“A Clear Partisan Purpose”: GOP Steps Up Attack On Early Voting In Key Swing States
On Election Night 2012, referring to the long lines in states like Florida and Ohio, Barack Obama declared, “We have to fix that.”
The waits in Florida and Ohio were no accident, but rather the direct consequence of GOP efforts to curtail the number of days and hours that people had to vote. On January 22, 2014, the president’s bipartisan election commission released a comprehensive report detailing how voting could be smoother, faster and more convenient. It urged states to reduce long lines by adopting “measures to improve access to the polls through expansion of the period for voting before the traditional Election Day.”
That would seem like an uncontroversial and common sense suggestion, but too many GOP-controlled states continue to move in the opposite direction, reducing access to the ballot instead of expanding it. The most prominent recent examples are the swing states of Wisconsin and Ohio.
Yesterday Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed legislation eliminating early voting hours on weekends and nights, when it’s most convenient for many voters to go to the polls. When they took over state government in 2011, Wisconsin Republicans reduced the early voting period from three weeks to two weeks and only one weekend. Now they’ve eliminated weekend voting altogether.
Over 250,000 Wisconsinites voted early in 2012, one in twelve overall voters. Cutting early voting has a clear partisan purpose: those who voted early voted for Obama 58 to 41 percent in Wisconsin in 2012, compared to his 51 to 48 percent margin on Election Day. Extended early voting hours were particularly critical with respect to high voter turnout in big cities like Milwaukee and Madison. “It’s just sad when a political party has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics,” said Wisconsin GOP State Senator Dale Schultz, a critic of the legislation.
A month ago, Ohio passed legislation cutting early voting by a week, eliminating same-day voter registration and restricting the availability of absentee ballots while Secretary of State Jon Husted issued a directive doing away with early voting on weeknights and Sundays as well. 600,000 Ohioans, ten percent of the electorate, voted early in 2012. The cuts in Ohio, like Wisconsin, have a clear partisan and racial underpinning—in Cleveland, for example, African-Americans made up 56 percent of those who voted on weekends in 2008.
Republicans are adopting the early voting cuts under the guise of “uniformity”—claiming they want all counties to have the same hours, which punishes large urban counties if small rural counties don’t have the money or manpower for extended early voting hours.
But few believe that’s the only reason why early voting is on the chopping block. Many Republicans are predictably reluctant to admit that the main reason they suddenly disfavor early voting is because too many Democrats are using it or because they actually believe, in the words of Jonah Goldberg, that “voting should be harder, not easier—for everybody.” (See Rick Hasen’s piece “The new conservative assault on early voting.”)
The latter argument was endorsed by Florida GOP State Senator Mike Bennett in 2011, who said: “I wouldn’t have any problem making it harder…I want the people of the state of Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who’s willing to walk 200 miles…This should not be easy.”
That view was widely repudiated in the aftermath of the 2012 election, when even Florida repealed its cutbacks to early voting. A move to significantly reduce early voting recently failed in the Georgia legislature, which can hardly be described as moderate. But Republicans in Ohio and Wisconsin are stuck on the disgraced idea that the best way to win an election is to make it harder for your opponents to participate in one.
By: Ari Berman, The Nation, March 28, 2014
“Mistakes And Subterfuge?”: Rick Scott’s Campaign May Have Violated Campaign Finance Law
On Monday, Florida Democratic Party chairwoman Allison Tant filed a complaint with the Florida Elections Committee, accusing Governor Rick Scott’s (R) campaign of committing campaign finance violations.
According to Tant’s complaint, Scott’s current campaign illegally transferred nearly $27.4 million from the governor’s former 2010 electioneering communication organization, “Let’s Get to Work,” to a new political committee with the same name.
Due in part to lax laws that allow for broad uses of campaign funds, a political committee, such as Let’s Get to Work, can legally give money directly to other political committees. However, an electioneering communications organization — which funds and engages in election-related activities through communication means, such as radio commercials and TV ads — cannot directly contribute to a political committee.
In other words: If the allegation that Scott’s campaign transferred money from a former electioneering communication organization to a political committee is true, it’s a violation of campaign finance law.
