The Para-Rigger

On Southern California Public Radio, Fernando Guerra, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, suggested a radical solution to increasing voter turnout: Enter all voters automatically into a $1 million lottery.

“Wouldn’t we get a lot of people who know nothing about politics or the candidates jumping in and voting and just checking the box so they could get a million bucks?” the radio host asked Guerra.

“Absolutely,” Guerra responded. But, he added, that might not be a bad thing. “That might produce better results. There is no data to show that uninformed voters make worse decisions than informed voters."

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/18/341283394/how-does-winning-fields-medal-effect-mathematicians-productivity?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=nprpodcast

An ad campaign supporting candidate Monica Wehby, includes words on the screen saying that Sen. Jeff Merkley voted six times "for more debt."

However, the U.S. Treasury, and a prior PolitiFact check, note that a vote to raise the debt ceiling does not, by itself, authorize new spending. All it does is authorize the federal government to borrow sufficient funds to pay for debt that has already been incurred.

Merkley’s six votes to raise the debt ceiling were not, in other words, votes "for more debt." We rate the claim False.