Dems to take the House

[Wesley]

As Thomas Jefferson said to Francis Hopkins in 1789, "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

"This is the most extraordinary concentration of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined here alone."
J.F.K. speaking to an assemblage of American Nobel Prize winners

If you have not read the collected letters and speeches of Jefferson, I HIGHLY recommend it. That man was amazing. I also recommend those of Madison and John Adams (and if you can find a version with some letters from Abagail in it, those are quite fascinating as well). Nothing better for understanding what the Founders meant and intended than their own words.

[York99]

To Orf on the electoral college:

It seems that your argument rests on the idea that all the people of Wyoming are rednecks and all the people in San Francisco are liberals. If I'm a liberal in Wyoming, my vote doesn't count because the rednecks will always have their say.... and this decreases the voter turnout because so many people say "screw it, why bother."

Your proofs don't take into account that the sample size shrinks because of disenfranchisement of voters who aren't the majority of thought... and in reality, not enough people care about the other issues on the ballot to justify them going anyway, even though the president etc. is a wash for them.

Ex. If there was a vote for president and that was the ONLY thing on the ballot (this example is valid because the big election is often the only one that matters to most people), I might not even bother to vote... and I'm one of the few people who takes voting very seriously... because there is NO FUCKING DOUBT that Texas is going to be for the Republican candidate. My vote doesn't matter except to voice the opposition... which the candidate really doesn't give much of a shit about anyway.

THAT is the biggest problem with the electoral college.

Even if you're mathematical proof DOES work out... most people don't understand it and figure their vote doesn't matter... yet again.

As for the baseball analogy, there are so many inconsistencies with that and political elections that I don't know where to begin.

[phlounderphil]

Justin's post includes somethings that can be used as arguments against a two-party system as well.

A two-party system creates a lot of voter apathy.

If there wasn't a strongly defined (and nearly impossible to break) two-party system in play, this problem wouldn't even exist. Look at Italy where there are multiple parties and voter turn-out is incredibly high compared to the US.

In fact, in the brief amount of research I just did, I discovered that many countries with a system of proportional representation have higher voter turn-out than the US.

Another problem with the two-party system is the high-level of incumbents who are easily re-elected based moreso on their party affiliation and "less-so" on their actions in office. In multi-party systems (or proportional representation systems), the amount of turn-around for politicians is higher than in the US.

I can pretty safely say that if we had a multi-party system in the US, one party (the most recent example being the Republican party) could not possibly remain in power for so long after being known for scandal and incompetence. Looking back through history there tends to be a cycle in American politics in which one party will hold power for 8-12 years before becoming the focus of some sort of scandal (or an unbelievably large group of scandals) only to lose power and slowly be replaced.

I'm sick and tired of this cycle, and it is only strengthened by this two-party system.

I'm not looking for an argument for I am still young and overly idealistic (heh) but would someome please explain to me how the negatives of a system of proportional representation outweight the positives? Why this whole single-winner plurality deal.

What about Duverger's Law? Do we just not trust the guy because he's French?

[Wesley]

I have to go pick up my parents, so I'll try to keep my beliefs on this brief...

First, most of my stances DO stem from the belief that states, as separate political entities, do in fact have rights, powers, privledges, views, and goals; and that not all states, like not all people, always agree.
I believe this for a number of reasons, not least of which being the words and actions of our forefathers.

The Electoral College was set up specifically to reinforce and protect this idea (and is further proof they believed it themselves). It was designed to keep large population (usually synonymous with industry, urban centers, and wealth) from running roughshod over small population states (usually agricultural, rural, and poorer).

I believe not only did that system work in the past, it continues to work to this day. Just look at the 2000 results. Gore may have won the popular vote--though I'd argue by little more than statistical noise at those voting levels--but Bush won a clear majority of the states (30-20, or 60%). If you break it down even more, Bush won around 72% of counties, and 83% of the total landmass of the country. And if you look at where each won, Gore obviously played better in urban centers. Using these results, urban centers totalling no more than 17% of the land in this country contain enough people to win a simply plurality election. If we went to a simply popular vote, candidates could literally win in 12-20 cities and never even bother to visit or listen to the rest of the nation. And those centers would unfairly dominate, by sheer numbers, national debate and policy. Boiling 100 million votes down to 535 keeps each State necessary and competitive. In a close race, an Alaska or South Dakota could be the key to overall victory. In a popular vote, there's no real reason to ever visit either one.

