Marketplace: News Archives

Tuesday, December 12, 2000

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It's Tuesday, December 12, 2000. I'm David Brancaccio.

With a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Presidential ballot recounts due, Florida's House of Representatives voted to give the state's 25 electoral votes to Texas Governor George W. Bush. Two Florida democrats joined with the Republican majority in the 79 to 41 vote. The Florida Senate gets will vote tomorrow. You may be interested to know that the legal jungle growing around this election is getting even thicker, even as the Supreme Court tries to cut away some of the vines. Marketplace's John Dimsdale reports.

Dimsdale: "Florida Democrats are asking the state Supreme Court to overturn two lower court rulings that refused to throw out absentee ballots that had been altered by Republican election officials in two counties. Republicans are hailing a victory in a Pensacola federal court that absentee ballots in 7 counties that don't have postmarks should be counted. This may just be the tip of the iceberg of the potential lawsuits from Florida's handling of Election Day 2000.

On that day, Florida voters encountered confusing ballots, inaccurate voter registration lists, untrained poll workers, and outdated voting machines. In some precincts, registered voters were turned away. In others, convicted felons were allowed to vote. A review by The Miami Herald found 62 robbers, 56 drug dealers, 45 killers 16 rapists and 7 kidnappers voted, illegally, on November 7. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel found three thousand people in south Florida with the same name and date of birth registered at two separate addresses. All of this ocurred despite a four million dollar effort by Florida to purge the state election database of felons, dead people, and double registrants. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has voted to investigate charges of racial discrimination at polling places in several minority areas of Florida, where voters allegedly encountered faulty equipment and indifferent or non-existent poll workers.

Election reformers hope the legal spotlight will generate support for their efforts to clean up voting lists, and to create clearer, simpler ballots.

In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace."

Palmer: "It was news to me, but there's an academic discipline called "Behavioral Finance." It's full of erudite professors who probe the psychology that governs how people and their money are parted. One such professor is Terrance Odean, of UC Davis's Graduate School of Management…"

Odean: "We take into consideration that people aren't rational, they don't always make optimal decisions when it comes to money."

Palmer: "Theoretical finance, he says, assumes that financial choices are supremely rational - but his own research suggests that investors' decisions are more often driven by emotion - the joy of gain - the pain of loss. Enter a researcher with a passion for pain - MIT professor Dan Ariely..."

Ariely: "I have been hurting people with different devices with different patterns over time."

Palmer: "His own experience kicked off this research. Badly burned, Ariely wondered how to make the misery of having bandages changed more bearable. Should the worst pain come first? Or should it build up to the most agonising? He tests these questions on volunteers, with heat, or vises on their fingers, or annoying noises, orgames where people win and lose on the stock market. He believes the brain deals with all these situations the same way."

Ariely: "How people integrate pain and pleasure over time seems to work for heat, pressure, annoying sound, and stock market."

Palmer: "Which sounds plausible - but not exactly helpful - I mean, however you integrate it, if your stock is tanking, it's still painful. But the Professor has advice - the same intensity of pain is more tolerable when it's getting better than when it's getting worse. So if the market's tanking, just ignore the numbers."

Carrier: "General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner said the decision to phase out Oldsmobile was an emotional one, but one whose time had come. For years the division has been losing marketshare. Wagoner said the company had to choose between keeping Oldsmobile alive or focusing on the future."

Wagoner: "We had to make a decisions on future products and just on the basis of performance even despite everyone's efforts and a really emotional attachment, we had that kind of call on Olds."

Carrier: "Most recently the company was offering incentives that included no payments or interest for a year on some of its models. But despite it's efforts, Oldsmobile couldn't turn things around. Drew Winter of Ward's Auto World said it's latest products just didn't cut the mustard."

Winter: "They've been unable to keep up with consumer demand either by making a flawless appliance type vehicle like the Toyota Camry or making something that is very stylish and upscale that could compete in the near luxury segment."

Carrier: "The phase out of the division will start next year. GM will allow the current models to complete their planned life cycles. GM plans to use the money it would have normally invested in Oldsmobile to strengthen it's other brands in the company I'm Gina Carrier for Marketplace."