Announcements

• John Allen Paulos speaks at Penn tonight in Meyerson Hall, B1. The lecture is entitled "Mathematics, Politics, and the News." He will discuss the "Total Information Awareness" surveillance program, the war in Iraq, and other topics from a mathematician's perspective. All students are required to go if possible; a signup sheet will be passed around, and there will be a question on Thursday's quiz about the lecture.
• Alternate assignment for those who cannot attend the Paulos lecture:
  Read the following articles. You will be asked two pretty basic questions about them on the quiz.
  • "Rooting out terrorists is tricky business"
  • "Drug hoarding and the Prisoner's Dilemma"
  • "Measuring bacteria with a yardstick" (and a clarification)
• If you cannot take the quiz on Thursday, April 24, you must bring a note in order to qualify for the makeup quiz.
• If you need extra time on the quiz, arrange a proctoring session with the Office of Student Disabilities Services for the duration of the lecture. (The quiz is 45 minutes long.)
• Homework assignments are due at the beginning of class today. Solutions will be discussed if desired.
• Course evaluations today.
• Grades so far have been calculated. Email me to find out how you're doing so far.

Current assignments:

• Study for the quiz on Thursday.
• Paper on mathematical aspects of political reform, due on Tuesday, May 6, at 3:30 pm.

Mathematical aspects of other political situations

• The Electoral College
  • Argument for abolishing the electoral college:
    Gary Parish, "The Electoral College: Source of Inequality and Social Injustice in America"
  • Low-population states like Wyoming get a proportionally bigger share of the vote than high-population states like Florida. About four times as many electoral votes, proportionally.
  • This is due to the two-elector bonus for every state: each state gets about one elector for every half-million people, plus two more electors.
  • Since higher-population states often have proportionally higher minority populations, the electoral college also ends up being racially discriminatory.
  • Argument against abolishing the electoral college:
    Will Hively, "Math Against Tyranny"
  • Your vote only really matters if it could determine the election. So the amount of power you have is proportional to how likely it is that your vote will change the election.
  • The electoral college system makes ties in each state more likely, so you have slightly more power under it than you would in a direct election.
• Campaign finance reform
  • Some mathematical aspects of campaign finance:
    • Donors always have an incentive to give contributions, because the benefits of access to politicians far outweigh the costs of contributions (Warren Buffett says contributions total about $360 million while benefits are on the order of $200 billion.)
    • Politicians always have an incentive to accept contributions, because there is no cost to them (money for favors comes from the public treasury, but campaign contributions go to them personally).
  • Mathematical models are quite typically used to model the expected effects of various campaign finance proposals.
  • Argument for campaign finance reform:
    Stephen Coate, "Power-hungry Candidates, Policy Favors, and Pareto Improving Campaign Contribution Limits"
    • Coate's model assumes that candidates honestly spend contributions to inform swing voters, and that they may offer promises to donors in exchange for contributions. He then works out how much candidates will offer to contributors based on optimizing their own probability of getting elected.
    • If candidates are power-hungry and willing to do anything, the best option is to ban contributions entirely. (Voters, candidates, and donors all benefit from this option.)
    • If not, the best option is to limit contributions. (Again, everyone benefits.)
  • Another argument for campaign finance reform:
    Nicolas Sahuguet and Nicola Persico, "The Equal Opportunity Rationale for Campaign Finance Regulation
    • A game-theoretic argument.
    • Basically, by helping weaker candidates, campaign finance regulation makes them less desperate and less willing to spend public money on a small group of voters to get their votes.
  • Argument against campaign finance reform:
    Jeffrey Milyo, "The Political Economics of Campaign Finance
    • Campaign contributions allow people to express strong preferences (by giving more money) than in a straight election where everyone gets the same vote. Thus they can lead to a winner preferred more strongly by society.
    • High campaign spending makes elections closer, thus leading to more voter interest and participation (since voters are more likely to vote if they think they can change the outcome.
• Applications of game theory to politics (and other things)

  The news links of GameTheory.net is an excellent resource describing various applications of game theory (some as simple as the 2 × 2 ordinal games we've studied, and some more complicated) to politics and other situations.

  Many of the articles it links to refer to studies conducted by researchers, which you could generally find published in academic journals.