The Uncertainty Principle of Political Reporting

I begin by laying some brief background on a concept in physics called the Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics proposed by Werner Heisenberg. The principle describes the “uncertainty” between the position and momentum (mass times velocity) of a subatomic particle such as an electron. In his 1927 paper, Heisenberg wrote: “the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.” For our purposes, we will take this to imply that one cannot accurately determine both the Position and the Momentum of an atomic particle.

And how does such a ground-breaking scientific discovery apply to politics and political reporting? Contemporary political discourse in the US focuses heavily on the use of metaphors. George Lakoff in Don’t Think of an Elephant makes the point that the use of metaphors is critical in framing the debate on any issue. He gives the following example.

On the day that George Bush arrived in the White House, the phrase “tax relief” started coming out of the White House . . . . When the word tax is added to relief, the result is a metaphor: Taxation is an affliction. And the person who takes it away is a hero, and anyone who tries to stop him is a bad guy. This is a frame. It is made up of ideas, like affliction and hero. The language that evokes the frame comes out of the White House, and it gets into press releases, goes to every radio station, every TV station, every newspaper. And soon the New York Times is using tax relief. And it is not only on Fox; it is on CNN, it is on NBC, it is on every station because it is “the president’s tax-relief plan.” And soon the Democrats are using tax relief – and shooting themselves in the foot (Lakoff, 2004).

Lakoff states that “when you are arguing against the other side, do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame – and it won’t be the frame you want.” The conservatives had set a trap with “tax relief” and the Democrats fell into the trap and accepted the conservative frame.

Framing is about getting language that fits your worldview. It is not just language. The ideas are primary – and the language carries those ideas, evokes those ideas (Lakoff, 2004).

Metaphors are used widely both in campaign rhetoric and the jargon of self-ordained political pundits. It seems as if the media can be played as a yo-yo, spun out and reeled in by a string looped around a politician’s finger. I remember a time when the phrase “investigative reporting” meant something––it gave readers an expectation of well-researched and accurate information; nowadays the media norm is to engage in yo-yo “loop the loops.” Creative media spin occurs so quickly and so often that poor electrons must be spinning in their graves with shame.

What could be the cause for such a shift in journalistic reporting? One possibility can be attributed to the “simpleton” syndrome. That is, politicians think that people are simpletons; that we want just the big picture and are unable to digest the details. That the details which provide factual information are beyond our ken. Ergo, metaphors are enough to “paint the big picture.” While we can understand this sort of thinking by politicians, it is difficult to fathom why journalists are complicit in such propaganda. As a consequence, crucial details are lost in the bile of spin meisters and their infotainment media dittoheads.

Maybe it is because “creative politics” has become a new journalistic sport of the decade. Not everyone, however, supports the use of metaphors. George Orwell criticized bad habits in political writing:

By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself (Orwell, 1968).

Orwell’s opinion is in the minority in today’s media-crazed world. But one thing ought to be very clear––while these “creative” metaphors are deeply rooted in the culture and appeal to many people, they are not a substitute for good communication or responsible journalese.

When beacons like the New York Times toe the metaphorical line, it is time to unleash the Uncertainty Principle of Political Reporting:

One cannot determine both the Relevance and Accuracy of a media political story. If the story is relevant, its accuracy is questionable. If the story is accurate, it is definitely irrelevant.

References

Lakoff, George. 2004. Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River: Chelsea Green.

Orwell, George. 1968. The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell 1920-1950, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (Eds.)

Presidential Election in the US: The "Odd" Anomaly

The President of the United States is elected every four years, not on the basis of the popular vote but on a majority of votes cast in the Electoral College. Each state is awarded a number of electors equal to its members in the US Senate (2 per state) plus its members in the US House of Representatives which varies according to a state’s population. The Electoral College currently has 538 electors, 435 for the number of congressional members in the House for the 50 states, three members who represent Washington, D.C., and 100 senators.

“A vote for the candidates for President and Vice-President named on the ballot is a vote for the electors. . .” In 48 states, the winner of the popular vote is supposed to get all the Electoral College votes of a state (the winner-take-all system); the two exceptions are Maine and Nebraska which use a slightly different system (the district system) to apportion the Electoral College votes. The Electoral College members meet in their respective state capitals and cast their sealed votes which are then sent to the president of the Senate to be officially counted on January 6 of the year following the election. To win the election, a candidate must receive a majority of the electoral votes, which at present is 270.

It turns out, however, that there are a number of things that may not go smoothly in this process. First of all, the electors in a given state are not obligated to vote for the candidate who won that state. There is no federal law that requires electors to vote according to their respective political parties. These faithless electors can vote against the people’s choice, which is legal in many states and not without precedent (although this hasn’t happened often in the past). Therefore, a candidate who may have secured 270 or more electoral votes after the election may be surprised on January 6 and lose the presidency.

A second and more serious problem is when a candidate does not receive a majority of the electoral votes. If there are two candidates running, there are many ways in which each candidate can get exactly 269 electoral votes (equally splitting the total of 538). Or if there are three candidates for instance, and the third party candidate wins a state’s electoral votes, then it is possible for the candidates of the two major parties to fall short of a majority of 270 votes. In the 2000 election cycle, if Ralph Nader had won just one state like Oregon with its seven electoral votes, neither Bush nor Gore would have secured a majority of 270 electoral votes. It does not matter now because that election was decided by an unprecedented one vote margin in the US Supreme Court.

