100 Years Ago Today Women Got the Right to Vote - and Reinvented What It Meant to be a Woman

100 years ago today women gained the right to vote in national elections. Two points about that.

One, product and social invention are often intertwined.

20 years before 1900, a woman would carry about 10 tons of fuel (wood and coal) and 40 tons of water in and out of the house each year. The invention of running water and electricity made it easy for more women to shift their focus outside the home. The woman as a political force was born.
In 1960, the Pill was approved and women could decide whether and when to have children. In 1968, Yale began to admit women. Today, more women than men earn university degrees. The woman as an economic force was born.

Two, progress has a clear direction: it gives more people more ability to live a life of their own choosing.

There is a simple question to determine to ask of a policy question: will this ultimately give more people more options? Healthcare coverage that lets more people live longer, healthier lives is progress. A population that lives to an average age of 85 has more options about what to do with a life than one that lives an average of 55 years. Educational policies that give more kids more options about what to do for a living or how to shape or make sense of their world is progress. Making it easier for more people in a community to vote is progress. Environmental policies and technology that promise to give the billions of people who will be living here in 100, 300, and 500 years just as many (or more) options to enjoy nature and affluence are progress.

Giving women the right to vote - like ending slavery or radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions - will never be considered radical by future generations. It is the sort of thing that makes future generations think that "they" (that "we") must have been a different species.

Communication and transportation technology is continually being reinvented. So is what it means to be a woman. Progress moves forward on a series of inventions, some technical, some social and all with the potential to disrupt.

100 years ago, women got the right to vote. And given how differently they vote, it was none too soon.

What the Right Gets Wrong About Voting by Mail

My friend Robert was very excited about voting by mail. This surprised me because he never really struck me as the kind of guy who was a big fan of more democracy. In fact, he seems to tilt authoritarian. A bit.

"Finally the left has come to its senses," Robert said excitedly.
"What brought this on," I asked.
"They're talking about voting by mail!"
"You're for that," I inquired.
"Of course! I think it's brilliant. Have you seen the polls that suggest how much that would change things? We would rock these elections!"
I paused a while, trying to process this.
"Robert," I finally responded. "You know that they are talking about voting by mail, M-A-I-L, not voting by male, M-A-L-E, right?"
He grew silent. About a minute later he muttered, "Stupid liberals."

What if the Senate is Obsolete?

As economic power and population shifted from rural farms to industrializing cities in decades around 1900, Britain and Germany changed how their parliaments were defined. US legislature hasn't made that shift in representation and probably should. This is going to be contentious.

As Britain pioneered the industrial revolution, Manchester's population exploded. A center for industrialization, Manchester grew to become the UK's third largest city (after London and Glasgow) by 1901. Between 1700 and 1800 it grew from fewer than 10,000 to about 90,000.  Manchester's population doubled between 1801 and 1820 and then doubled again by 1850.

Yet when it began its growth, Parliamentary representation was granted to districts. Manchester did not even elect its own Members of Parliament (MPs) in the early 19th century. It was just part of the Lancashire district.

Meanwhile, in "rotten boroughs," a paltry few could elect two MPs. How few? In one borough, 7 voters got to elect 2 MPs. Dunwich had literally fallen into the sea, leaving just 32 voters clinging to land; they, too, got to elect 2 MPs. In a sense, this was representation by acreage.

The economy changed how population and power was distributed. Industrialization brought workers into cities like Manchester and left behind smaller populations in the little rural communities that - in part thanks to industrialization - needed fewer people to raise crops and tend livestock. While the population and economies of cities grew, their political representation had not.

This changed in the UK (the disparity between Dunwich and Manchester began to be addressed with legislation in 1832) and, later, in Germany, Austria and France through a series of parliamentary reforms starting in the early 1800s and continuing through the first world war. As the economy shifted from agriculture to industrial, as the important factor shifted from land to capital, these communities shifted political power to give voice to the members of this new economy.

The need for such a shift in the US is less dramatic. At least in the House. Divided into 435 districts by population (obviously a number that grows every decade), the US is not going to have anything as egregious as 7 people electing two representatives.

