The founders’ reservations about democracy
Bob Zadek opened the episode by recalling Richard Beeman’s book Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, which he had read on a vacation in the Czech Republic and Austria, and by drawing from it the observation that the founders had little enthusiasm for democracy. As Zadek described the government after ratification in 1788, the only direct voter participation was the election of members of the House of Representatives; Senators were elected by the state houses, voters did not elect judges, and voters elected electors who elected the President. Zadek put it that the founders limited direct voter participation because they were uncomfortable with the ability of everyday people to make important decisions with the ballot Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013).
Ilya Somin, a Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law and the author of Democracy and Political Ignorance, subtitled Why Smaller Government is Smarter, agreed that most of the founders were very worried about the problem of voter ignorance. He said they wanted some political participation, particularly as a check on the power of elites and the wealthy, but also worried greatly about ignorance, and that many were concerned about ignorance-driven excesses in state governments in the 1770s and 1780s. Somin named James Madison and Gouverneur Morris among those who believed the public was often ignorant about politics and irrational in evaluating the information it did know. Zadek added James Wilson, in Philadelphia, as unenthusiastic about widespread democracy, and framed democracy for the founders as a check and a control device rather than an end in itself. Somin allowed that some founders, Jefferson for instance, probably valued popular participation as an end in itself, without that preventing them from being very suspicious of it.
Why voter ignorance matters
Somin said he had been interested in the issue for at least 15 years, since he was a student, and that what persuaded him of its importance was its effect on almost all other problems in government policy. He listed the spending crisis, gay rights, racial discrimination, economic regulation and environmental policy, saying that survey data on what the public knows about each usually shows very substantial ignorance, which feeds back into government policy and often has negative effects. He stopped short of calling it the most important problem in the democracy, saying there were lots of contenders for that title, but described it as the problem that significantly affects all the others and tends to make them worse than they otherwise would be.
Polling evidence of ignorance
Asked for examples, Somin cited the federal budget debate: most of the public greatly overestimates the amount spent on foreign aid, thinking at least 5 to 10 percent or more of the federal budget goes to it, when in reality it is less than 1 percent, while the public greatly underestimates spending on big entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. On Obamacare, he cited a poll conducted in April by the Kaiser Foundation finding that 42 percent of the public did not realize Obamacare was still the law, and a poll a month or two later finding that 79 percent said they had heard nothing or very little about the Obamacare exchanges. Zadek repeated the 42 percent figure back in surprise.
On the basic operation of government, Somin cited a 2006 poll finding that only 42 percent of the public could name the three branches of the federal government: executive, legislative and judicial. He said the public often has trouble distinguishing events for which politicians can be given credit or blame from those for which they cannot—rewarding and punishing incumbents for short-term economic changes they very likely had nothing to do with causing, giving incumbents a boost when local sports teams win championships, and blaming governors in farm states for droughts that reduce farm prices. The fundamental problem, he said, is that there is very little incentive for the average voter to spend more than the minimal amount of time and effort learning about politics, because the chance any one vote will make a difference is infinitesimally small—maybe about one in 60 million, very roughly speaking, in a presidential election.
Rational ignorance and political fans
Zadek described his own habits—reading political blogs while brushing his teeth, checking politics during the workday, talking politics at the checkout counter—and asked Somin to expand on why, under rational self-interest, it makes no sense to be informed. Somin answered that becoming a better voter is not the only reason to acquire political knowledge: just as sports fans learn about professional teams without thinking they can influence games, there are people he calls in the book “political fans” who enjoy following politics and cheering on their favorite party or candidate. Such people are only a minority of the population, he said, but it is not irrational to learn about politics if you enjoy it.
Somin distinguished voting from becoming informed: voting is an extremely low-cost activity, maybe half an hour of your time at most, so if you care about your fellow citizens and think there is a substantial difference between the two sides, it makes rational sense to vote—whereas acquiring more than a minimal amount of political knowledge is much more costly in time and effort. The equilibrium, he said, is what is seen in the real world: large numbers of people voting, most of them not knowing very much about what they are voting on. He added that political fans, though they know more than the average person, often do a poor job of evaluating the information they know, overvaluing what confirms their preexisting views and ignoring or undervaluing what cuts against them, and that studies find the people who know the most about politics are some of the most biased in evaluating what they know.
Zadek argued that there is no duty to vote, that a duty to vote is absurd, but that if you want to vote you have a duty to become informed, and that voting while uninformed violates a duty to your fellow Americans.
The failure of the miracle of aggregation
Zadek asked whether uninformed voters zero each other out—uninformed Democrats offset by uninformed Republicans, leaving informed people to carry the day. Somin said some important scholars argue this, but that it is only likely to work if errors in one direction almost exactly offset errors in the other, and that the data on most issues suggests this is not true: on most issues, if you increase people’s knowledge, the distribution of opinion significantly changes. He added that the choices the parties put before voters are themselves heavily influenced by their knowledge that they face a mostly ignorant electorate, so a more knowledgeable electorate would likely see different candidates and almost certainly different party platforms.
Across episodes
The excerpts come from a single episode, and show no development across episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpt breaks off at the point where Zadek introduces the segment on foot voting versus ballot box voting, so the discussion of foot voting, federalism and decentralizing power is not present in the source material. The episode description mentions a free speech incident at Modesto Junior College and an eminent domain plan in Richmond, California, but the excerpts contain no discussion of either. The caller identified as Chuck, from Sonoma, does not appear in the excerpts, and no caller segment is included.