Substack

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Getting people to vote!

StickK.com has started commitment contracts to incentivize voters to vote in their local elections. As Dean Karlan writes in an FT op-ed,
"StickK can verify (using publicly available data) whether people fulfill their commitment to vote. If they do not, StickK e-mails their friends or charges their credit card as punishment for failure. If money, individuals choose where the money gets sent; but most choose to send it to a charity (chosen by stickK, so the individual gets no specific pleasure from knowing where the money goes), or even harsher, to an 'anti charity', a politically polarizing charity such as the Bill Clinton Presidential Library or the George W. Bush Presidential Library."


(HT: Freakonomics)

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