Further, we ARE NOT a democracy, but a Republic. We never have been and were never meant to be a democracy. Never. (Many founders abhorred pure democracy.) That means that the majority does not always win and it does not because they felt that protecting and emphasize the rights and beliefs of the minority was more important than mob rule.
(One of the examples I've read from the time used this analogy. Let's say you have 19 wolves and a sheep in a room and they decide to vote on what's for dinner. A pure democracy slaughters the sheep without thought, a republic guarantees its protection and safety.)

And while people love to play lip service to "checks and balances" they'll also express joy at the passage of the 17th Amendment, which essentially (and somewhat incorrectly) destroyed State checks on Federal powers and will continue to push for the abolision of the Electral College--which is one of the States' last remaining, functioning checks on Federal authority. That people no longer understand the system or just decide they don't like it, does not change this fact.

Now, that said, the Constitution is pretty unclear on the College beyond each state gets Electors totalling their House plus Senate seats and those Electors meet on a set day to vote. This means that States, again as separate entities, are and should be free to change how their own Elector selection process works.

If a state with 20 Electors decided that it would be in the best interest of its citizens to send "fair representation of the state's vote" instead of "winner take all" to Washington, they could. So, if the Republicans won 60% of the vote, the Dem 35% and some independent 5%, they would not send all 20 republican Electors, but 12. Along with 7 Dems and 1 for the 3rd or independent party.
Or, they could say the winner gets both Senate votes, but split the rest, so in a 52-48 election, the winner would get 11 of the 20 votes (2 for winning, plus half the remaining) and the runner up would still get 9.

I'm fine with such scenarios. The reason few States do is that it doesn't make sense in some cases. Splitting 3 electoral votes isn't worth a candidate's time. However, in the case of large states, while it would weaken the State's sway over the election to a large degree, it would also benefit the people of that state to split votes in some way. Take Texas with 50+ votes. If we split votes...if Gore had just taken 40% of the state, he'd have gained (and taken away from Bush) 22 electoral votes and won that election. Candidates that know they would lose in a large population state would still be compelled to campaign there and win what they could. And candidates guaranteed a win would still have to fight for a larger win, because a 55-45 win would actually mean far less than a 70-30 one.

In short, the system has a reason and it is a reason that I still think is very valid. In fact, I think it might even be more important now than ever.
On the other side, each State, being a separate political entity, is free to change the procedural matters of the Electors as they see fit.

That's a bit of a shallow overview, but without taking the time to reread it, I think it will do to express my basic beliefs in the system. States rights and checks on federal powers, protect small and rural states from population centers, it still works, and each state can alter their own process as they and their citizens deem fit.

[Brian Boyko]

I waited until a few days after the elections to jump in on this rumpus. I had to see what crazed ranting was flowing before I waded into the deep. But then somebody hit a scientific/mathematical nerve... and now...

Excuse me, somebody's going off on the electoral college system?

Would prefer that your vote holds as little power as possible? You desire a system that is more easily manipulated by fraud? Is that what you want? Because with straight individual "raw" voting, that's what you'll get. The worth of your individual vote would be next to nil, and even slight amounts of fraud would have major ramifications. Manipulating elections in California could be done from Pennsylvania. It would be as easy as pie. (FYI, pie is pretty easy.)

I completely disagree with this point. Completely.

Let's go with the raw numbers on this. First, manipulating elections in California can already be done from Pennsylvania - and was in 2004. The reason is that Pennsylvania was a swing state.

To be fair, we will never eliminate election fraud, so we must take actions to mitigate the risk of election fraud being successful, and decrease the incentive for one to do so.

The status quo is that a relatively local conspiracy to defraud the vote can occur with a small number of co-consipirators, changing a relatively small number of votes. In 2000, election fraud of 500 votes in the local areas of Florida could have very well changed the election one way or the other. If that was on a popular vote, election fraudsters would have needed to engage in a country-wide conspiracy to change 1 million votes across the U.S., making detection likely and therefore providing a disincentive to do so.

Moving to a popular vote will not eliminate ballot stuffing but it sure as hell will make ballot stuffing less effective and less likely.

Heck, if you're in favor of going to a popular vote, then you should agree that the Boston Red Sox should have won the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. After all, the Sox outscored the Big Red Machine by a total of 30-29... yet somehow, the Reds won 4 games to to the Sox' 3, and they were declared the victors. So which is it that matters, the runs scored, or the games won?

This is a false analogy. In Baseball, the amount of games won is the determining factor, because there is no external reason to play baseball except to win games.

In voting, there is an external reasoning: An election is a process by which the person chosen to represent the people is selected. Here, the most accurate determination of the people is the actual real vote tallies.

Indeed, to use your analogy, the electoral college is like using the number of games won to determine who scored the highest!

