In part 1 of this series I referenced the paper “The genetics of politics: discovery, challenges, and progress,” a review of years of research on genetic influences on political attitudes, and discussed the general concept of heritability. In part 2 I discussed some of the findings referenced in the paper. In this third and final part I discuss some of the implications of these findings. First and foremost is that if political attitudes are in fact significantly genetically influenced then political differences among people are inevitable. We will never convince our political opponents to agree with our positions starting from our own moral intuitions. It’s likely that the best we can do instead is to manage our political differences within a framework like representative democracy (“the worst form of government, except for all the others”) that can provide some assurance that the public good will be advanced, that winners of political contests will need to come back again to the voters at some point, and that losers of those contests will have another chance to be winners.1 ...

In part 1 of this series I referenced the paper “The genetics of politics: discovery, challenges, and progress,” a review of years of research on genetic influences on political attitudes, and discussed the general concept of heritability. Now let’s get to the interesting stuff, namely the findings discussed in the paper. Let’s start with the opposite ends of the spectrum. Per figure 1 in the paper (see Razib Khan’s post for a more readable version) some of the most heritable traits include having an interest in politics, voting and otherwise participating in politics, identifying as liberal or conservative, and political knowledge and sophistication in general. On the other hand the least heritable trait was party affiliation, which appeared to be much more influenced by one’s family and other shared environment. How can we reconcile this? ...

How do we come by our political attitudes? Are some people “born conservatives” (or liberals)? Why do we identify as Democrats vs. Republicans vs. independents? For an interesting take on this question see the recent scientific paper “The genetics of politics: discovery, challenges, and progress,” which I found via a blog post by Razib Khan (who offers some commentary of his own). Personal genomics, genetics, and related topics are personal interests of mine, as is politics (in a more general as opposed to strictly partisan sense), so the intersection of these areas is definitely a blog-worthy topic for me.1 ...

If you could vote on exactly how Howard County spends $10M (just over 1% of its operating budget), would you take advantage of the opportunity? What if you could vote on how the county spends $100M? This thought was prompted by a blog post touching on “participatory budgeting,” a movement that started in Brazil and has since spread to other jurisdictions in Latin America and elsewhere. To quote from the PB home site, ...

I’m interrupting my blogging hiatus again to point you to an important report that I think everyone interested in Howard County and Maryland politics should read: Counting Votes 2012: A State by State Look at Election Preparedness. There’s been a lot of controversy about alleged voter fraud, with calls for voter ID cards and the like. I have my thoughts on that general topic, but for this post I’ll simply note that this report deals with a related but somewhat separate issue, namely potential problems in the counting of votes and in confirming that votes are actually counted correctly. (Related because counting votes properly is a key technique in detecting certain types of fraud, separate in that the concern here is not with verifying that people are eligible to vote, but rather with problems that can occur at the point of voting and afterward.) ...

No deep analysis tonight, just a brief report on my visit today to BonChon in Ellicott City to try out their fried chicken. The place still hasn’t officially opened, but prompted by Howchow’s report we decided to stop by and try it out during their “soft opening.” The verdict: We really enjoyed it, and will definitely be back from time to time (as often as prudence allows). The run-down: We went in the late afternoon, and it wasn’t crowded at all (one other party of four guys). We got our food in less than 15 minutes. I can see where it might be quite busy at other times though. It’s a fried chicken place, so we ate fried chicken, We didn’t try any other main dishes, and frankly I don’t see any point in doing so. (Specialization for the win!) We tried both the wings and chicken strips (which I’m not sure are all breast meat or mixed breast and thigh), the wings with the hot sauce and the strips with soy garlic sauce. Personally I preferred the wings with hot sauce: I liked the hot sauce much better, and I thought the strips, though nicely crunchy, seemed a bit on the dry side. I’m biased though, as I am a big fan of chicken wings in any form, especially fried; the strips with soy garlic sauce are certainly much more child-friendly. I got white rice as a side dish, both to cut the spiciness of the wings and to stay more in the “I could be eating this in Seoul” mood. We also got some fries, which were OK but pretty generic. We also were brought radish chunks with the chicken; these were nicely refreshing though again most children will likely spurn them. Service was attentive (not surprising, since at that time of day the staff outnumbered the customers). We talked with the waiter, the general manager, and one of the owners (presumably John Kim of Tutti Frutti fame, though we didn’t ask his name). Total cost was under $50 for three people, which I consider quite reasonable for what we got. In summary, I’m really happy to see BonChon in Ellicott City, and wish them luck with their grand opening whenever it is (September, most likely, based on our conversations). ...

Many people recall that John Maynard Keynes characterized “practical men” as being the “slaves of some defunct economist.” Fewer people recall that Keynes accorded political philosophers equal weight in influencing the opinions of those practical men. I note this to justify why I spent several hours of my spare time reading the political philosopher John Tomasi’s new book Free Market Fairness, which according to the blurb “offers a bold new way of thinking about politics, economics, and justice—one that will challenge readers on both the left and right.” It’s also why I now feel compelled to spend a bit more time recommending it to others and outlining why I think it’s important. ...

Thus far this weekend I’ve suggested revamping the way we elect the Howard County Council as the price for extending the time council members can serve, proposed the single transferable vote system as an alternative, outlined its advantages, and explained how it would change the two main parties’ strategies. I’ll conclude this weekend by discussing how STV would affect the chances of candidates who represent a relatively small minority of voters. As we saw in the last post, if a bloc of voters exceeds the size of the STV quota (one-sixth of the voters plus one for a five-member council, or 17,001 voters in our example) then they can elect a candidate of their choosing simply by voting for that candidate as their first choice. But what if the bloc of voters is smaller than a quota, and its chosen candidate can’t attract that many first-preference votes? The alternative strategy is simple: If you can’t be the first choice of lots of voters, try to become everybody’s second choice. ...

Walking around the neighborhood after publishing my last post I had a sudden pang of anxiety: Were the things I wrote about STV elections really the case? In particular, people have always been able to take advantage of bloc voting to elect a favored candidate (or candidates); what’s so different about STV compared to a conventional at-large election? Fortunately I was able to convince myself that STV worked (or at least could work) the way I thought I did. I’m now writing my thoughts down just to make sure—and of course in the hope that others might find this informative. ...

In part 1 of this two-part post I discussed my proposal to replace the current way of electing the Howard County Council with a new scheme to elect council members county-wide using a single transferable vote (STV) scheme. As is apparent from even my simplified explanation, understanding and running an STV election is significantly more difficult than a traditional by-district or at-large election. Why put ourselves to this extra trouble? In short, because STV can do a much better job of ensuring that election results reflect voters’ true preferences. ...