Do informed voters make better choices? Not necessarily.

Knowledge is power -- except maybe when it comes to voting on ballot initiatives. Then it doesn't seem to matter so much.

That's the conclusion of an intriguing new study, "The Dilemma of Direct Democracy," by researchers Craig Burnett of the University of California at San Diego and Elizabeth Garrett and Matthew McCubbins of the University of Southern California. In exit polls after the 2008 election, they asked 1,002 voters in San Diego how they had voted on Proposition 7 -- a measure that would have required public utilities to generate at least half their energy from renewable sources by 2025. They also asked about the basic facts of the initiative, whether in general voters preferred that utilities produce more renewable energy and whether they knew if gas or electric companies had opposed or supported the initiative.

"Surprisingly, we discover that knowledge does not matter," the authors write. Regardless of whether voters were familiar with the facts of the initiative or knew the utility companies' positions, they tended to cast their votes in a manner consistent with their own underlying preferences. "We find no support for the expectation that better-informed voters . . . are more likely to make reasoned decisions than those who are, by our measure, uninformed," the researchers write.

Burnett, Garret and McCubbins nonetheless argue that, in a well-functioning democracy, voters should understand the issues on the ballot so that they can be confident they're translating their preferences into reasoned decisions. After all, about a third of those voting "yes" did so against their stated preference, and about 14 percent of those voting "no" did the same. So the authors propose offering voters more information at the "point of sale," i.e., on the ballot itself, and removing the responsibility of writing the ballot titles and summaries from political officials to a bipartisan commission.

Ironically, the only fact in the researcher's poll questions that was clearly stated on the ballot -- that half the energy generated would need to come from renewable sources by 2025 -- was the one that fewest voters (16.9 percent) knew.

The proposition lost, 65 percent to 35 percent.

-- Carlos Lozada

lozadac@washpost.com