Interesting Things from Around the Internet

This is a fascinating story about a study done on voting patterns in Michigan. Several different groups of voters were treated to different persuasions to vote via mail: nothing at all, appeals to civic duty and finally the threat of public shaming. Guess which one worked the best?

Also on the voting tip, here’s a New York Times editorial discussing the success of early voting in the states that have adopted it. It seems strange to me that we do all these things – voting on Tuesday, making registration difficult – not for any good reason, or because we think voting should be difficult, but because for some reason Americans hate the idea of certain kinds of change – usually change that involves public institutions – or milk jugs, I guess. At what point do we finally sit down and address this absurdity in a serious, progressive way?

The NASA probe to Mercury took a bunch of pictures in a recent flyby, expanding our knowledge of the closest planet to the sun, but still leaving a number of surprising gaps in our knowledge: the western hemisphere of the planet is 30% smoother than the other, it’s covered in an unidentified substance the scientists call “blue material” (oh, you scientists and your clever names!) and it looks like Mercury has shrunk significantly as its interior has cooled. All interesting enough, but it sounds like the real interesting stuff will happen in 2011 when the probe enters stable orbit around Mercury. Another success for the space program, and another blow against manned space exploration (sadly).

And finally, Daniel Larison has a perceptive take on that most frustrating of creatures, the undecided voter. I agree with PW that sitting through that Obama infomercial was pretty painful, but I think Larison was right: this is closer to what the undecideds want. Which is truly kind of frightening. It started me wondering, the problem is clearly not that people don’t understand the candidates positions. Even when they might be a little bit fuzzy or a little bit misleading, it isn’t hard to assess the positions of both candidates and come to a rational decision on them. Despite what they say, undecided voters don’t want to know more about “issues,” because they don’t understand and don’t care about issues. So: what do we do? How does democracy function when a large portion of the electorate (and when we’re talking about undecideds, we’re talking about people with no interest who still vote – to say nothing of those who don’t care and don’t bother) just don’t care about rational decision making? Are their opinions (and votes) worth as much as ideologues? Or more? I don’t have any answers, but it certainly seems to me like an important question.