A week or so ago, in a post about partisan redistricting, I noted that rumors were beginning to circulate concerning a Republican push to change the way Michigan’s electoral college votes are cast in presidential elections. Presently, as I suspect you know, Michigan has 16 electoral votes, and all of them go to the candidate who wins a majority of the state’s popular vote. Last November, for instance, when Obama took 54% of the popular vote in Michigan, he was awarded all 16 of our electoral votes, making him the sixth straight Democratic candidate for President to do so. And, as you can probably imagine, this doesn’t sit well with Republicans, who, for innumerable reasons, would prefer never to see another Democrat in the White House. So, it wasn’t hard for me to believe that the Republicans in Lansing, emboldened by the fact that they got away with murder during the lame duck session, may attempt to change the “winner take all” system in earnest, replacing it with a scheme in which electoral votes are divided among the state’s Congressional districts and allotted accordingly. (Legislation has been proposed it the past to this effect, but it’s never gone gotten traction.) To give you a sense as to what this would mean, if such a system had been in place this past November, 9 of Michigan’s 16 electoral votes would have gone to Romney, in spite of the fact that Obama had won the statewide popular vote by 10%. (This, of course, is due to the fact that the Republican legislature has redrawn the district lines in such a way as to not only ensure conservative victories for the foreseeable future, but marginalize voters in more densely-packed urban centers by essentially devaluing their votes relative to those of voters in predominantly conservative, suburban areas.)
But there’s good news… Governor Snyder says that, if this this were to happen, it would be some time off, as it’s not something that he’s pushing. But, then again, he also said that right-to-work legislation wasn’t ‘on (his) agenda,’ and we all saw what happened there.
Here, for those of you who are still inclined to believe him, is what Snyder had to say to the Associate Press:
…Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he “could go either way” on the change and doesn’t plan to push it. But he said it’s a reasonable issue to debate and that he prefers that leaders discuss it well before the next presidential election.
“It could be done in a thoughtful (way) over the next couple years and people can have a thoughtful discussion,” Snyder said…
Based on how right-to-work went down, I think we need to assume that something similar will happen here, and plan accordingly. We need to assume that the Republicans will do whatever they can, no matter how loathsome, to see their agenda furthered… And, if you don’t believe me, just ask the people of Virginia, where, just a few days ago, Republicans in their legislature, taking advantage of the fact that one of their Democratic colleagues was in D.C. for Obama’s inauguration, giving them the slight edge that they needed vote-wise, pushed a contentious redistricting bill through the legislature without debate, and advanced a plan that would see their electoral votes for President distributed by Congressional district, as outlined above. Here, with more on that, is a clip from Talking Points Memo:
…Virginia’s bill, which emerged from a subcommittee on a tie vote Wednesday, would award the state’s electoral votes by individual congressional districts, with its two at-large electors going to whichever candidate won the most districts. But the districts, which were redrawn under Republican control in 2010, are so gerrymandered that President Obama would have won just four votes to Mitt Romney’s nine despite handily winning the state’s popular vote. As Richie noted, the result would be to massively water down Democratic votes concentrated into a few urban districts — many of them cast by African Americans — while boosting the impact of whiter and more rural districts.
“It is basically an obvious attempt by the Republican senator who proposed it and the Republicans who are backing it to completely distort the outcome of Virginia’s presidential electors,” Devin McCarthy, a research fellow for FairVote told TPM. “It would effectively guarantee Republicans at least 8 votes in Virginia no matter what happened in a national election, whereas this year they won 0.”…
In addition to Virginia and Michigan, it should be noted that Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are also considering similar legislation. And, here’s an interesting factoid… If all six of those states, which are currently controlled by Republicans, had changed over to such a system prior to the 2012 election, “Romney would have won the electoral college despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.”
I’m not adverse to the idea of reconsidering how we elect our President. Personally I think that it might be worth considering a nationwide popular vote. But I don’t think the solution is allowing one party to game the system by constructing Congressional districts that are essentially unlosable, and then leveraging that fact to keep a Republican in the White House in perpetuity. (It should be noted that all of this talk of electoral college reform is taking place in states governed by Republicans that typically vote Democrat for President. This, in other words, isn’t an across-the-board push for reform. This is about gaming the system to extract electoral votes from blue states, while keeping the status quo in red states.)
The bottom line is that we need to kill this before it gets off the ground, folks. Any ideas as to how we do that? I know it would be an uphill battle, but how about launching a coordinated nationwide movement for a non-partisan federal organization, like the one they have in Canada, which is responsible for administering our federal elections, and ensuring a level playing field? I know it would be an uphill battle, as all of the red states would fight back, claiming “states rights,” but perhaps it’s a fight worth having.