Nonetheless, the Senate is still structured around the notion that acreage deserves representation. Like the early forms of British parliament that found themselves antiquated by urbanization and industrialization, the US Senate gives disproportionate representation to owners of land rather than capital or knowledge. Two states, Wyoming and Vermont, have populations smaller than Washington DC. Those states have four senators and DC has none. 21 states with a population of 36 million get 42 senators; California with a population of 39 million gets 2 senators. In one part of the country, you are just one of 850,000 voices your senator must represent; in another, you are one of 19.7 million voices

California has helped to pioneer the information and entrepreneurial economies and that has made it successful in industries like aerospace, communications, silicon, software, biotech, and the internet. Of the 100 most valuable companies in the world earlier this year, the market cap of companies in California represented $4.2 trillion of the US's $14.1 trillion (and of the world's $21.2 trillion). California represents 12.4% of the American population and 30% of the value of the country's biggest companies. Like Manchester in the early 19th century, California's lead in creating jobs and wealth has not yet translated into commensurate representation.

In 1790, when the US was founded, 90% of workers were in agriculture. Acreage was a pretty good proxy for good representation at that time. Agriculture now employs fewer than 2% of American workers. Acreage is now a terrible approximation of how representation should be calculated. (And yes, I know that technically the Senate is a way to represent states not acreage but it does effectively do that. State representation does not follow people around as they move; states "govern" over a constant and stable area, not a constant and stable population. What this effectively means is that Senators represent acreage.)

As it now stands, the politics in the US is going to be disproportionately defined by the least populous and least affluent areas of the country because of how the Senate is structured. It's hard to imagine us ignoring that for too much longer or imagine that addressing this issue will ever be easy.

What is Certain in Today's Election

We live in a probabilistic, not deterministic world. The Democrats will probably win the House and the Republicans will probably hold the Senate but .... we don't know. Yet. Fivethirtyeight gives Republicans a 15% chance of keeping the House and the Democrats a 15% chance of winning the Senate.

Reality is choosing among possible paths as rapidly as it can but there are so many of them. We can simulate reality so much faster than reality can play out because reality does not simplify.

One of the things that we will learn is how unique is Trump. It is very normal for a Republican to win the presidency after two terms of a Democrat in the White House. In that sense, the 2016 election was boring and normal. But of course Trump is a bizarre character who seems to most of us to be hugely different than a typical Republican. If he really is, the backlash could be bigger than what is captured in current probabilities; if typical Republicans and swing voters think he is really no different than a normal Republican, there will likely be a swing towards Democrats but it won't be very dramatic; about enough to win the House but still be still be a minority in the Senate.

What is certain? 

Democrats could win by 6 points nationally (53 to 47) and still lose the House. Because of gerrymandering and the fact that individual voters in big cities have less influence even in House races, Republicans have about a 5 to 6 point starting advantage for Congress. That strikes me as the most remarkable thing about politics in this second decade in the 21st century.

Related, the counties that voted for Clinton represent two-thirds of GDP. It is the areas of the country that least understand how to create jobs and wealth that thought Trump's anti-trade, anti-immigrant, nationalist agenda sounded like a good idea.

As it now stands, our policy is being decided by minorities as counted by the number of voters and GDP. That's certain. And that is certainly weird.

What else is certain? The House will decide whether we learn what Mueller has learned about Trump. The House will decide whether Trump will - for the first time in his life - experience any negative consequences for any negative deeds. Voters today will decide whether we continue to have a Republican-led House that merely enables Trump or a Democratic-led House that checks his worst excesses. 

What is certain is that Trump will be more dangerous with a Republican-led House. I'm certain that I don't want two more years of a Congress that merely acquiesces to his every whim; I wish I could be certain we'll get that.

Finally, as I think about today's election, the words of Tiny Tim repeat in my head: God bless us everyone.

The Real Culprits in the Trump Presidency

We've watched a year of extreme incompetence in Trump's presidency. Not only does he not understand trade or war or trade wars or any of a hundred other topics intrinsic to governing, he lacks interest in these topics or the cognitive ability to process any data or narratives with more subtlety than a bumper sticker. Since Twitter has allowed a doubling of character limits to 280, even his tweets have taken on a curiously rambling tone, becoming even less coherent. Every successful politician represents some serendipitous match of time and destiny; it may well be that one of the chief reasons for Trump's political success is that his thoughts and policies don't need to be packaged to fit into a 140-character limit but are actually birthed whole at no more than 140 characters. Twitter was the perfect medium for Trump, a medium serendipitously designed to the exact dimensions of his cognitive limits.  

