Mike van Winkle of The Chicago Report is hosting a discussion on the rationality of voting. As I note in the comments, I don’t think Downs’ conception of rational voting is quite inclusive enough to explain why most people vote in the United States and other democracies where voting isn’t compulsory.

Steven Taylor notes the latest setbacks for Bilbo wannabe Roy Moore, late of the Alabama Supreme Court. First the Alabama convention of the Southern Baptist Church distanced itself from Moore, then the perennially irrelevant Constitution Party invited Moore to be its 2004 presidential nominee. Now all that’s left is for Moore to get an MSNBC talk show with Phil Donahue to complete his deserved slide into pathetic obscurity.

James Joyner discovered that he’s an “influential” according to the authors of a new book entitled—you guessed it—The Influentials. Never mind that any first-year grad student in sociology or political science already knew this, because Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld wrote a book on it called Personal Influence, oh, way back in 1955 (yes, kids, 48 years ago). Now just wait until someone cribs Zaller for the biz-exec audience…

Happy first-year blogiversary to fellow political scientist Brett Marston of Marstonalia (via PoliBlog and OTB).

James Joyner links to a John Fund OpinionJournal piece looking at whether or not John F. Kennedy technically received a minority of the popular vote; in 1960, Alabama’s voters decided between Nixon and a slate of 11 Democratic electors, 6 of whom were unpledged—and voted for Harry Byrd—and 5 of whom pledged votes for Kennedy.

In the same election, Mississippi also elected a slate of unpledged electors who voted for Byrd; however, unlike in Alabama, they beat a slate of electors pledged to Kennedy by 7886 votes, according to Presidential Elections: 1789–1996, published by Congressional Quarterly—which still attributes all of Alabama’s votes to Kennedy, despite CQ’s own reallocation of the votes between Byrd and Kennedy based on the behavior of the Alabama electors.

Matthew Stinson has a photograph of a young Dutch woman eagerly awaiting the kickoff of a soccer match between Scotland and the Netherlands.

The letter of the day is, of course, K for Kate.