Tant now argues the campaign “violated the law,” and that “the governor is supposed to uphold the law.” If she’s right, Scott’s re-election campaign could be fined up to $82 million.
John French, the chairman of Let’s Get to Work, criticized the accusations, saying that the first incarnation of Let’s Get to Work was dismantled before a check for $24.7 million was given to the new committee, which was formed the same day the original organization was discontinued. Hence, according to French, the check received by the political committee could not have come directly from the electioneering communication organization, because it no longer existed at the time the check was written or received.
Still, Democrats maintain that the transfer of money was illegal, even if the check was written after the official close of the first version of Let’s Get to Work.
According to The Huffington Post, two Democratic state elections experts say the same.
“It’s the subterfuge that they went through to transfer the money illegally. It’s allowing them to do indirectly which they can’t do directly,” says Mark Herron, an elections lawyer.
Another expert on state campaign finance laws, Ron Meyer, agreed: “If it’s not blatantly illegal, it certainly violates the spirit of the law.”
This is not the first campaign controversy for Scott’s Let’s Get to Work: His campaign recently addressed a “mistake” that resulted in the committee failing to list a $500,000 donation it received from a private business.
By: Elissa Gomez, The National Memo, March 19, 2014
“Keep Calm And Carry On”: Jolly’s Win Does Not Presage Republican Wave
David Jolly won an upset victory over Democrat Alex Sink in Tuesday’s special election in Florida’s 13th congressional district, sending another Republican to the House of Representatives, and unleashing a torrent of breathless predictions that Democrats are doomed in 2014.
A National Journal article by Josh Kraushaar, titled “Why a Republican Wave in 2014 is Looking More Likely Now,” and Joe Scarborough’s declaration that “we may have something historic here happening, where you have one act [Obamacare] actually causing grave damage to a political party two midterms in a row” typify this brand of speculative political analysis.
That makes for an easy narrative, but it’s grounded in very few facts. It’s entirely possible — or even probable — that Republicans make major gains in the 2014 midterms. They may even win a Senate majority. But if they do, it will have nothing to do with what happened in Pinellas County on Tuesday night.
For starters, as political scientist Alan Abramowitz pointed out after a 2011 special election in New York — in which Republican Bob Turner upset Democrat David Weprin, prompting excited (and false) reports of an impending Republican wave in 2012 — the results of special elections do not accurately predict the results of subsequent general elections.
“An analysis of the results of all special House elections since World War II shows that while there is a weak relationship between the net party swing in special elections and the net party swing in the subsequent general election (the correlation is .32), special election results have no impact once you control for other factors such as the party of the president in midterm elections, seats held by the parties going into the election and the incumbent president’s approval rating,” Abramowitz wrote.
A quick look at the specifics of Florida’s special election makes it clear that this contest is no exception.
First, turnout was very low. Just 183,634 voters cast ballots in the election, down from 329,347 in the 2012 general election, and 266,934 in the 2010 midterm. To be clear, Republicans — who have a narrow registration advantage in the district — did a much better job getting their voters out to the polls than Democrats did. But Florida Democrats’ failure to convince voters to turn out for Alex Sink in March tells us exceedingly little about, say, Alaska Democrats’ ability to get out the vote for Mark Begich in November.
Second, there’s no evidence that Obamacare — which has been widely labeled as the hinge on which the election swung — actually served as a decisive factor in the election. There is no exit polling available for the race, but polls leading up to election day suggested that voters had other priorities; a Februrary Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9/WUSF Public Media poll, for example, found that while 39 percent said the Affordable Care Act was “very important” to their voting preference, 33 percent said it was just “somewhat important,” and 26 percent said it is “not at all important” (in fairness, that poll also said that Sink would win).
And while the Affordable Care Act featured prominently in the barrage of television ads that saturated the airwaves throughout the campaign, it was hardly the sole focus of the race. In fact, Jolly didn’t even mention the law in his victory speech, choosing instead to focus on his commitment to local issues.
But even if it turns out that Obamacare did seal the victory for Jolly, there’s no reason to assume that the issue will spark a Republican wave. As Abramowitz reminds us, the way that 180,000 Floridians feel about the law in March tells us very little about how some two million voters in North Carolina or Georgia will feel about it eight months from now. And national polls suggest that the law is not set up to be a clear electoral winner for either party.