Now that Wolff's book is revealing so much that - as James Fallows says - is an open secret, pundits are coming out critical of his staff for not outing him as grossly incompetent. Among the many open secrets about Trump is the fact that the man who was already prone to repeat stories in a thirty-minute cycle has reduced that cycle to about 10 minutes. This is a man bragging about the size of his nuclear bomb button, threatening nuclear war against the poor people of North Korea whose lives have already been ruined by one madman and could now be ended by another. He's easily distracted and apparently has little interest in consequences. 

The Republican Congress, too, has been criticized for worrying more about protecting Trump than the country. Ryan and McConnell haven't had courage enough to criticize Trump on any of his tweets, positions, or evidence of madness and incompetence. 

There is a group, though, that bears the most responsibility for Trump and has not been criticized at all: Republican voters.

Republican voters excitedly voted for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. These voters cheered on an invasion of Iraq and then screamed about a stream of refugees from Iraq and the rise of ISIS out of the chaos of that country. These voters cheered deregulation of financial markets and then screamed about the Great Recession that quickly destroyed a decade's worth of jobs in just a few years. Like moths to a flame, they want their hand on the burner but are mad about it hurting. These are not people who understand cause and effect that takes months or years to play out. These people are upset about the number of Muslim refugees who have come into Europe but don't see it as connected to their insistence that we literally bomb Iraqis to liberation. These people were upset about the number of unemployed but don't see it as connected to their cheering for deregulation, or in simpler terms, removing rules that made financial markets more fair and safe. ("Why do you make our kids wear helmets when they don't want to!" Games later, "How could you let our kids get these kinds of head injuries?")

Undeterred by how badly the Bush Cheney experiment went, Republican voters went all in on a vice presidential candidate who showed about as much understanding of policy as someone who distractedly listens to talk radio as if it were background music. Sarah Palin was simple minded but photogenic, a beautiful woman unafraid to speak like an internet meme and Republican voters fell in love with her.

Most recently, Republican voters have given us a man who repeatedly demonstrated his disdain for women, his ignorance of policy, his lack of morals and his disregard for truth, data, or experts.

Republican voters will excitedly support some new candidate once Trump is institutionalized (whether this institution is a home for those with Alzheimer's or criminal convictions is as yet uncertain). It would be best if they did not. At this point conservative voters are like that friend who has been thrice married to men who have each turned out to be abusive who is nonetheless convinced that she should marry again. Someone has to tell this woman that her judgement is bad and her husbands are worse, no matter how exciting she finds them.

Republican voters are the real culprits here. If not for them, Trump would be a comical figure, a TV star who took himself too seriously but was nonetheless amusing for that very reason, like a character on Seinfeld. Instead, Republican voters who cannot tell the difference between comedy and tragedy or lies and revelations have given him more power than anyone else on earth. 

Why We Have No Experience with Policy

The biggest problem with modern politics is that people never experience good policy. Or bad for that matter.

If you go out to eat this evening, you’ll have a clear experience. You might love your dinner and think it’s reasonably priced. You’ll decide to go back the next day or next month but you will act on what you’ve learned. In theory, politics is similar but in practice it’s not.  When it comes to policy, you don’t actually experience it.

To take an obvious example, let’s say that you fund development and education in a poor neighborhood. Let’s say that you sustain this investment long enough – at least a decade or two – that it actually impacts the kids growing up in that neighborhood. So much, in fact, that those kids end up making double what their parents made – even adjusted for inflation. This policy is a raging success.

But what does it really mean to say that you’ve increased the earnings of a 7 year old? Their peak earning years will probably be about 40 years away. Worse, if you just look, say, 15 years out you might actually see lower earnings because these kids – unlike their parents – are still in school in their early 20s and not making any money. Even worse (yes, it gets worse) given they’ve followed jobs for young professionals, there is a very good chance that they won’t be living in that same neighborhood when they do hit their peak earning years. How would voters in an area ever “experience” that return on investment?

And of course it gets even more complicated. Education initiatives can change a dozen times in the dozen years that kids are in K-12. It’s tough to see the impact of programs that are discontinued before teachers have even adapted their curriculum to the initiative. The introduction of new technology like personal computers or nanotech can cause productivity and wages to rise regardless of education policy and the proliferation of outsourcing can cause wages to fall. There’s never just one thing going on and that makes it difficult for the average person to know what difference policies made.

