Discuss the use of heuristics in making political decisions, their benefits, and their costs.

What will be an ideal response?

Heuristics can be a good shortcut to allow busy voters to figure out what their position on a particular bill is.  This means that American voters are able to vote the way they want to, despite the lack of knowledge on most issues.  However, heuristics are not guaranteed to work, and many heuristics -such as assuming a politician's background reliably predicts their politics -can backfire.