Voting Rights Act killed by failure to update data

Today the Voting Rights Act was struck down.  The Supreme Court hinted at this in a 2009 decision, in which it ducked the central question and seemed to give Congress the chance to act. Congress, of course, did not do so.

The problem is that the act has been extended based on issues that arose in the 1960s and early 1970s and for generations before.  Congress, in their lack of wisdom, has not updated the information to reflect changes that may or may not have occurred since before I was able to vote for George McGovern over Richard Nixon in 1972 (and Barak Obama was in grade school).

So, by failing to look at conditions which were at least somewhat more current than the leisure suit, Congress doomed the act.

What if we did update the data?

The New York Times considers what might happen if the data were actually updated; I’m just going to show one example below. The Voting Rights act covers the shaded areas below:

If we look at the greatest difference in black versus white voter registration, we get a much different picture using current data:

If we use other criteria, we get different patterns yet; I recommend playing around with the NYTimes graphic linked to above to see.

It’s not true that there isn’t racial discrimination; it is true that the geographic pattern of that discrimination can change. Permanently making certain states guilty seems unconstitutional on its face.

Selling your vote

From Marginal Revolution:

"It is estimated that one-fifth of the Indian electorate sells its vote in some manner."

That's a summary of this article, which also notes "the share of voters is higher among the voters in the so-called below the poverty line, or BPL, category: 73% in Karnataka [where Bangalore is] while the national average is 37%."

Pigskins and Politics: Linking Expressive Behavior and Voting

Andy Eggers at the Social Science Statistics Blog has this fascinating entry:

Pigskins and Politics: Linking Expressive Behavior and Voting
David Laband, Ram Pandit, Anne Laband & John Sophocleus
Journal of Sports Economics, October 2008, Pages 553-560

Abstract:In this article, the authors use data collected from nearly 4,000single-family residences in Auburn, Alabama to investigate empirically whether nonpolitical expressiveness (displaying support for Auburn University's football team outside one's home) is related to the probability that at least one resident voted in the national/state/local elections heldon November 7, 2006. Controlling for the assessed value of the property and the length of ownership, the authors find that the likelihood of voting by at least one person from a residence with an external display of support for Auburn University is nearly 2 times greater than from a residence without such a display. This suggests that focusing narrowly on voting as a reflection of political expressiveness may lead researchers to overstate the relative importance of expressiveness in the voting context and understate its more fundamental and encompassing importance in a variety of contexts, only one of which may be voting.

Ungated working version here; I haven't read it yet.

I'd never thought of this link before, but it makes sense. In both cases, the individual's behavior (putting up football paraphenalia, voting) has only a tiny effect on the outcome (winning games, determining the election). So it makes sense that people who have faith that one form is efficacious might have faith that the other form is efficacious.

And, in both forms of behavior, there is some demonizing of the opponents (the University of Alabama, the opposite party).

Are Voters Different Than Nonvoters? Why not?

Andrew Gelman blogs about whether voters and nonvoters are different.

Baldassare finds a lot of differences in California. Yet Gelman points out that "political scientists generally hold that voters and nonvoters aren't really so different", and refers to a blog posting with some nice links by Sides.

I did a quick skim through Sides material, and it's consistent with the excerpt Gelman quotes from Highton: "How can one estimate what nonvoters would do if they were to vote? . . . we attributed to nonvoters the perspectives of voters in their respective [demographic group]"

This is creative, but leaves us with the assumption that within a demographic group the opinions of voters and nonvoters are in aggregate the same. That's not necessarily true, since voting is a form of involvement.

It's very common in consumer packaged goods research for people who are willing to provide information about their purchases (i.e. cooperate with detailed surveys) to be far higher purchasers of new products than the average household -- even matching on demographics.

This is because the people who are cooperating are people who are more interested in packaged goods products than the average person, and this involvement causes them to pay more attention to new products. This means that the relative sales of new versus established products is higher (directly analogous to a political voting choice).

It's no great leap of faith to theorize that -- controlling for demographics -- people who vote are more involved in the process are nonvoters and may have different / more informed opinions.

But there's likely to be a lot more literature out there that what I've skimmed quickly.