An electoral college not only prevents the big states from running roughshod over the small states, but it gives any individual voter a greater chance of swaying an election.

Yes, but do you not see that that is a fundimentally un-democratic thing? The electoral college essentially ensures that individual voters in 90% of the country has a vote that has absolutely NO bearing on the election - voting for Kerry in Texas, for example, and inequitably gives individual voters in swing states much more impact. The point of democracy is that each man is equal under the eyes of the law and that each person's vote should count.

The Madisonian system, by requiring candidates to win states on the way to winning the nation, has forced majorities to win the consent of minorities.

This is completely untrue. The Madisonian system requires candidates whose appeal is in the population centers to win the consent of rural voters because rural voters have more electoral votes. On the other hand, candidates whose appeal is in rural voters do not have to similarly reach across to the population centers. This is pure bias, plain and simple.

Unless you are an INCREDIBLY altruistic human, you want your vote to have the most say. If you're in Wyoming, you don't want them hippie liberals in California deciding the presidency for you, because you know better than them. If you're in San Francisco, you don't want those uneducated redneck bigots in Wyoming deciding the election for you, because you are obviously more worldly and better educated than they are. If you want your vote to be the one that has the best chance of swaying an election in your favor, you want the electoral college system.

Again, fundimentally un-democratic, because the idea of democracy is that each vote counts equally. I DO NOT want my vote to count more than someone in Wyoming, I DO NOT want it to count less than someone in Wyoming. This is the fundimental idea of democracy and it does not mean that someone needs to be particularly altruistic for this to be the case.

To address the point about fraud, suffice it to say that keeping the election in the hands of multiple individual states with their electoral votes is far better than having a nationwide popular election with one single federally-controlled election oversight official/committee. More checks and balances keep the risk of widespread corruption down. That's a good thing.

There's no reason we couldn't let the states count the votes, I'm just saying let's let the votes count equally.

[Brian Boyko]

If we went to a simply popular vote, candidates could literally win in 12-20 cities and never even bother to visit or listen to the rest of the nation. And those centers would unfairly dominate, by sheer numbers, national debate and policy.

This is true, but right now, rural voters unfairly dominate, by sheer electoral votes, national debate and policy. It's one of the reasons a President who comes from the South has a great advantage.

Boiling 100 million votes down to 535 keeps each State necessary and competitive. In a close race, an Alaska or South Dakota could be the key to overall victory. In a popular vote, there's no real reason to ever visit either one.

Alaska and South Dakota were never visited during the elections either.

I have no problem with boiling 100 million votes down to 535, if you want to keep the electoral college. What I have a problem with is that the way in which those 100 million votes boils down is that voters in Wyoming have way more of an impact on the final vote count than voters in California - if each state got a proportional number of electoral votes based on their population, I would not have as much problem with an electoral vote system as I do.

[York99]

Boyko, you just scored a bunch of points in my book... for countering several arguments where I didn't have to... and way more eloquently than I would have.

One point that Boyko made but in response to something else was the idea of candidates visiting certain areas and not others. Candidates in national elections neither visit nor cater to voters in non swing states. Again, this makes the residents of swing states have votes that count more than mine.

Congress does a good job of balancing states vs. popular representation. The presidency does not. It is a position that affects everyone equally in many senses, but we are not represented equally. Side note: look how many vice president nominees (not to mention presidential nominees) are selected (by thier parties) based very much on where they are from. Back to the point: America was founded on the rebellion of taxation without representation. It very much applies now that many people are taxed -- figuratively or literally -- without proportionate representation... simply because they are not from a place that matters to the electoral college.

[Wesley]

This is true, but right now, rural voters unfairly dominate, by sheer electoral votes, national debate and policy. It's one of the reasons a President who comes from the South has a great advantage.

Personally, I would not use the word "dominate" in this instance. If they "dominated," you wouldn't have a system that matches the popular vote totals 95% of the time and even when it doesn't is only a difference of a handful of electoral votes. What was 2000 again? 5 votes? That is easily overcomable with ANY one state flip-flopping, even a 3-elector state (Gore didn't even take his home state (11 votes) or he would have won, and Florida was a razor's edge). I hardly call that dominating.
Besides they fact that is impossible to get and maintain a "perfect" 50/50 balance between urban and rural areas, especially as rapidly as our population moves about, it should not be forgotten that it was never intended to provide a "perfect" 50/50 split. Some of the bias that seems to slant toward the rural communities was an intentional part of the system design. It was decided that it was more important to protect the rights of minority from the oppression of majority.


