DAY 16

Twenty-four hours is not a lot of time to spend in Manhattan, but we managed to cover a lot of ground while we were in town. Lila, who lived in the city for a year, was in charge of navigating; Michael, who is a fearless driver, was the man behind the wheel. We had a small setback this morning when we showed up for one of our scheduled interviews and found that our interview subject was not expecting us (the appointment had been arranged through his assistant) and did not have time to meet with us today. We might have been upset except that he was quite apologetic and offered to help arrange an interview with the president of his organization in Los Angeles (which will be easy for us to do in November when we’re back on the West Coast).

This afternoon, Lila was reminded of her J-school days when she first learned that trying to get a man-on-the-street interview in New York can be more difficult than hailing a cab in a downpour: people see you coming with a clipboard and a camera, and they run. Michael came up with the idea that instead of approaching people and asking them if they want to be in a documentary about voting and the electoral process, we should walk up to them and say “Hey, do you want to be in a movie?” Lila hesitated at first, but came around quickly. We were really only trying to get people to stop long enough (15 seconds) so that we could explain what we were doing. And guess what? It worked! In fact, we got a great interview with a non-voter who gave very specific reasons why he does not participate in the electoral process. We’ve had a difficult time finding non-voters to interview; if they’re not interested in voting, they’re often not interested in talking about voting. We guess it might be akin to trying to interview Lila about the last Superbowl.

Our last scheduled interview in New York was with Steven Brams, a professor of politics at New York University. Professor Brams is a specialist on game theory and has written several books applying game theory principles to voting and elections.