Elections Have Consequences

 

            It’s hard to get things done in the Tragic Commons, particularly when the task requires the cooperation of more than a few people.  Being highly rational, most of us carefully compare the likely benefit we individually will receive for doing anything with the cost of taking the action. Most of us won’t act unless the cost of acting is less than the probable benefit taking the action will earn.

            Though there will always be suckers here who will be motivated by feelings of generosity, altruism and community spirit, it’s simply not rationale to incur costs without the possibility of profit.

            That’s why, when we choose leaders for the commons, its so hard, first to find people who are willing to devote time and effort to managing the Commons as whole (instead of their own little piece of it), and second, to get people to participate in the electoral process.

            We’ve solved the first problem by paying our leaders more than they could otherwise get doing something else, by increasing the prestige of leadership and by making appeals to their own narcissism.

            The second problem is more difficult.  It’s easy to get the suckers to show up at the polls and vote.  We convince them that voting is as much a civic obligation, as paying taxes or serving on juries (both of which we enforce by imposing steep financial penalties for non-compliance). When they leave the polls we give them stickers that announce the fact that they have participated in one of the few public rituals we still have here in the Commons.  It impresses most of the other suckers, and it gives the rest of us something to talk about.

            Getting everyone else out to vote is difficult.  Most of us have better things to do than take the time necessary to learn about the candidates, leave work at inconvenient times and wait for a chance to cast a ballot. 

            It might be different if our elections were often decided by a single vote.  Knowing that one’s vote will decide which of two candidates will be elected gives the voter a 100% increase in the likelihood that his or her vote will matter, making it all but certain that he or she will get his or her preferred policies.  That would make the costs of participating relatively small for a voter who knows his vote will decide an election.

            But since our elections never come down to a single vote, it’s much more rational for most of us to conclude that there’s nothing in it for us and to leave the costs of voting to the suckers.

            We’ve tried to address this in recent years by lowing the costs of voting.  Political campaigns here are generally well funded, and so it’s extremely easy to learn about the candidates.  They’re more than happy to tell us what we need to know. 

            And we’ve been tinkering with the times and places for voting as well.  We’ve seen that if we lower the cost of voting by doing things like allowing people to vote by mail, vote on the weekends and vote on days other than the specifically designated Election Day, the number of people who vote tends to go up.

            And that’s why I can’t help but be puzzled by the actions of the Montgomery County, Maryland Board of Elections.  This august board decided to shut down two of the county’s most frequented used early voting centers.  They would move the early voting operations of the Marilyn J. Praisner Recreation Center, currently located in population dense Burtonsville, to a hard-to-access location in bucolic Brookeville.  They’d move the early voting operations at the Jane E. Lawton Community Center, currently located near the Bethesda Metro Station to somewhere in Potomac you can only reach by car.  They said that they wanted to add some geographic diversity.

            Praisner serves an area with a high numbers of minority and low-income voters. Moving early voting to Brookeville will raise the cost of voting for these kinds of voters because they are often hourly workers who don’t get paid when they are off the clock.  They need the convenience that Praisner offers to accommodate their work schedules if they are to participate. 

            Similarly, Lawton serves as many as 50,000 voters, many of whom work outside of the county and have professional obligations that make it difficult to leave work in order to participate on a single day.

            What could they have been thinking? Don’t they understand that we ought to be making it easier for people to vote if we want our democracy to work?

            How could such a thing have happened in the liberal bastion of Montgomery County? 

                        Someone’s suggested that the move was a nakedly political attempt to raise the costs of voting for the sorts of people who tend to vote for Democrats in Montgomery County.  All of the members of the board are appointees of Republican Governor Larry Hogan. And under Maryland law, Hogan was entitled to appoint three Republican members and two Democratic members.  Apparently, the three Republicans, after consulting with the State’s Republican party chairman, saw fit to outvote the two Democrats on the board.

            But, I suppose that’s someone being cynical. Nobody in Montgomery County would actually think of trying to suppress anybody’s else's vote, would they?