Your voice. I drive around and talk to a lot of people your vote, trying to do my part to get Donald J. Trump reelected.
On fifty five KR the talk station at oh five fifty five KRC Detalk Station. Brian Thomas wishing everyone a very happy Wednesday, looking forward to the bottom of the hour as I always do on Wednesdays with judg Ena Paulitano, and really looking forward to dive on into this study done by my next guests, among other researchers, Hillary Shulman, PhD, Associate Professor in the School of Communication at the Ohio
State University. Her work examines on how communication can be used to stimulate engagement in the areas of politics, health and science, and that's of course the focus of the study we'll be talking about today. Caption Predicting vote choice and election outcomes from ballot wording, the role of processing fluency in low information direct democracy elections. Welcome to the program, Hillary Schulman. It's a real pleasure to have you on today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Now in your study and I and I dove into it, and you know, it's a lot, it's well, it's a well written study. All of the research is documented. You do give credit where credit is due, so no plagiarism here. Lots of citations and other previous studies you relied on. I had to clear the error on that one right out. You're welcome.
I appreciate you're reading that whole thing.
Yes, you talk about low information voters, and this is a concept that I am an admitted weed dweller. This is what I do for a living. I'm reading politics twenty four to seven basically, so I kind of feel like I'm kind of at a higher level of understanding when it comes to a lot of matters, including ballid initiatives. But so many people, as you know, and I think most people will acknowledge, don't pay a lot of attention to politics, and the more obscure an issue, the less
likely they're going to have any knowledge about it. And as you note in your study that well, sometimes when people show up at the polling booth, it's the first time they've ever been even exposed to the issue that they're voting on.
Yeah, that's true. I mean there are definitely some issues that gain a lot of exposure, and that campaigns rely heavily on the fact that people aren't going to read the language, so they just send you a mailer and say vote yes or vote no, and people just go okay,
and they never actually read the language. But for these like more obscure, like you're talking about political issues, things like millages, things like amendments to you know, esoteric laws, people might not know those are up for election and walk into the voting booths on election day and see those for the first time.
Well in issue one, and I don't know where you are on and it's immature for the purposes of our discussion. But you know, I'll predicate this statement or this this question, or this point by acknowledging that, yes, I am a weed dweller, but I'm also a lawyer at seven years of college tall it wasted or not practice for sixteen years, and the self deprecating comment I always raise my MENSA membership because to me, it doesn't mean any thing. It
doesn't mean you're smart on any given issue. Now, with all that I read Issue one, it's lengthy and it is bloody confusing, even to someone who understands, you know, maybe more than the average voter. I mean, it's it's crazy. So how is someone how is someone to walk into the poll as a low information voter to have any any understanding of how this is actually going to play
out in practice. Who doesn't walk through hypothetical scenarios like, well, what if one of these independent committee members happens to be a felon, or you know what if they do something untoward or illegal. As I understand it, there's no way for the average person to go after them, to sue them, to litigate whatever to get them off. They have to be voted out by their own membership. I
find a problem with that. But you aren't going to even grasp that small component if you're standing there for the first time looking at it in the ballot box.
Nope, And here's what you're gonna do. You're going to read that for the first time in the ballot box, and you are going to vote no on Issue one accordingly, because you're going to be like, I don't like this, and I use the word in my title, which you
know is a jargon y term, so forgive me. But this idea of processing fluency, and that's the idea of how much effort we feel like we're spending on reading something, And in the case of Issue one, that perception of effort is going to be really high and really hard, and we don't like things that kind of challenge us when we're not anticipating that challenge, and what we do is we usually oppose it in that case. So, well,
then who just walks into the voting booth. They're probably going to vote no if they're just relying on the language and I'm just relying on kind of their gut instinct, and I.
Suppose your research demonstrates it. Well, I know what I'm what I'm living with now and may not be perfect, but since I'm confused by what I'm staring at, I'd rather just stick with the status quo because I'm at least familiar with and it isn't impacting my life directly.
Basically, Yeah, yeah, there is evidence of that. It's called the statf that is quo biased, and that is indeed true that people will tend to vote for the thing that's already existing, especially if they don't feel like they did their due diligence and their you know, information searching on the topic, and like you said, a lot of people sure don't. We might. I read the news every day. I enjoy listening to all sorts of programs and whatnot.
But I recognize that I am an audity compared to the average voter, and so absolutely, well.
You got some company anyway.
Well, the research does show that you and I, even if we're in totally different ends of the political spectrum, have a lot more in common with each other than somebody who's less engaged.
Okay, now, how what impact? And again I'll just rely on Issue one as an illustration of how this happens generally speaking, because you didn't focus on that issues, focused on these ballid issues generally. But then the money that flows in and in that in particular Issue one, we got a lot of out of state money. We have, I guess the guy from Switzerland who's pumped in millions and millions of dollars for reasons beyond my understanding, but
I think I understand it's for political reasons. Does the money and the the the just sort of the boiled down, boilerplate language politicians evil? This takes politicians out of the equation. Does that have an impact on people who otherwise are low information voters and not inclined to read through all this and the complexities to.