What I have a problem with is that the way in which those 100 million votes boils down is that voters in Wyoming have way more of an impact on the final vote count than voters in California - if each state got a proportional number of electoral votes based on their population, I would not have as much problem with an electoral vote system as I do.

I don't buy this at all. Wyoming doesn't have "way more impact" than California at all! Wyoming has 3 electoral votes. California has 55. In the right circumstances, either one could sway an election one way or the other. However, California is much more likely to do so, much more often.
And states DO get "a proportional number of electoral votes based on their population." Or else Wyoming wouldn't just have 3 and California a whopping 55. Electoral votes numbers are determined by the number of Senate representation (everyone gets 2 of those) and the number of House representation (which IS based on population).
This goes right back to the checks and balances of people v. states, states v. federal government, etc. The 2 votes for the Senate helps give all states some equal footing and keeps small states from having just 1 vote, but the addition of population-based representative votes ensures that a state like California carries nearly 20 times the total votes of a state like Wyoming.
Are you proposing taking away the 2 votes each because otherwise it is EXACTLY what you say you wish it was.
(Right now it still takes 19 Wyomings to trump California. Without those two little votes to bolster a small state like Wyoming with more equal representation, they'd be reduced to 1 vote and it would take 54 Wyomings to beat out a single California).


Candidates in national elections neither visit nor cater to voters in non swing states. Again, this makes the residents of swing states have votes that count more than mine.

Again, see my proposal. If states altered their own procedures, this could be readily addressed and corrected. If Texas, a non-swing state was not winner-take all, then the Dems would campaign here harder and your voice could still be heard. Take it up with your state legislature.
To abolsish the entire, working system, for a few concerns that could be corrected within the confines of the system (while still maintaining the system's validity and purpose) is crazy to me. It's like saying power plants produce pollution so let's abolish power plants instead of saying "let's find ways to keep the plants and the value they produce, yet also reduce the pollution they put out."

The election of President has always been indirect. It was meant to be that way and meant to be that way for a reason. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. Never was. Never should be.
However, part of the problem is also that the role and power of the President has grown too far and too fast. Congress has ceded to the position too many of its own powers and checks on authority. I can see why people put so much importance in who that person is and how they got elected, but I'd propose making a few refinements to the system (as I still maintain it works both mathematically, philosophically, and in practice) and combining that with a great reduction in the powers of the Presdient--a return of Congressional powers to the Congress and a reduction of the executive branch's reach, size, and purpose.

[York99]

Well Bill, it looks like we've found your running mate.

[DollarBill]

I've pulled out of the race. I'm to busy with things that are way more important. But the ticket is now, Nash/Nowitzki 2008. Here they are on the campaign trail with a local Texan at a bar in Dallas:

[shando]

Wes, I have been fond of this thread and engaging with you on issues of partisan politics and the Constitution. I think our positions on a lot of these things are actually a lot closer than it might seem--with some large areas of disagreement to be sure. I believe, however, that your own observations about the nature of the Constitution taken to their logical extension illustrate exactly the point that I've been trying to make all along, namely that our Constitution and system of government contain forces within its design that virtually assure a two-party system in the United States. These forces became apparent within the Founders lifetime, much to the dismay of many of them, and these forces are still very much in play today.

Let's take your discussion of the Electoral College as an example. You make a very good case that the Electoral College is in place to represent the interests of the indivdual states in the selection of the President. No argument there. Since that is in fact the case, individual states, especially big states that have a history of being "swing" states have no interest in diluting their say in the Electoral College by going toward representational apportionment of their electoral votes. Had Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004 had a distrubuted model in place, Bush wouldn't have won either election. For this argument this assumes that the other states are all still winner take all (except for Maine and Nebraska, the only states that allow for a split in their electoral vote as determined on the level of Presidential votes with the individual Congressional districts). But neither Florida nor Ohio would be interested in going toward this model, because then there's no compelling reason for Presidential candidates to spend time there or pay attention to Florida or Ohio interests. To put it another way, Ohioans and Floridians in those elections may have been split about who they wanted to be the President, but the states as entities weren't divided in wanting Ohio and Florida interests paid attention to. To ensure that that their interests do get paid attention to, they need and want a winner take all model. To some degree, all the states feel this pressure. Swing States don't want to remove themselves from the equation by opening up the way they divvy up electors. Big states that consistently vote a certain way (think California or Texas) don't want to dilute thier power either by handing a bunch of electoral votes over to the other side, so they too have a vested interest in the winner take all model. No state, and certainly no state with enough electoral votes to tip an election all by itself, wants to unilaterally disarm by splitting its electors. That being the case, this sets the stage for a two-party system. We're not all the way there though. More on that in just a bit.

