Tag: voting

Age-Weighted Voting?

The young will experience the effects of policies passed today for the greatest length of time but this is not reflected in their voting power. Put differently, the time-horizon of (self-interested) older voters is short so perhaps this biases the political system towards short time-horizon policies such as deficit spending or kicking the can down the road on global warming. Philosopher William MacAskill offers an alternative, age-weighted voting. one way of extending political time horizons and increasing is to age-weight votes. The idea is that younger people would get more heavily weighted votes than older people, in proportion with life expectancy. A natural first pass system (though I think it could be improved upon) would be: 18–27yr olds: 6x voting weight 28–37yr olds: 5x voting weight 38–47yr olds: 4x voting weight 48–57yr olds: 3x voting weight 58–67yr olds: 2x voting weight 68+yr olds: 1x voting weight

Obama is talk, Holder acts

between this and the push for extending all federal benefits to all same sex couples

The Justice Department’s role in confronting discrimination must be as aggressive today as it was in Robert Kennedy’s time. I will not let this department be simply a bystander during this important moment in history.

holder is easily the only member of the current administration who is actually making progress on civil liberties. his boss, “change” notwithstanding, is quite the opposite. history will tell but my money is on holder, not barry, despite premature nobel prizes.

Helios Voting

Helios offers verifiable online elections. We believe democracy is important, whether it’s your book club, parent-teacher association, student government, workers’ union, or state. So we’ve made truly verifiable elections as easy as everything else on the Web. Helios elections are: private: no one knows how you voted. verifiable: each voter gets a tracking number. proven: Helios is open-source, vetted by top-tier experts, and in use by major organizations. 2m votes have been cast using Helios.

ben’s implementation of his thesis, iirc

Voter Bias

bryan caplan identifies 4 biases that prompt voters systematically to demand policies that make them worse off. First, people do not understand how the pursuit of private profits often yields public benefits: they have an anti-market bias. Second, they underestimate the benefits of interactions with foreigners: they have an anti-foreign bias. Third, they equate prosperity with employment rather than production: Mr Caplan calls this the “make-work bias”. Finally, they tend to think economic conditions are worse than they are, a bias towards pessimism.

ReDistricting Game

By exploring how the system works, as well as how open it is to abuse, The Redistricting Game allows players to experience the realities of one of the most important (yet least understood) aspects of our political system. The game provides a basic introduction to the redistricting system, allows players to explore the ways in which abuses can undermine the system, and provides info about reform initiatives – including a playable version of the Tanner Reform bill to demonstrate the ways that the system might be made more consistent with tenets of good governance. Beyond playing the game, the web site for The Redistricting Game provides a wealth of information about redistricting in every state as well as providing hands-on opportunities for civic engagement and political action.

arcana can be fun (and important)

Voter registration

heh

We may not be electing a President this November, but important elections are happening in your state – with control of Congress, state legislatures, school boards, and more at stake. So MySpace has partnered with Declare Yourself, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign to energize and empower you. In 2004, DY registered over 1M young voters – this year, MySpace and DY are working together to make it easy for millions more to make a difference.