It's only policy wonks who've teased through the data to isolate causes who can - with lots of caveats and uncertainty - say that - all else being equal - this policy is likely to raise wages and this one to depress them, etc. Again, your average voter won't experience that. Meanwhile, your average American is distrustful of experts so they won't listen to these experts and even if they did, the experts who express lots of honest uncertainty will seem less convincing than the politician who speaks with great confidence.

There’s an old quip about the guy who didn’t have 20 years of experience but instead had one year experience 20 times. In politics, it is worse. Whether the policy is economic development, education, environmental, or urban or family planning, the long-term effects of policy rarely are clearly experienced. 

For me, that's just one more reason that systems thinking and systems simulation has to be popularized and taught. It's not enough to let the experts benefit from running models that simulate reality. We could "experience" policy but it would take far better and easier to navigate simulations than anything we have now. Perhaps in a generation people play policy simulations the way that  simulate policies the way that Millennials played video games. 

The Slow Spread of Democracy (say, aren’t those peasants armed with voter pamphlets?)

The American Revolution didn't just happen once. In fact, it is still happening.

In 1689, England's Glorious Revolution shifted authority from crown to constitution. British Parliament essentially hired monarchs (William & Mary) and told them that they could have subjects but would - like everyone else - be themselves subject to the constitution.

About a hundred years later the Americans decided that if they had a constitution they wouldn't even need a monarch. It's worth remembering that George Washington was the first president in the history of the world. But of course it never occurred to the founding fathers, who thought that all men were created equal, that anyone other than white, property-owning, Protestant males should be able to vote.

The Revolution of 1776 was a beautiful thing but it didn't really change the the rights of most Americans. It took 34 more years before people (well, property-owning white males) of any religion could vote. It took 74 years before even white males who didn't own property could vote. 144 years before women could vote and 148 years before Native Americans were considered real Americans and also able to vote. 189 years later, minorities' voting rights were ensured. And it took nearly 200 years before the 18 year olds considered old enough to die for their country were considered old enough to vote for their leaders. (And it is probably no coincidence that since then we've not had a draft.)

The real limit to change is always the collective imagination. For all of their vision, it is not the least obvious that our founding fathers could conceive of an 18 year old black female casting the vote that might elect the next president.

Social progress is often a bet on the person who has yet to prove himself. By definition it almost has to be. Before 1920, women could not prove that their vote mattered for the simple reason that it did not.

A couple of centuries later, democracy is still spreading. Right here within our borders. Now that's a revolution.

The Irrational Voter

This evening at the gym, I see Josh Groban and Rosario Dawson and a couple of other celebs urging people to vote. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but it is not hard to imagine.

Of course, the whole idea of voting is based on some fallacious notion about probability. You have better odds of buying a winning lottery ticket than you do of casting the deciding vote and I can pretty much guarantee that you are not going to win the lottery. Given that it is simply not rational to think that your vote will make a difference, only irrational people actually vote.

Wait. That seems to explain so much, doesn't it?

Time for a Virtual Democracy

Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist, has an interesting posting about the difference in efficiencies between markets and elections. It is upon the responsiveness of institutions to these two dynamics - markets and election - that our quality of life rests. In the comments, section, the point is made

Your vote buys one of two gigantic packages - a president or a congressman (at the national level, at least). But your dollar can be split into many parts and be used to buy many different products.

If we could choose to vote for every policy, power and person in government, and not be directly affected when we abstain from voting, then a vote might be more like a dollar.

It seems clear to me, at least, that the vote is a FAR blunter tool than the dollar.

And as I read this, I wonder, why? Why is it that we have to vote for one person or party or another? Why not vote on things issue by issue? We certainly have the technology. We can vote on whether Barry Bonds home rum record should have an asterisk or whether Britney Spears should get custody of her children. Ours is a wired world and there seems little reason why the public couldn't vote in an on-going basis for a variety of policy issues.

Imagine that every 2 to 4 years, you voted for one business conglomerate that was going to provide you with all your products and services in the coming 2 to 4 years. Your phone service, ice cream, automobiles, and housing would all be provided by whoever you "voted" for. We'd think that this was absurd. And yet, that is what we do at voting booth. Is it any wonder that so few Americans vote and so many are dis-satisfied with those who are elected? Isn't it time that we reflected in our democracy that we have made some advances in polling and communicating in the last 225 years?