A recent study for the Cato Institute, When Ignorance Isn′t Bliss, is making a deep analysis of the Americans voting habits. Surprisingly as it may seem, things are not so far away from the ones we see here in Romania.

The study finds the voters abysmally ignorant of even very basic political information. The statistics are backing up the theory:

In 1996, The Washington Post reported that 67 percent of Americans couldn’t name their congressman and 94 percent had no idea that William Rehnquist was the chief justice of the United States. Only 26 percent knew that senators serve six-year terms

Gallup found in January 2000 that while 66 percent of the public could name the host of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” only 6 percent knew the name of the speaker of the House. Last year, a Polling Company survey found that 58 percent of Americans could not name a single federal Cabinet department.

Also what is more alarming, is that the tens of millions of non-voting adults are the tens of millions of adults who do vote despite knowing next to nothing about the candidates and the issues.

You can come to see pretty much the same patterns and habits in Romania if you read the Public Opinion Barometer or The Romanian Public Opinion Before Campaign released by Gallup earlier this month. As these studies find 70% of Romanians consider that Romania needs a change in this year elections, 67% of them are completely or dissatisfied enough by the Government performance or 53% don′t know a name of a parliament member elected in their county, yet more than 30% of them consider the actual political party in power as the most trustable and more than 40% of them will go and vote for them.

As for more reading material here are the links to both materials:

Public Opinion Barometer (545Kb, PDF file, Romanian only)

When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy (337Kb, PDF file)

Also as further reading here are the political programes of the two major competitors in this autumn Romanian elections: Social Democrat Party and DA Alliance (Romanian only)

UPDATE: For romanian readers only, Dilema Veche and Euractiv.ro just released a comprehensive study of the two political programmes, mentioned above, Who am I voting for?

Check out this very interesting analysis on American federalist system. I will just quote a little of it so you can make an idea on what’s about:

In the 2000 presidential election, the candidate who won by more than 540,000 votes lost. George Bush became America′s new ″popularly elected″ president, despite not having the plurality of the votes.

In the Senate, Michael Enzi and Thomas Craig have the same voting power as Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. Enzi and Craig represent 501,242 people from the state of Wyoming, while Boxer and Feinstein represent 35,484,453 people from the state of California. That means that one person from Wyoming has the voting representation of 71 Californians.

In Massachusetts, you can get married to whomever you chose. In the rest of the country, your choice in Massachusetts can be ignored.

The 13 smallest states, consisting of 4.46% of the population, could outvote the rest of the country when ratifying an amendment.

You can download the whole PDF analysis clicking the link here: A Critical Evaluation of America′s Federalist System

The EU is set to draw up national action plans, in a fresh bid to reach its goal of becoming the most competitive economy in the World by 2010.

The recommendations for national action plans will come in a report, which will be presented to EU leaders next month, drawn up by former Dutch premier Wim Kok.

The report is widely expected to conclude that the EU remains a long way off its target.

The Financial Times reports that the national action plans will focus on creating growth and jobs.

A Wall Street Journal reporter in Baghdad seems to have been sent in a “long planned” vacation, until after the November 2nd Elections. That seems to happen after a private email criticizing the Iraq’s situation ended up on a high profile weblog.