Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Persistence pays

When I was a young assistant prof. at George Mason, we were considering making an offer to someone and the faculty voted not to extend it. Apparently some people were not happy with this result as a couple days later we had another faculty meeting to vote on exactly the same issue. I asked Bob Tollison (the second ball hogging-est social scientist ever) what was up and he told me "we are going to keep voting until we get it right!"

That appears now to be the case in Venezuela. Voters have already rejected a comprehensive constitutional reform that allowed unlimited reelection of the President. Now they are voting again on the 15th in a referendum that is only about unlimited reelection (of the President and also other politicians this time). Even before this vote has been taken though, Chavez has warned the world that another "no" won't necessarily mean "no" to him. That is to say, he plans to put the issue to another vote if this one fails!

According to the AP: Chavez says "there's no limit in the constitution regarding the number of times that an amendment can be attempted."

In other words, keep voting til you get it right!

Hat tip to Boz

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