The following image, which comes courtesy of our friends at the Center for American Progress, does a pretty good job of illustrating what we’re up against.
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And, because I can’t stop, here’s something from Sabato’s Crystal Ball:
This is definitely going to happen. There’s no reason to think that Republicans will show restraint here, when they haven’t elsewhere.
Meanwhile the NAACP is focused on the right of minority communities to access large sugary drinks.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUGARY_DRINKS_LAWSUIT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-23-06-18-52
The Center for American Progress released a report this morning on this very subject.
Here is their announcement.
The report:
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2013/01/24/50459/grand-theft-election/
What would it take to make this happen in Michigan? Do they have the votes?
MSNBC is on it as well.
This is really happening.
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/24/we-did-the-math-how-the-gop-will-gerrymander-its-way-back-to-the-white-house/
I know this might seem insane, but really, why not just a simple popular vote tally?
I’ve said it before but it would be much more efficient if we just allowed the wealthy to purchase our votes. Think of how great it would be to have a little extra spending money for the holidays. Wouldn’t that be nice? You could buy a nice dinner at Red Lobster, or a Ted Nugent CD. It would be perfect.
This is what the political class knows.
Most people, voters, do their duty in the general elections and move on. They don’t have the time or much inclination to follow the minutiae of this kind of political infighting. In other words they don’t care, until they do.
Political machinations like redistricting and to some extent party primary elections are the insiders game and most folk don’t have the time or enough energy to make the effort to understand who this kind of stuff affects the outcome.
And Snyder had the audacity to accuse the unions of overreaching. Disgusting.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter. We’re too late. The earth is dead. The experiment failed.
http://www.metafilter.com/124232/Greenland-melting
Good news. It looks like their efforts in Virginia might be fizzling. Rachel Maddow is reporting that state Senators Laura Conaway and Ralph Smith are likely not supportive.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/25/16698949-election-rigging-scheme-stumbling-in-virginia?lite
734, I had a “cold day” off of work on Tuesday and went to see Chasing Ice. I would encourage everyone to see it, even though I know the deniers/haters will say it doesn’t mean anything or that it wasn’t caused by humans or that God is just fucking with us. It’s a very chilling (hahahahaHA!!!!) film.
‘I’ve said it before but it would be much more efficient if we just allowed the wealthy to purchase our votes. Think of how great it would be to have a little extra spending money for the holidays.”
I think this would be an excellent idea. The cost of “our votes” would be equivalent to the cost of 2200 Abrams tanks firing rounds at 24 hours a day for 365 days a year on the ruling class elitist enclaves in this country. And then crushing the rubble into dust.
Republicans: for state’s rights and Federalism, until they might get some short-term gain out of tearing it down.
I am not sure why any state politicians would be willing to turn their states into a bunch of North Dakota-sized electoral blocks.
I think you’re right on that this is about gaming the system further, rather than any actual reform. Perhaps the counter-offer here in Michigan would be to support the National Popular Vote Compact, which has states committing (legislatively) that they will assign their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, as soon as 270 electoral votes worth of states have signed on.
In 2008, the Michigan House passed such a bill by a 65-35 margin; several Michigan Senators introduced similar legislation but it did not pass. A2/Ypsi’s Senator Warren was one of the co-sponsors at that time; perhaps she could be encouraged to reintroduce that idea.
Meanwhile, I will quibble with the state-level diagrams you’re using (I know they’re not yours) — they fall into the standard fallacy of showing electoral districts by land area, rather than by population, which might lead the casual observer to believe that votes really *should* be skewed more towards those big fat red areas.
Thanks for the comment, Murph. I’ve been looking into the National Popular Vote Compact… and I agree with you about the graphic. If you can find another that makes the point better, let me know and I’ll add it.
Ohio’s Ken Blackwell is involved.
Read more:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/26/1496981/electoral-college-rigging/
Sign our petition to tell Rick Snyder to STOP Michigan Republicans from plotting to steal the presidency!
http://www.democraticgovernors.org/StopMIGOP
I don’t know how practical a recall effort would be, but might it not demonstrate to Snyder that he’s gone too far?
The Nation has 3 things that people can do.
1. “NAME AND SHAME” THOSE WHO WOULD RIG ELECTIONS
Because election rules are often arcane, those who write them have an advantage. If they move quickly and quietly, they can “fix” the system to their advantage.
Priebus made a mistake several weeks ago when he spoke openly about the Electoral College scheme, announcing: “I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue [Democratic in presidential politics] that are fully controlled red [in the statehouse] ought to be considering.”
When The Nation began writing several weeks ago about the Priebus plan, and specific efforts in swing states, the stories went viral. Social media matters in this struggle. So, too, does the attention coming from television and radio hosts such as MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and Thom Hartmann.