Go with it. I mean, yeah, so the study you read at the beginning actually focused on issues that get no money, right, so that there's no outside interests, there's no bank account from Switzerland funding an Ohio election ballot. But so in these cases ballot language matters. But in the instances you're talking about, right, the ballot or the funding for these ballot initiatives can work a lot like an R or a D on a kind of on local election, right where people just use it as a heuristic.
My going yet, I'm going yes. If my team's going no, I'm going no. And I'm probably likely to never read that ballot language and just rely on these heuristics for these cues, like we do it a lot of kind of down ballot races just to say, I vote for my team and I vote against my opposing team, and that's that.
Whatever the pink sheet of blue sheet states.
Exactly whatever the fly or tells me that a person whom I like, you know, endorsements matter for these things too. You know, if I the senator that I like is endorsing this, then I'm likely to just say yes or and vice versa.
Well, in the underlying issue itself tends to matter in terms of people's awareness of it. I think your research found out or other research cited in your study, finds out that social and moral issues have a higher awareness rate than something non social like jerrymandering, I would imagine is a non social issue.
Yes, it's a non social issue, but they both are likely to receive fun. But the thing is about social and moral issues. You know, we had the constitutional amendment in August right about putting abortion rights in the state constitution. Regardless of how that ballot's written, people sort of know where they stand on that, and all they have to do is look up whether or not where they stand aligned with the guests or now.
Yeah and then.
So so for those people are more readily able to access you know, what their vote means and what they care about versus you know, millages and you know, more right, more complicated in the weeds types of initiatives.
But going back to something when I when I recall the vote to legalize gambling, that ballot initiative that was in or amendment that was in. People didn't think the government should say you're not allowed to gamble. I think it was you know, everybody, for the majority of us, we don't find any problem with gambling. There are problem gamblers, but that's a subset. But in terms of me being able to go out in place a bed, nobody cares. So when Kevin an opportunity, it is like, oh, this
legalizes gambling, you get my yes vote. But they didn't pay attention to the fact that it created a monopoly for specific individuals and casinos, which was enshrined in the constitution, which I find absolutely I voted no just because of that reason, same reason I voted no on the original marijuana cartel establishment. It was the mechanism that was wrong,
not the general issue. I don't care if you want to smoke weed, but as sure as I wasn't going to put in the hands of John Bayner in hand select couple of other people.
Sure, well, this was really interesting, and you're raising the question of whether direct democracy is a good thing, and whether or not citizens are capable of kind of reading legislation of this kind and understanding all the repercussions and the ramifications of a certain initiative. And there are definitely people out there who would consider themselves, you know, pro
democracy and really care about what the people think. But they still say, like direct democracy could be problematic because these decisions are potentially too complicated or multicaceted to put in the hands of the people. And so you know, these can be instances and again depending on how these are written, and not all of us have law degrees, whether we use them or not, you know, it could
be problematic for sure. And there are definitely people who are opposed to kind of ballot initiatives and direct democracy in general for these reasons. They think it could be manipulated.
Clearly they can. Now now in terms of you deal a lot within your study, which is fascinating. I'll encourage my listeners to take a look at it. My producer will put it on my blog page fifty five cars dot com. The language that you use and the word difficulty, the complexity of the language. So yeah, boiled down. I got to figure based upon what you've explained to me,
and of course I read it. The more difficult the languages to understand, the again, the less likely is someone who's going to is someone who's going to embrace it like scratch my head, I don't get it. I'm going to go with no.
Exactly exactly, so well, you know that's but you know some of this too, is that this varies by state, like and some of these ballots, and again this goes into the challenges of direct democracy, is that some of these ballots can be written, you know, with they have more flexibility with how they're written, and politicians can write them to kind of appeal to or try to explain
or make more accessible the ideas there is. But some of these ballot propositions in certain states go directly into law, so they necessarily have to be written in this legally sort of fashion, and that, one could argue, makes voters even less prepared to vote their preferences on that matter.
So, in terms of using your study as a guide for those who are proponents of or opponents of any given legislation, does your study help, you know, facilitate an opportunity to create a broaden understanding of issues. Does it suggest you know that you can market or buy ads sufficient enough to sway the vote one way or another, or really does it come down to securing the endorsement of one party or the other.
Well, there are cynical and stimistic views of this research. But what I will say is, and this is like a thesis of all of my work, is I am just an advocate for I think people should better understand
and be engaged with kind of the political process. They should know what they're voting for, and they should be able to kind of understand and when we use certain kind of language tricks to potentially impair that understanding, whether again for a bad intention or you know, just something you're not even thinking about reasons, whatever those reasons are, I think, you know, it should cause us to reflect a little bit about how we can make the public.
You know, we need to meet the public where they are, because you know, politics is in the service of us, and language is one way to do that.
Yes, and I just wish it was higher on people's you know to do list, paying attentions to matters political because it impacts every single one of us. Hillary Schulman, PhD, Associate Professor in the School of Communication at de Ohigh State University. Check out the study if you care too at fifty five krc dot com. Hillary, has been a real pleasure having you on the program today. I enjoyed our discussion me as well. Thanks for having me, It's
been a real pleasure. Take care of yourself eight eighteen, fifty five KRCD Talk Station more coming up, including, of course Bottom of the Hour judge and An Apolitano, who you can stick around right here at fifty five krc DE talk station.
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