How does voting work, anyway?

I was listening to the Roundtable on WAMC this morning as I repaired a window screen, and they read out a remarkable email from a listener.

I've read and heard plenty of "I can't vote for Clinton," and from people with whom I'm more or less in agreement on many questions of policy. I don't agree with the "I can't vote for her" position, but obviously if you think her policy stances are horrid, or if you think she's a liar (presumably in ways that the average politician isn't?), then I understand reluctance or inability to pull the lever.

There's the "lesser of two evils" argument: whether you like it or not, the next president will be either Clinton or Trump, so failing to vote for one of them is in effect voting for the other. I can understand the disgust with that: if you keep accepting the lesser of two evils, you never force the Democrats to put up someone who isn't evil.

Now, I don't agree with that argument, first because I don't think Clinton is "evil," and second because Trump looks far worse to me than anything remotely credible that's been lodged against Clinton.

But there is at least a logic to refusing to choose the lesser of two evils. Not a logic I agree with, but a logic.

Then there's this morning's WAMC listener email.

He couldn't vote for Clinton for the normal reasons that some on the left say they can't vote for her.

Trump was not an option (OK, we agree there).

The Libertarian candidate was going to wipe out entitlements (I don't know if that's an overstatement, but it is at least the direction the Libertarian candidate would go, a good reason not to vote for him if you think our entitlement programs do a reasonable job).

And Jill Stein from the Green Party is great, but she has no chance.

Wait ... what?!

It seems like there are three ways to approach voting: tactically, strategically, or idealistically.

A tactical voter might say, "I hate Clinton, but it's her or Trump, and Trump is worse, so I'm voting for Clinton."

A strategic voter would take the longer view: "The Democratic party keeps offering me horrible choices, because people eventually fall in line behind the lesser of two evils. The only way to teach the party to stop doing that is to stop accepting unacceptable candidates, so I'll vote for a good third-party candidate rather than a bad Democrat, and if that means Trump wins, then that's all the clearer a lesson for the Democrats." (Again, I don't agree with this approach, but it has its logic.)

An idealist is, in effect, like a strategic voter, only without an expectation that the Democrats will learn: "I think Stein is good and Clinton is bad, so I'm voting for Stein."

But ruling out Clinton, Trump, and the Libertarian for policy issues, then ruling out Stein because she can't win?

How does this guy think voting works, anyway?

I've heard people question the intelligence of Americans who support Trump, or of Brits who voted for Brexit. But spare a little of that for this WAMC listener.

A package deal (Day 7)

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Early morning from the balcony of my hotel room

This morning we boarded our bus and rode to Matanzas, a small city a little ways in the direction of Havana. Our itinerary was the Pharmacy Museum, and Ediciones Vigía, an outfit that creates hand-made books.

Slogans found today:

“Socialism is the only way to continue being free and independent.”

“The victorious revolution continues forward.”

On the way, Jesús gave a condensed version of how the embargo developed over a few months, involving an Esso refinery that was nationalized because it wouldn’t refine Soviet oil.

In Matanzas, the Pharmacy Museum turned out to be closed, so we headed off toward Ediciones Vigía, but en route we stumbled upon an art gallery / workshop the Jesús hadn’t known about, a joint venture of several artists.

This peculiar fellow greets you just inside the door.

Artists seem to have “themes” that they work in multiple variations. In Trinidad there was a woman who crafted coffee pots that were women. In this gallery in Matanzas, there’s someone who does heads in clamps.

There are many variations on this theme.
Photo: Pawsansoe Bree

Welcome, imperialist pigs! (Day 6)

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Today we made our way from Cayo Santa Maria and its fabulous beach via Caibarién, where we visited a former sugar mill turned into a museum, then Remedios, where we learned about their festival of Las Parrandas, and finally on to Varadero, where we will spend three nights.

We traveled the red line from east to west.

Before leaving the resort at Cayo Santa Maria, I took a stroll around the grounds. It’s a nice place, fancier than the “all inclusive” place we stayed outside Cienfuegos, but probably not the top of the line. It has characteristic bits of not quite getting it right: the sloppy grouting in the bathtub, the light fixture along a path, just left off of its base, as if a repair was begun and then just never quite finished, the dry pools around the restaurants.

A nice place, just a little rough in some spots

There’s a “Ciber Café.” Or at least, that’s what it says above the door.

This is not a cyber café

Electoral fraud?

 

Some supporters of Bernie Sanders are circulating this paper from two Stanford students as proof that the Clinton camp committed electoral fraud. It's an interesting piece of work, but a weak reed for the claims surrounding it.

 

One of the key arguments is that states differ in whether they have a paper trail for their electronic voting or not, and that Sanders did much better in the states that have the trail, where fraud is presumably harder to commit.

 

The basic issue is whether there are other explanations for the discrepancy they found, and whether they adequately investigated them.

 

The initial numbers look undeniably bad. Sanders won only 35% in states without a paper trail, but 51% in states with a trail. If the 51% is the more accurate number, because it’s insulated from fraud, then the implication is that Sanders would have won in a fair election.

 

The first obvious question is whether states differed in some other way besides paper or no-paper. The authors are aware of that, and after presenting the raw 51% vs. 35% figure, they do a regression where they can at least in part control for those other factors.

The two variables that they add, besides paper vs. no-paper, are:

1. Percent of non-Hispanic whites in a given state
2. The “blueness” of the state (its history of voting for Democrats rather than Republicans in presidential elections since 1992).

