cost of voting would not increase in this
situation is if they are fully invested in the idea of Dutch Knockout and are banking
on the final.
Therefore,
if we take Professor Coppock’s example of a $20 marginal cost of voting to be
the standard for UVA students, a UVA student taking ECON 2010 will have MC >
$20 come Election Day. In a situation such as this, the “something” that would
make voting rational, D, of a student taking ECON 2010 would have to be greater
than the D of a fellow UVA student not enrolled in ECON 2010, ceteris paribus,
in order to justify going to vote.
I told
Bridget, after hearing this story, to report back to her editorial team that
one conspiracy theory, for sure, can be thrown out the window. An economist
like Professor Elzinga knows full well that the probability of one of his
students’ votes being decisive in an election is a number so small that we can
call it zero—therefore, scheduling an exam to keep his students from the polls
cannot be the explanation.
2 comments:
While Prof Elzinga is most likely aware that each of his students individually may not have much impact (especially in national matters) this may reveal his political preference. Under the assumption that college students political beliefs are not representative of the population, perhaps Professor Elzinga is attempting to raise the transaction cost of reaching the polls for a specific political ideological group. As Professor Elzinga has close to 1,000 students each semester, this could have a significant impact on the result of local elections. Stay skeptical, Professor Elzinga could run the area's schoolboard and Charlottesville's City Council with a sway in a thousand votes.
Hey Brandon, I think it's always healthy to keep a skeptical look for things. I think though we could look at that example you proposed and determine that's not Professor Elzinga's motive either. As stated in the original post, Professor Elzinga thinks like an economist; he wouldn't do something–which incurs a cost–unless it had a benefit to him. Let's assume out of those 1,000 students, 90% of them are registered to vote and of those 90%, 90% of them are registered to vote on here in Charlottesville (I'm going with higher percentages so as to give you situation the benefit of the doubt). In the local elections of 2017, the seat for the VA house and the Charlottesville position for sheriff, commissioner of revenue, and treasurer all ran unopposed. For the school board, only three people ran and all three were elected to it. In terms of city council, we elected two members to that each year. Only three people received a significant enough number of votes. Of those three, they were all of similar ideology.
If Professor Elzinga's goal was to sway these elections, it there would be a very low probability of drastically changing the outcome for any election making his marginal benefit quite low. Charlottesville, outside of the UVA student population, is more ideologically homogenous than it is heterogenous, thus making it hard for 1,000 students to drastically change the outcome.
Post a Comment