Category: Election 2012

It is fashionable in election years to lament the undemocratic nature of the electoral college.  The latest installment is a nice column in The Dartmouth this morning.  There are two problems that are cited -- that less populous states are overrepresented and that the preferences of people who live in states in which they are in a small minority are irrelevant.  For example, the column notes that Wyoming has 0.18% of the population but 0.56% of the electoral votes.  Continuing with Wyoming, it will always vote Republican, so the preferences of anyone living there don't count at the margin.

It is true that if we elected the President through popular vote, then everyone's vote would count the same.  What is missed in these discussions is that only the first problem -- overrepresentation of less populous states -- is distinctively American.  It applies to both the electoral college and the way the majority party in the Senate is selected.  The second problem is present everywhere that there are representatives elected from districts.  For example, the majority party in the House is chosen every two years by electing our representatives by Congressional district.  I live in Vermont -- everyone who represents me in the House and Senate will be a member of the Democratic Party, regardless of my preferences.  In the attention paid to the question of who will be the next Speaker of the House, no one is considering my vote in Vermont but everyone is looking across the Connecticut River to New Hampshire, where the race in the 2nd district is very close.  These issues also arise in parliamentary systems in which the Prime Minister is chosen by the legislature (though it is important to note that this typically happens with smaller districts than our states and parliamentary systems often have more than two parties and a ruling coalition of those parties).

It is also true that if we elected the President through popular vote, then in a close election nationally, the chaos from Florida in 2000 might spread to many more places.  It is a shame that our voting technology and support are so bad that they constrain the type of election reform we can have.

The internet is abuzz today with reactions to the "secret" video of the "closed door" Romney fundraiser "leaked" to Mother Jones.  You can hear excerpts, with accompanying biased commentary by "journalist" David Corn, here.

Romney is distinguishing two types of Obama voters from 2008 -- those whom he has little chance of flipping and those -- a much smaller group -- who might be willing to vote for him if he allows them a way to still claim that their vote for Obama was not a mistake in 2008 but would be in 2012.  His triage seems callous, but it doesn't strike me as any worse than the President's rhetoric regarding people he doesn't expect to vote for him.

We have this notion that what needs to happen in the general election is for the candidates to move toward the political center to pick up the marginal voters.  That's a strategy, but it doesn't seem like it is the only viable strategy.  A candidate might instead choose to focus his energies on getting his base to turn out in higher numbers than his opponent's base, particularly in states that are closely contested.  The role of the swing voter is overrated.  What matters is total votes in swing states.

This article by Robert Barnes in the Washington Post is well worth your time in a season when campaign finance will once again become an issue of contention.  I have long been disappointed that the Supreme Court is so willing to treat money in politics as if it were speech.  Some money is speech.  The rest is a bribe.  We would have a much better democracy if we could find a way to remove the latter without seriously compromising the former.

The focus of the article is a recent case in Alabama, which the Supreme Court chose not to hear.  The key piece of information is that judges in the lower courts are pleading for more clarity.

Federal law makes it a crime to corruptly solicit or accept money with the intent of being rewarded or influenced in official actions, and prosecutors have said campaign contributions can be part of such a scheme.

The Supreme Court’s guidance on the issue is thin. In 1991, it ruled that a campaign contribution could be a bribe if prosecutors proved a quid pro quo — that the contribution was “made in return for an explicit promise or undertaking by the official to perform or not to perform an official act.”

In a subsequent case, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the quid pro quo need not be expressly stated. But lower courts have differed, since then, on exactly what standards apply.

Read the whole thing.

Chris Cillizza takes a careful look at Mitt Romney's "narrow path" to a possible victory in November.  I thought the conclusion was interesting:

Given the narrowness of his electoral map window, the key for Romney this fall is to win in places that Bush, McCain and other Republican nominees over the past two decades have struggled to make inroads. No Republican has carried Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Michigan (16) or Wisconsin (10) in any of the past five elections, for example.

Picking up one of those states would be evidence that the Republican Party can remain a national party.  My how things can change in eight years ... remember this?

Paul Kane's article in The Washington Post today sums up the 2012 election pretty well -- unless one party gains a large majority in the Senate, then the gridlock in Washington won't end regardless of who wins the White House.  According to the article, the Democrats have 23 Senate seats to defend, compared to just 10 for the Republicans, during this cycle.  There will be a close battle for the majority, but it likely won't yield a large majority either way.

Given that likelihood, it would be interesting to have the major presidential candidates asked specifically about how they would appeal to a divided Senate.  For some earlier musings on whether there will be more or less gridlock with Romney rather than Obama in the White House, see this post from January.