Politicians often spout numbers and statistics—sometimes invented on the spot—in attempts to sway voters, and because we will be coming into the election cycle very soon, it might be interesting to follow up on some of these issues. Listeners in the crowd do not have the time or facilities to track down the real numbers, but you do.
How expensive are the different sources of electricity? In the USA, the three main contenders are hydroelectric power, coal-fired steam generators, and wind power. In a strictly dollars-and-cents analysis, which is the winner?
Related to the previous: Wind power receives a lot of political criticism, but how important are the issues politicians raise? How much noise do wind turbines cause? Does the noise cause cancer? How many birds do wind turbines kill? (And how many birds die from causes such as flying into skyscrapers?) If the wind dies down, do the lights go out?
How many illegal voters? We often hear about enormous numbers of non-citizens flooding our country to vote in our elections. What are the real numbers like? (And if you do this one, go for genuine research, not more shoot-from-the-hip guesses from fear-mongers.) According to the Texas Secretary of State, Texas has 18.6 million registered voters. A typical Greyhound bus carries between 47 and 55 passengers. How many busloads of illegal voters would it take to affect the outcome of an election in Texas? (I chose Texas because it is so near to Mexico, but you could ask the same of any other state. California is often cited, with more than 23 million voters.)
Related to the previous: Following the Civil War, many southern states came up with restrictive requirements to keep newly freed slaves from voting. One example would be nearly impossible literacy requirements. Another would be a poll tax which impoverished people could not afford. Is anything like that happening today?
Birth tourism: The USA is one of the very few countries which grant automatic citizenship to anyone who was born on US soil. (The law is called jus soli, the right of soil.) We got into this as a way to grant citizenship to newly-freed slaves who were not counted as citizens, but whose families had been in the country for generations, and we continued it as a way to deal with the question of citizenship for Native Americans. Some politicians claim that enormous numbers of people show up on tourist visas just to give birth. How common is this really? How much public welfare money is spent on these babies?
Do tariffs work? This is not the first time the USA has imposed heavy tariffs on imports. What happened the last time around? Was the national economy strengthened or weakened? (To do this one, you will need to do just a bit of research to learn who really pays the tariff bill. This is very basic stuff—you should have learned it in high school civics classes or beginning business courses, but politicians often misrepresent this very basic fact.)
Late-breaking: On Friday, February 20, the Supreme Court struck down many (but not all) of the recently-imposed tariffs, but this is still a live topic. One reason is that trade-protectionism is still a favorite idea for many politicians (and they will find non-tariff ways to implement it), and another is that we should look back on recent events and ask about causes and effects.
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