Since the elections have, for the most part, been conducted within a two-party system, and because there are many ways in which a tie can occur, it comes to me as a surprise that a simple fix has not already been implemented to solve the problem of a tied vote. The population of the US has increased over the last decade and it should be possible to make the total number of members in the Electoral College an ODD number, increasing it by one to 539. Surely there is at least one state which can be allotted one more congressional member in the House of Representatives. Having an ODD number will solve the problem of a tie in a two-party race, but it will not solve the problem of a non-majority when a third candidate is able to win the popular election in one or more states.

I am not an expert in constitutional law, but what happens in the situation of a tie or non-majority of electoral votes is determined by the 12^th Amendment to the US Constitution. Here again, the process can produce very interesting results because of the ODD anomaly. The electors of the Electoral College meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and in a separate ballot for Vice-President.

Excerpted from the 12^th Amendment: “The Electors shall meet in their respective States and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each. . .” This can result in a President and Vice-President who are not affiliated with the same party (perhaps we could use that in the present political climate).

“The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.” So here again, the possibility of a tie or non-majority exists. Continuing to quote from the 12^th Amendment, “. . . and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.” It may appear at first glance that this process is easy, but the amendment reads, “. . . in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each State having one vote. . . . and a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a choice.”

And how many states are there? Last time I checked it was an even number of 50. Although the District of Columbia has three congressional members in the House of Representatives, it is considered a “federal district” and not a state. It will be a matter of interpretation of constitutional law as to whether or not D.C should be allowed to vote in this process. In the event of a tie or non-majority, the House can continue taking votes with the hopes of a favorable outcome. The House has until March 4 to select a President based on a majority of all the States (i.e., 26 votes); otherwise “the Vice-President shall act as President.”

The ODD anomaly does not end here. A similar process is applied to select the Vice-President. “The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President. . . . and a majority of the whole number (of Senators) shall be necessary to a choice.” And there are 100 senators, again an even number.

Fortunately, in recent times, we have not had occasion to apply these safety nets of the election process. But the time may come soon, when the battle for the presidency is so hard fought that we may have to deal with a tie or non-majority in the electoral votes.

Increasing the total number of states to an odd number (say 51) will be difficult. Regardless of the total number of states, since there are exactly two senators per state, the total number of senators will continue to be an even number and I do not see an easy way to resolve this issue. What can happen quickly and what is relatively easier to accomplish is to make the number of congressional members in the House an odd number by increasing it to 439. That will prevent a tie from occurring in a predominantly two-party race but it will not address the pitfalls in the event of a non-majority when there are more than two candidates running for the office of President.

If a tie or non-majority were indeed to occur, the Writers Guild strike could fade into oblivion because the “best political minds” on TV will milk this event into a marathon soap opera, airing even on the weekends. Victor Newman and Nikki – you will no longer be Young and Restless.

Second Place "Loser" can be a "Winner"

The Bush administration and the media have at least one thing in common. They bandy the words “winner” and “victory” without thinking about the implications. Take for example, the simplistic notion of “winning” the war in Iraq. Many elected officials and a few presidential candidates want nothing short of a “victory” in Iraq. But does that make any sense at all? The military conflict or “war” in Iraq was won three years back – what needs to happen now is to secure the “peace” by finding a political solution to the conflict. I have yet to read a definition of what “victory in Iraq” means and I have yet to see a reporter ask this question of an administrator.

This same notion of “winner” and “victory” is now being bandied about by the media in the political process to select presidential nominees. Consider the “winners” of the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. The media extolled the winners to such an extent that audiences in other countries thought that the nominations were all locked up by counting the votes of less than one half of one percent of the population! It was a relief to see that there was still one smart person left in the media – Lou Dobbs of CNN News offered the lone sobering minority opinion by noticing that the emperor’s clothes were missing.

The facts are as follows. In both the races, what matters is the number of national delegates that a candidate gets after all the states have voted. This year, with the penalties enforced by the Republican and Democratic National Committees, a Republican candidate needs 1,191 delegates to be nominated and a Democratic candidate needs 2,026 delegates to be nominated. In the Iowa caucus which Obama “won”, the Democrats selected 45 national delegates based on the caucus results. Of these Obama picked up 16, Clinton got 15, and Edwards got 14. An additional 12 delegates are currently unpledged and will be selected later. In the New Hampshire primary which Clinton “won,” she and Obama picked up nine delegates each, and Edwards got four. These numbers hardly merit phrases like “momentum” and “victory.” In the Republican race, Romney currently has 66 delegates (28 more than McCain), and yet McCain is being touted as the front runner and “winner.”

The other implication by these self-ordained infotainment pundits is that if you are not a “winner” in enough states, then you cannot get the Presidential nomination. Again, these pundits are not entirely correct in their analyses.

The process of awarding delegates to candidates is not uniform across states and across the two parties. In many Republican primaries, the winner takes all the delegates. In most Democratic primaries, however, delegates are awarded based on the proportion of votes cast for a candidate. In addition, each state has a few “superdelegates” in both parties who can vote for a candidate of their choice and are not bound by the election results of that state’s primary or caucus.

Hence, if a candidate consistently gets second place with for example, slightly more than a third of the votes, and the first and third place candidates trade places in a few states, it is possible at the end of the process, at least on the Democratic side, for the second place “loser” to muster enough national delegates to “win” the nomination. On the Republican side, with a “winner takes all” method of awarding delegates in many states, it may not be possible to get the nomination without a few first place finishes.

When the whole world watches and reads about elections in the United States, it is important for journalists to give a knowledgeable and accurate coverage of the process. When the “best political minds” fail to do that, they portray a very poor opinion of not only the public but also of themselves. We must follow the lead of Lou Dobbs and demand that the media not insult the public’s intelligence by engaging in such simplistic and inaccurate analyses.