These are both reasonable first efforts. Much was made of Clinton’s “firewall” among people of color, and Sanders’ better performance among whites, so the first control variable is getting at something real. The two candidates also differed in their appeal to long-time party regulars vs. people who don’t necessarily identify as Democrats. I don’t know how much the exit polling bears this out, but commentary suggested that Sanders appealed both to people who were critical of Clinton from the left, and to some whose sense of the system being rigged left them open either to Sanders or to Trump. So it makes sense to have some sort of variable for the party identification of a given state.

  

But there are problems with both of the variables they chose, and the clearer problem is with the race variable.

Appropriately modest desires

On Friday we arrived in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, where will be through early afternoon Wednesday.

That first evening we ate at a restaurant that serves really traditional Moldovan food, with musicians playing in the background (a mix of traditional tunes plus Hollywood or other familiar music repackaged in a more Balkan style). We were joined by students from the local university who shared their experiences and impressions.

Yesterday we had an outing to the countryside north of the capital, Chisinau. Our first stop was at Brăneşti winery, located in a limestone area with lots of tunnels carved into the earth.

The owner meets us at the gate

The proprietor told us that in a radius of 8 km, there are 1,000 km of tunnels. Some of the limestone pulled out in the tunneling process is used as a construction material.

Gouges in the wall from the tunneling machinery

Apparently there are foreigners - such as the former Chinese ambassador to Moldova - who rent space in the tunnels to cellar their wine.

Don't lean back: that's some sort of mold on the walls (and on the chandeliers), and it'll get on your clothes:

From the winery we went to a monastery carved into a rock outcropping nestled in the bend of a river (see the location marked "Monastirea Orheiul Vechi" on this map).

The view from the icy ledge outside the monk's cell.

Noticing good-luck coins wedged into crevices in the limestone

Atop the outcrop there's a stone cross with an ornamental figure in the center. The local custom is that if you make a wish while resting your hand on that figure, your wish will come true.

The wishing cross

After visiting the monastery and the cross and the church at the top of the ridge, we negotiated our way back down the icy hillside to the village at the bottom where we had another traditional Moldovan meal, this one in an "eco" restaurant where the family grows or raises many of the ingredients themselves. It was in a fixed-up traditional house, with the staff in sheep-skin vests and a kitty up in the rafters that later came down to walk among the legs of our chairs.

The students have been great about willingness to go with whatever's thrown their way, in terms of both experiences and food, sampling unfamiliar things and even liking several of them. But we thought it might be a good idea to give them a break from the cultural novelty and go for dinner at a pizza place that had been recommended to us.

"Yes!" said one of the students. "That's what I wished for at the cross! Pizza!"

I guess if you're going to go making wishes, there's something to be said for keeping it realistic. You're less likely to be disappointed asking for comfort food than pinning your hopes on, say, winning a Grammy.

On the other hand, you have to wonder if the cross wasn't a little put out by the whole thing. "Really? Pizza? People climb this icy slope to ask me to cure their crippled limbs or to make their child healthy, and you want pizza? OK, whatever - here's your pizza."

Still, keep it practical, and you just might get your wish.

FOX News Chisinau

The restaurant here at Chisinau Hotel in the capital of Moldova has a remarkable service, FOX News Live.

It takes the form of an American guest, aged about 60, from Colorado.

He and I were the only guests in the restaurant at breakfast this morning - I was just finishing mine, he had ordered his.

He got on his phone and I heard him ask the other party if they had laundry soap. We're looking for where to wash some clothes, so I thought I'd ask if he knew about a laundromat.

When his food came, I wished him bon appetit, and we exchanged pleasantries - where are you from, etc. Hearing I was from New York, he talked about growing up on Long Island, he couldn't remember if it was Valley Stream, or maybe it was Kew Gardens, and driving up to Canada.

"In those days all you needed was a driver's license, we didn't have all these problems."

And he was off:

We have a real lack of leadership (though he said the last two administrations).

Things went off the rails in the second Clinton administration, and from there a long disquisition on Lewinsky.

"And Cohen, the secretary of the Treasury ..."

"Wasn't Cohen the defense secretary?"

"Oh, that's right. Who was at Treasury?"

"Was it Summers?" I asked, uncertainly.

"No, not him."

"Wait, it was Rubin."

"That's right, Rubin." (Rubin/Cohen. Because who can tell one of them Jews from another, amirite?)

Over those 10 minutes I spoke little more than my part in the preceding exchange.

I learned that we the people didn't do adequate background work on Clinton before electing him. I learned that Clinton's taste in the women that he allegedly had brought to him was very poor, though in this man's view that also helped explain how he chose Hillary, with her big legs, "not to be disparaging." (Oh, no, not disparaging at all.)

I learned that Obama is incredibly weak and that (by implication from what this man thinks Obama should have done), we should now be at war with Russia over Crimea and China over some pissant islands a few miles off their coast.

I excused myself by explaining that I had some reading to do (which is true, so I should wrap this up now) but I had a question, which is whether he knew of a laundromat, since I'd heard him on the phone ask about laundry soap.

Unfortunately, he was talking to a friend who's letting him use his machine in his apartment.

And in parting I said I thought Bush had weakened us incredibly by getting us into a war we shouldn't have been in, and that Obama had been doing a reasonable job of trying to clean up that mess. (I'd already showed my hand earlier when he'd referred to "the occupant of the White House," and I'd interjected, "You mean, the President?")

He parted friendly enough, we're each entitled to our opinions, etc. etc.

But maybe I'll just stay here in Moldova. A little change of insanity does a person good.

How much are we spending, really?

A colleague linked to a New York Times article on the high cost of higher education.

Particularly in the case of public colleges and universities, people have blamed at least part of the rise on a decrease in government support.

The article's main contention is that there has been no such drop in support. "It is a fairy tale in the worst sense, in that it is not merely false, but rather almost the inverse of the truth."

"In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher. 

"In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000."

There are a few things wrong here.