Now, since each individual state, as a state, feels a vested interest in keeping the winner take all model, nothing, barring some kind of cosmic alignemnt when all remaining 48 states decide to go to a proprtional model at the exact same time, is going to change the two-party dynamic at the Presidential level. One could say, well, the federal government could mandate some kind of policy dictating electors should be apportioned represtatively by the state vote. This would require a Constitutional amendment to work, and furthermore it would gut the very Federalist principle of allowing the States a say in the selection of the President that the Electoral College is there to protect. And if that were the case, it would make a lot more sense to dispense with the Electoral College altogether and just move toward a direct election of the President.

But that's only part of the equation that leads to a two-party system. The other part has to do with Congress. Say someone you don't like is President, whose selection is like I said, almost certainly going to be arrived at by a two-party system. As Wes as pointed out, our system enshrines protection of minority opinion in its construction. By that, it doesn't mean that simply holding a minority opinion earns you some kind of special protection. Instead, the Constitution makes it hard as hell to do anything even if you have a majority in one body. You could look at last Tuesday's election as a perfect example of this. By a pretty clear margin, voters rejected the Bush position on any number of issues. In a parliamentary system, he'd be gone already. But guess what? Since we elect our executive separately from the legislative body, he still has his hands on the levers of power in the executive for two more years. The Bush minority position is protected, at least until then. So what to do? Well, this kind of split between the branches is common in our history. If you want to be in opposition to the executive, or heck if you want to support him, you don't want a coalition of people who kind of sort of agree with you on some issues but not on others. You want to put together a pretty clearly defined and reliable majority in at least one body, since, as I've already said it's already hard enough to do anything with a majority in just one body anyway. And this also propels us toward a two-party system. It also has a tendency to make the parties big, gassy, sometimes intellectually inconsistent beasts, since they slurp up a lot of positions that in a different system would be left for the smaller parties.

Is this ideal? I don't know. But the two-party system is in this country's political DNA. It's continuance is practically assured by the way the Constitution is written. And barring some kind of crisis that destroys the system of government that the Constitution enshrines, I don't see it going away.

[shando]

As Thomas Jefferson said to Francis Hopkins in 1789, "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

This is a nice quote, but like a lot of things Jefferson said, it's divorced from many of the ways he conduced himself. Jefferson is one of the savviest partisans this country has ever produced. Ask Hamilton. It's also a quote from before the implications of what this goverment was were fully manifest. The Constitution had just been ratifed. Look to Jefferson in 1800 to see if he held himself to that quote.

[shando]

Wes, I have been fond of this thread blah blah blah

Shorter Shannon McCormick:

It is no surprise that a system of govenment that has many mechanisms in place to temper its responsiveness to public opinion would wind up with a system of politics that does the same.

[yodApollo]

Wes,

The Democrats are far from being able to "bully" through legislation. Personally, I'm very happy about the current party swing in the capitol. The Dems have a majority, but not a "overriding" majority. They will still have to work with the President. I think that's where a bunch of theproblems have come from in the last six years. In wasn't that Republican were in control (though, Bob, I also not a fan of neo-conservatism). It's that ONE party was in control of two BRANCHES of the US Government. Part of my personal politcal beliefs is that no party should be in control of more than one branch.

With Clinton, his most effective and progressive legislation was done after 1994, while working with a Republican Congress. My hope is now that the parties will HAVE to work together to do ANYTHING, that something good will happen.

Ideally, of course I wish that the US could move to a three or four party system, but I really don't think it's ever going to happen. I honestly believe that any series of events that could lead to multiple parties gaining mainstream support would more likely lead to an all out revolution before a Libertarian or Independent being elected President.

Now, on a completely separate topic, did anyone think that Bush was just going to lose it during his press conference the day after the elections? There was a moment when I swore he was going to start hopping up and down and hooting like Daffy Duck when he's gone bonkers.

[kbadr]

Now, on a completely separate topic, did anyone think that Bush was just going to lose it during his press conference the day after the elections? There was a moment when I swore he was going to start hopping up and down and hooting like Daffy Duck when he's gone bonkers.

Oh yeah, it was strange to hear. Especially the way he was being really snippy with the British journalist.

This might not be a popular opinion here, but I actually think there's a chance Bush will work well with a Democrat-controlled legislature. Did anyone else notice how he pack-peddled so quickly and became less of a blow-hard once his party wasn't in control of everything? He's such a politician-to-the-extreme, that I think there's a chance he'll do whatever he has to do be on the good side of *whoever* is in power.

Time will tell....