The attention “names and shames” Republicans who are implementing the Priebus plan in states such as Virginia. But it also puts pressure on Republicans who are considering doing so. Significantly, when Florida legislative leaders were asked by The Miami Herald about the proposal, the biggest swing state’s most powerful Republicans scrambled to distance themselves from the anti-democratic initiative. Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford said, “To me, that’s like saying in a football game, ‘We should have only three quarters, because we were winning after three quarters and the beat us in the fourth. I don’t think we need to change the rules of the game, I think we need to get better.”
Florida Senate President Don Gaetz was similarly dismissive. “I think we should abolish the Electoral College but nobody in Washington has called to ask for my opinion,” said Gaetz. “If James Madison had asked me, and I had been there, I would have said a popular vote is a better way to do it.”
He’s right.
2. ENGAGE IN THE DEBATE AND OFFER A POPULAR-VOTE ALTERNATIVE
Priebus and his allies will claim that assigning electoral votes via gerrymandered congressional districts gives more Americans a voice in the process—even though that “voice” could allow a minority to claim a state and the presidency.
The right response is to highlight the anti-democratic character of the Electoral College and to push for a national popular vote. This will require a constitutional amendment. That takes work. But the process is in play. States across the country have endorsed plans to respect the popular vote that are advanced by FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy.
“The very fact that a scenario [in which a rigged Electoral College allows a popular-vote loser to become president] is even legally possible should give us all pause,” argues FairVote’s Rob Richie. “Election of the president should be a fair process where all American voters should have an equal ability to hold their president accountable. It’s time for the nation to embrace one-person, one-vote elections and the ‘fair fight’ represented by a national popular vote. Let’s forever dismiss the potential of such electoral hooliganism and finally do what the overwhelming majorities of Americans have consistently preferred: make every vote equal with a national popular vote for president.”
Understanding, talking about and promoting the National Popular Vote campaign is an essential response to every proposal to rig the Electoral College. It pulls the debate out of the weeds of partisanship and appeals to a sense of fairness in Democrats, independents and responsible Republicans.
3. MAKE GERRYMANDERING AN ISSUE
The assignment of electoral votes based on congressional district lines is not unheard of. Two smaller states—Nebraska and Maine—have done it for years. But this approach with gerrymandering schemes that draw district lines to favor one party has the potential to dismantle democracy at the national level.
The courts have criticized gerrymandering, and even suggested that there may be instances where it is unconstitutional. But they have been shamefully lax in their approach to the issue—at least in part out of deference to the authority extended to individual states when it comes to drawing district lines. But when gerrymandering threatens the integrity of national elections and the governing of the country, this opens a new avenue for challenging what remains the most common tool for rigging elections.
It is time for state attorneys general who have track records of supporting democracy initiatives, such as New York’s Eric Schneiderman, and state elections officials, such as Minnesota’s Mark Ritchie, to start looking at legal strategies to challenging the Priebus plan in particular and gerrymandering as it influences national elections. This really is an assault on the one-person, one-vote premise of the American experiment. And retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, among others, is advocating for a renewed push on behalf of fair elections.
“[It] goes back to the fundamental equal protection principle that government has the duty to be impartial. When it’s engaged in districting it should be impartial,” Stevens explained in a recent interview. “Nowadays, the political parties acknowledge that they are deliberately trying to gerrymander the districts in a way that will help the majority.”
This, argues Stevens, is “outrageously unconstitutional in my judgment. The government cannot gerrymander for the purpose of helping the majority party; the government should be redistricting for the purpose of creating appropriate legislative districts. And the government ought to start with the notion that districts should be compact and contiguous as statutes used to require.”
Stevens says the courts, which often intervene on voting rights cases involving minority representation, and in cases where states with divided government cannot settle on new district lines, should engage with the purpose of countering gerrymandering.
“If the Court followed neutral principles in whatever rules they adopted, the rules would apply equally to the Republicans and Democrats,” says the retired Justice, a key player on voting and democracy issues during his thirty-five-year tenure on the High Court. “I think that line of cases would generate a body of law such as the one-person, one-vote cases that would be administered in a neutral way. This is one of my major disappointments in my entire career: that I was so totally unsuccessful in persuading the Court on something so obviously correct. Indeed, I think that the Court’s failure to act in this area is one of the things that has contributed to the much greater partisanship in legislative bodies…”
Justice Stevens is right. That partisanship has moved from gerrymandering the state lines and US House lines to gerrymandering the presidential vote. The moment is ripe for a constitutional intervention.
what did my liberal friends make of obama’s long bout of dishonesty last night?
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