THE IRON LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES:

Electoral reform won’t save the Republicans or the Democrats (David L. Leal, 05/16/26, The Hill)

Decades of research have found that socioeconomic status, and particularly education, is key to explaining voter turnout. To understand why, consider this formula: Voting likelihood equals benefits minus costs, plus duty. The benefits of voting are small for individuals, but so is the cost. While few have cast the deciding ballot in an election, voting usually requires minimal effort.

However, in “The Turnout Myth,” my Hoover Institution colleague Daron Shaw and his coauthors discuss a large “diploma gap” that has existed for decades. We see turnout differences across education levels, with the most educated about twice as likely to vote, at 80 percent, as the least, at 40 percent.

Scholars explain this in several ways: First, education reinforces the belief that voting is a civic obligation, or duty. Second, education increases knowledge about politics and government. Voting is easier when you’re familiar with the issues and parties. Third, education enhances civic skills such as public speaking, group organizing and managing paperwork that can make political participation easier.

People with more education therefore have lower costs and higher duty, which leads to greater turnout among them. Education is also associated with higher incomes and professional occupations, which allow individuals to better meet any financial or time costs of voting.

So, when voting is made more challenging, the more educated are, on average, more motivated and able to overcome the obstacles than are people with less education.

And in today’s politics, those individuals are increasingly likely to be Democrats.

ESCHEWING RESPONSIBILITY:

We Are Sliding Back Into the Middle Ages (Katya Ungerman, 5/17/26, NY Times)

Demonic vexation, teleportation, increased interest in religious practice — those phenomena are all signs that life feels, to many, increasingly charged with unseen forces. You might say it has been re-enchanted. There’s a widespread feeling that the material explanation is no longer sufficient; that something uncanny, maybe even numinous, is diffused into the texture of ordinary American life.

Any excuse is better than accepting that they are the authors of their own misery.

NO RACISM REQUIRED:

Why Neutral Maps Could Empower Black Voters as Much as the Voting Rights Act (Nate Cohn and Eve Washington, May 17, 2026, NY Times)

A race-neutral, nonpartisan redistricting process could create just as many House districts where the candidate preferred by nonwhite voters — usually a Democrat — would be favored to win.

One way to tell whether nonwhite voters would lose their power in that kind of redistricting process is by looking at computer simulations of hypothetical congressional districts. The algorithms, first designed by a team of political scientists in 2022, try to draw compact districts that respect county and municipal lines. After the Supreme Court weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, we reran the simulations without consideration of race. Using the algorithms to draw new districts thousands of times with those compactness constraints can give a good sense of what neutral maps could look like.

And the simulations yield roughly as many so-called minority-opportunity districts across the South as existed under the Voting Rights Act.

In other words, the act didn’t create minority representation that couldn’t have existed otherwise. Nonpartisan, race-neutral redistricting would still preserve many such districts, even if in a different configuration…

CONSPIRACIES HELP THEM EXPLAIN AWAY PERSONAL FAILURES:

12 Things Everyone Should Know About Conspiracy Theories: The strange psychology of suspicious minds (Steve Stewart-Williams, Nov 15, 2025, Nature-Nurture)

Some personalities are more fertile soil for conspiracy theories than others. Research on the Big Five personality traits, for instance, shows that low agreeableness and high neuroticism tilt the odds toward conspiratorial thinking. Other personality predictors include entitlement, low inquisitiveness, low humility, and a victimhood mentality.

But the single strongest personality predictor is narcissism. Narcissists are particularly prone to conspiracy theories because they have a strong need for uniqueness, are prone to paranoia, and can also be remarkably gullible.

ASSUMED IDENTITY:

Black Candidates Do Not Need Black Voters to Win (Deroy Murdock, May 15, 2026, American Spectator)

In her dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Elena Kagan argued: “If other States follow Louisiana’s lead, the minority citizens residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.”

Can Kagan read the minds of “minority citizens?” If not, how would she know whether the “candidates of their choice” are minorities, Democrats, or anything else?

Also important: Where is it written that minority candidates must represent minority voters?

Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District is 61.3 percent black and only 24.5 percent white, the Census Bureau reports. And yet, since 2006, this majority-black, greater-Memphis electorate has voted 10 times to send Steve Cohen to the U.S. House. Cohen is white.

Conversely, the Left whines that black Democrats can win only if a majority of voters of color (typically black) elect them. They assume that black contenders cannot secure a plurality or even a majority of white votes. This racist argument suggests that black candidates lack the charm, ideas, or ideas to win white votes, and/or whites are too bigoted to back blacks.

Thus, race-obsessed Democrats concentrate black candidates in constituencies that resemble South Africa’s Apartheid-era Bantustans. Predominantly minority congressional districts recall Bophuthatswana, KwaZulu, Transkei, and other black “homelands.” And yet, for decades, constituencies with neither black majorities nor shapes like Rorschach blots have elected black Democrats and Republicans.