Why Berthier-Maskinongé voted for Ruth-Ellen

A reader writes from Québec -- he reads the French version of this blog, no doubt -- to ask Walt to explain the results of the recent Canadian federal election.

In particular, our reader wants to know how it came about that le Nouveau Parti Démocratique, which has never held more than a single seat in la Belle Province, suddenly captured 58 of the 70 available. In even more particular, he wants to know whatever possessed the voters of the riding of Berthier-Maskinongé to elect Ruth-Ellen Brosseau.

Mme Brosseau may well be the hottest-ever MP. See pic. However she speaks only a little French, which one would think a handicap in a riding which is 98% francophone. But then Mme Brosseau could be forgiven for not knowing that, since she never set foot in the riding until yesterday, a week after the election. No, not even during the campaign. She spent most of the campaign on vacation in Las Vegas. How could the nice people of Berthier-Maskinongé have voted her in?

The answer to this poser may be found in Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel. There, the brilliant political analyst, Scott Adams, writes: Most voters are ignoramuses who get all of their opinions from paid TV ads.

If you doubt this thesis, look at the "ordinary people" shopping with you at the supermarket. (If you buy groceries at WalMart, don't stare too long or you'll damage your cerebral cortex.) You will observe that many of these "ordinary people" fill up their carts with nationally advertised brands of junk food. This in spite of the availability of equivalent house or no-name brands, usually on the very same shelf.

The generic potato chips or whatever are, as often as not, made by the very same company that produces the branded junk. And the generic junk is cheaper! Yet people buy Krapped foods (thanks to Adams for that one) rather than the no-name product. Why? Because "we seen it on TV!"

Still in doubt? Many malls now have "As Seen on TV" stores! People flock into these stores and flock off with shamwows and slap-chops which are the epitome of over-priced, useless crapola. Why? Because "we seen it on TV!" And here's the thing. Those shoppers are allowed to vote!

So, to win the votes of the "ordinary people", the parties praise (or vilify) the candidates, especially the party leaders, until people vote for (or against) them. The good bourgeois of Berthier-Maskinongé didn't vote for Mme Brosseau. They voted NDP/NPD because its leader, Smilin' Jack Layton, came over on TV as "the kind of guy you'd most want to have a beer with. We seen him on TV!"

Let's give the last words to Scott Adams.

My favorite thing that politicians say is "The voters aren't dumb." This is something that voters generally believe because they are dumb. I realize this sounds harsh. But if I'm wrong, and it's true that the voters are smart, despite allevidence to the contrary, it raises some troubling questions.

How uninformed must a voter be before it's okay to call him dumb?

If all the voters have roughly the same goals and the same information, but half of the voters vote one way and half vote the other way, doesn't that mean half of them are dumb?

How can we tell which half is the dumb half?

To which Walt would add this reminder. To win an election, you need only 50% + 1.

Rick Mercer to Kanuck Kids: Vote!

You Canadian kids out there, if you're not gonna listen to Walt, listen to Rick Mercer. Give the geezers a surprise. Get out and vote.



Walt is pleased to report that students at three Canadian universities are taking Rick up on his challenge. In spite of the heavy final exam schedule, "vote mobs" have been organized [Let's say they sprang into being fully formed. Ed.] at Guelph, McMaster, Victoria, Calgary, Ottawa (the famous U of 0), and the heretofore unknown University of Northern BC. According to Agent 3, McGill students are putting on their old red sweaters as I write.

Good on yer, kids! But please remember to follow through on May 2nd. And remember your ABCs.

Don't vote, stupid!

Jason Brennan is an assistant professor of philosophy at Brown University. He has a theory about the ethics and morality of voting which is breathtaking in its political incorrectness. He says if you don't know who and what you're voting for, you shouldn't "pollute" the polls by voting

Here's the abstract of his article, whose final and definitive form was published in Vol. 88 of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

"Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any vote is right. Citizens should not vote badly. This duty to avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of restraint is low. Good governance is a public good. Bad governance is a public bad. We should not be contributing to public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low. Many democratic theorists agree that we shouldn't vote badly, but that's because they think we should vote well. This demands too much of citizens."

The Journal is not accessible online. However, you can find the "preprint" version by clicking here, then going to the second link under "Peer-Reviewed Articles".

Prof. Brennan first published his ideas in 2008, prior to the US presidential election, but the Journal version appeared in June 2009 ... too late. Walt hopes the article will be widely circulated in time to diminish the influence of the ignorant in future elections. But...

By definition, the uninformed people who "vote badly" will not read the article. Prof. Brown said in an interview today that he explained the concept to the most ignorant person he could find who admitted to having voted in the recent election. Sure enough, that person agreed that stupid people shouldn't vote.

What is to be done? Should those of us who know what's going on attempt to educate those who don't? Or should we just shoot them?

Shenkman on Obama

A few days ago I recommended Just How Stupid Are We?, by Rick Shenkman, a regular commentator on Fox News and CNN. I repeat the recommendation. You should read the book, if only for Shenkman's comments on the election of President Obama.

The book itself was written before the 2008 election, but the author has added an epilogue in which he refutes the argument that the election of Obrama proves that the American people -- those who vote, that is -- are smarter than he gave them credit for.

Shenkman says what should be obvious, that the election of Obama was based on pure emotion, rather than reason. (That is why Walt called it wrong, by the way. I never thought US voters would take leave of their senses completely.)

Obama's message was that a vote for him was a vote for hope-and-change (n. singular). What exactly would be changed was not spelled out, and the American people, the great unwashed, were gullible enough to fall for it.

Here's what Shenkman says:

One wishes not to so generalize Barack Obama's profile as to make him indistinguishable from other pols. He clearly is different.... But he behaved just like an ordinary pol on so many occasions that one begins to suspect that his chief calculations were more similar to theirs than different.

Did he really believe the American people are smart? Of course not. Like McCain, he counted on people not being smart.

And of course he was right.

But perhaps "the people" are waking up. Yahoo! polled its readers yesterday on the question "Has Obama brought meaningful change to the world?" 36% said yes. 64% voted NO.