You might not be able to tell a book by its cover, but it seems that more often than not you can guess someone’s political affiliation simply by studying his or her face. At least that’s what Nicholas Rule found when he asked undergraduate research subjects at Tufts University to look at black-and-white photographs of strangers and guess whether they were Democrats or Republicans. Nearly 60 percent of the time they got it right. “That’s not a huge effect,” says Rule, a doctoral student in psychology, “but it is significantly better than chance. You can’t just walk down ... Read More
Ballot Initiatives: Making The Grade?
February 27, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
If corporations can cut out the middleman, why not citizens? That appears to be the logic behind grassroots organizations on the left and the right who have championed the use of citizen-led ballot initiatives to break legislative stalemates and enact much needed social or fiscal reform. The ballot initiative system, which causes near constant controversy in the 24 states that allow it, gives average voters the ability to write and implement statewide legislation — and in some cases directly override elected officials. Backers have championed this system as way to check bloated or ... Read More
Do Gerrymanders Come in Shades of Red and Blue?
February 23, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
The type of redistricting reform Miller-McCune examines in its March-April issue is founded on a pair of premises — that citizens would be better off wresting control of the highly political process from the politicians who manipulate it for their own gain, and that, in doing so, we might cut down on the partisanship in government. The first sentiment seems like common sense, and may be reason enough all by itself to adopt reforms nationwide that would give independent commissions the right to redraw congressional and legislative boundaries every 10 years. The second, from the point of ... Read More
Can California Redistricting Reform Change Congress?
February 19, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
If I taught journalism, the final project would have students write an article about municipal bonds. The assignment would be a reality check: As a profession, journalism is so difficult nowadays that only those young people who have the drive and style needed to accurately enliven the second-most boring subject in the news universe — municipal finance — have any chance of a significant career. If you can make bond covenants sing, you might earn a journalistic living in an age when people dislike paying for news, and countless millions of blockheads write for no money. But even I have ... Read More
How Negative Campaigning Can Fall Flat
February 17, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
It's beginning to look like 2004 all over again. While Bush versus Kerry may feel like a lifetime ago, that infamously polarized election might be better suited to forecast the 2010 midterms than the anomaly that was the 2008 campaign. As officials and hacks dash back to entrenched positions, it's party platforms, not individual personalities, that are again increasingly important to voters. Just like 2004, voters this year should expect a hard-fought, hot button issue-oriented battle between the faceless DNC and RNC establishments. ("Hope" and "Change" R.I.P. — for now). As in every ... Read More
Get Politically Engaged, Get Happy?
February 14, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
As the United States gears up for midyear elections, getting involved in a campaign might not only be a great opportunity to participate in democracy — it might make you feel better. Two psychologists — Malte Klar, a practicing psychologist in Germany, and Tim Kasser, professor at Knox College — have found a clear link between political activism and a person's sense of well-being, and have shown that even a very small engagement with political activism can boost one's sense of vitality. "Activists live a happier and more fulfilling life than the average person," said Klar, who ... Read More
Where You Vote Affects How You Vote
February 11, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
In 2008, a trio of scholars found the location of a polling place can affect how people vote. Specifically, they discovered that in the 2000 Arizona election, voters who cast their ballots in schools were more likely to support a school-funding initiative. Those researchers raised the troubling question of whether casting ballots in churches — the most common polling location in America, according to the American Humanist Association — might alter voters’ decisions on social-values issues. Newly published research provides evidence that it does. “Polling locations can exert a ... Read More
Snowmaggedon Backs All Climate Change Views
February 10, 2010 • By • 4 Comments
Federal government offices in Washington, D.C., closed for the third straight day today as back-to-back winter storms pushed the region toward the heaviest single season of snowfall on record. The U.S. House of Representatives has bailed on the entire week of legislating. The Postal Service has given up delivering the mail. And in the streets, officials have started rationing salt. Amid the chaos — "Snowmaggedon," residents are calling it — opposing camps of the climate debate have finally found something they can agree on: Here it is, the evidence we've been talking about! Never ... Read More
Was Hitler a Man of the Left?
February 10, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
When Jonah Goldberg published his book Liberal Fascism in 2007, George W. Bush was still president, and no one had yet compared Barack Obama to Hitler. Goldberg’s ambition for his book, if you boil it down, was small. He wanted to clarify the word “fascism” for a popular audience and defend himself, as an American conservative, against the knee-jerk label “fascist.” Fair enough. “To suggest that Hitler was a conservative in any sense related to American conservatism,” he wrote, “is lunacy.” That’s true. Hitler hated almost everything about America, from its messy ... Read More
