Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Correlation Between Voting Method and Turnout?

A friend of mine who lives in College Park, Maryland was recently complaining about how his vote in the presidential election doesn't matter because Maryland always goes overwhelmingly for the Democrats. He was wondering if there was any research regarding a relationship between voting method (winner take all, proportional representation, instant runoff, etc.) and turnout.

I found a wealth of information on this subject at FairVote.org and I definitely recommend the site (which is non-partisan) to anyone interested in the subject.

Experiment in capitalism

I found a website today about a fellow who, as an experiment, was trying to turn $14 into $1000 in a year. He had a job, and plenty of money, but was just doing this as an experiment in capitalism. The goal was to do this without gambling (or otherwise incurring extremely high levels of risk), and with minimal work (since he already had a job).

I certainly find this intriguing. While it sounds impossible - a 7142% annual return - when you start considering the ways in which one might do this it really may be quite doable! What do you think?