Ballot box voting is the mechanism by which citizens cast votes to elect officials or decide policy questions. In discussions on The Bob Zadek Show, the term serves mainly as a contrast to “foot voting”—the ability to choose which government to live under by moving. Libertarian scholar Ilya Somin of George Mason University, author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, argues that ballot box voting suffers from structural weaknesses that foot voting mitigates Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020). Bob Zadek, the program’s host, frames the problem through the figure of the “rational voter,” who does not and need not study complex policy questions such as foreign policy or economic theory 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022).
The rational voter problem
Somin describes the core defect of ballot box voting as an incentive problem. Most voters have little reason to be well-informed because the chance their vote will make a difference is small, and they have other commitments—work, children, and daily obligations—that claim their time 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022). Zadek puts the same point to Somin by suggesting that a rational voter should not be expected to have read Locke’s Second Treatise on Government or to master debates over Keynesian versus free market economics.
Somin extends the problem beyond simple ignorance to the manner in which voters process what they do learn. He compares voters to sports fans: just as fans welcome information that reflects well on their team and resist calls that go against it, politically engaged citizens evaluate information in a biased way. Somin calls these people “political fans” and argues they are likely worse than hardcore sports fans in their bias. This bias makes voters vulnerable to disinformation and deception, not only on social media but elsewhere. Somin notes that the problem long predates social media and attributes susceptibility to conspiracy theories to partisanship on both sides, citing belief in Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 election among partisan Republicans and, years earlier, belief in claims that George W. Bush allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen among partisan Democrats.
Foot voting as remedy
Somin’s proposed response to the weaknesses of ballot box voting is to shift more decisions to foot voting. When people vote with their feet, he argues, they have greater incentive both to seek out information and to evaluate it objectively, because their decisions are more likely to make a difference. He gives the examples of choosing a school for one’s children, buying a product, or deciding where to live, situations in which a person is more skeptical of a conspiracy theory than when the subject is a politician.
Somin presents foot voting as a partial remedy rather than a complete one. He acknowledges that foot voters can still make mistakes and still be influenced by ignorance. He also argues a marginal benefit for the ballot box system itself: if fewer issues are decided by voting, voter attention is less spread out, so voters may do somewhat better on the questions that remain under ballot box control.
Disinformation and the question of censorship
In response to Zadek’s framing that foot voting amounts to a form of libertarian abstention from the problem of disinformation, Somin rejects the idea that the flow of disinformation can be much reduced or that voters can be made substantially better informed. He criticizes proposals, which he associates with authors of a progressive report, to have government restrict the flow of misinformation. Somin argues government cannot be trusted with such a power because it would be tempted to use an information-censoring system in a partisan way, and he doubts the government could catch up with the flow of disinformation unless it approached a near-totalitarian state.
Somin also expresses skepticism, speaking for himself rather than for his co-authors, that disinformation or political ignorance is much worse in recent years than in earlier historical periods.
Electoral process and the Electoral Count Act of 1887
Somin discusses the Electoral Count Act of 1887, legislation that he says was enacted in the wake of the disputed election of 1876 and that most Americans had not heard of before 2020 The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022). He identifies several vague aspects that he says were exploited in 2020. First, it is unclear at what point states must certify their votes, which he says opened the possibility of a state legislature after the fact creating a different slate of electors than the one chosen. Second, it is unclear what happens if a governor, secretary of state, or other certifying official refuses to certify the vote. Third, the powers of Congress and the vice president to refuse to recognize particular electoral votes had been treated as a formality before 2020 and 2021.
Somin proposes reforms. States, he says, have a broad range of options under the Constitution for allocating electoral votes, but they must set the system before Election Day so they cannot change it after the fact because they dislike the result. He favors allowing judicial review when a state official acts illegally in the certification process. He also favors making clear that Congress may refuse to recognize votes only for a narrowly specified set of reasons, such as a calamity or strong evidence of fraud, and that the vice president cannot overturn results on his own authority. Somin credits Mike Pence with correctly deciding he lacked that authority under the 1887 act but says it should be made clearer. He also proposes raising the threshold for triggering a congressional challenge to a state’s electoral votes, so that one senator or one member of the House cannot alone initiate a challenge, and he names Josh Hawley as a ringleader of such challenges.
Somin argues that even those who favor Trump or the Republican Party should recognize that similar tactics could be used by Democrats if given the chance. He calls it ridiculous to assert that a vice president, who is often a competitor in the election as Pence was and as Al Gore was in 2000 and 2001, should have the authority to overturn electoral vote counts on his or her own. He asks whether Republicans would trust Kamala Harris with such power, or Democrats a Republican vice president, and answers that they would not, and for good reason.
The Electoral College
Zadek introduces the Electoral College by noting the original design: voters did not vote for president directly but for electors who would vote for president, outsourcing the selection to people presumably wiser and better studied than the average voter. Somin responds that the system has never worked as some of the founding fathers thought it would. From the first seriously contested presidential election in 1796 to the present, voters have in practice voted for a party or candidate rather than for an individual elector. Even in 1796, when the contest was Adams versus Thomas Jefferson, voters were choosing Adams or Jefferson rather than an elector, and almost nobody knows who the electors are.
Somin describes electors as ciphers chosen by their political parties, selected deliberately so that they will almost certainly cast their electoral vote for the party’s candidate. He notes that in the entire history of the Electoral College only a relative handful of electors have gone rogue, and it has never changed the outcome of an election. Speaking for himself, Somin says he would be fine with eliminating the electors and simply awarding a state’s electoral votes to the winner of that state’s popular vote, or allocating a proportion of them, or other approaches. He adds that he would even be fine eliminating the Electoral College entirely and adopting one of several alternative systems, such as a French-style two-round election, though he notes this would require a constitutional amendment.
Across episodes: no development
The topic is treated in the episodes “Foot Voting > Ballot Voting” and “The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin,” with Ilya Somin advancing the argument in both; the excerpts show the same position argued without development or change between the earlier and later treatment.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state what the Electoral Count Act of 1887 specifically provided, what any court has held about it, or which constitutional amendment governs any of the described powers. They do not say whether any of Somin’s proposed reforms were enacted, or what Congress ultimately did. They do not give the outcome of any state certification dispute. They also do not state what the progressive report or its authors proposed beyond Somin’s characterization of their view on restricting misinformation.