Finally, in Florida’s election, one must consider Libertartian candidate Lucas Overby, who won about 5 percent of the vote. As Nick Gillespie points out in Reason, Overby’s platform makes it very plausible that he pulled more votes away from Sink than he did from Jolly (in the same manner that Libertarian Robert Sarvis pulled more votes from Democrat Terry McAuliffe than he did from Republican Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia’s recent gubernatorial election). Again, with no exit polls, it’s impossible to know for sure. But there’s a chance that were Overby not in the race, Sink would have won. If that were the case, would the media be running with overheated reports that Democrats will be in the catbird seat come November?
There’s no question that Sink’s loss should be a major disappointment for Democrats, who squandered a real shot at winning a seat that Republicans have held for decades. And there’s also no question that Democrats, saddled by an unfriendly electoral map and an unpopular president, are in danger of suffering big losses in the midterms. But there is simply no reason to believe that last night’s result provides a roadmap for future elections across the nation. If Republicans do make big gains in November, it will have nothing to do with David Jolly or Alex Sink.
By: Henry Decker, The National Memo, March 12, 2014
“Stand By It, Support It, Argue For It”: Democrats Should Run On Obamacare, Not Run From It
Alex Sink should have won the special congressional election in Florida yesterday. She had more money, she had a better resume and profile, and she was certainly a good candidate.
Florida’s 13th congressional district is a very competitive district that President Obama carried in both 2008 and 2012. True, it had been in Republican hands for a long time, but it was a good chance for the Democrats to pick up an open seat.
So, what went wrong? Hard to tell, of course, from inside the beltway, but let me offer up one thought. Sink tried to straddle health care and got caught in the middle.
As we all know, the notion that “I was for it before I was sort-of against it” does not sit well with voters. Certainly one could argue that the “fix what is wrong” strategy could work in 2014 for Democrats. But my fear is that what the voters hear is “I don’t really like Obamacare much because it may be hurting me politically.”
It is my strong belief that Democrats need to argue vociferously for the benefits of Obamacare. They need to tout what it will do for the country, for average Americans, for those without health insurance, for the economy, for keeping health care costs under control. If candidates believe they can distance themselves politically, especially after they voted in favor of it, they are making a tragic mistake. Own it. Don’t shy away from the important impact it is having now and will have in the future.
Sure, each race is different, each race will have its own dynamics, each race will have its own issues and differences among candidates. But if Democrats are hopelessly divided on health care, even at odds with themselves, they will not be able to stop the Republicans from hammering them.
By emphasizing the “mend it, don’t end it” strategy rather than the “here’s what it will do for you” strategy, Democrats are playing defense. Sure, they can use the Bill Clinton line, “We’ll be fixing it this year, will fix it next year and we’ll fix it the year after that,” but stand by it, support it, argue for it. This is the way Social Security worked and Medicare too — they were constantly amended and changed — but the end result is that they are among the most effective and popular programs ever enacted.
Gov. Mitt Romney tried to straddle the auto bailout, Republicans try obfuscating on women’s issues and Kerry tried to argue both sides of his Iraq vote. It’s hard to make those plays work.
On Obamacare, Democrats should argue strongly for it. Over the next eight months, Democrats should point to the number of people signing up, the care that people are receiving, the improvements in delivery and cost, and, most importantly, what it will accomplish in the future. Once Obamacare is fully operational, fewer people will be bankrupted by health care expenses, our populace will be healthier and the overall impact on the nation will be similar to Social Security and Medicare.
In short, if Democrats start now and double down on the issue, they will fare better in November than if they run and hide.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, March 12, 2014
“No Bellwether Or Harbinger Of Anything”: Meaningless Special Elections And The Press’s Consequential Imperative
If it were up to me, I would eliminate special elections for the House of Representatives entirely. They make sense when it comes to the Senate, where every state has only two senators and terms run six years, meaning a vacancy can leave a state without significant representation for an extended period of time. But when a congressman dies or retires and there’s another election to fill that critical 1/435th portion of the lower house’s lawmakers in a few months, do we really need to mobilize the state’s electoral resources, spend millions of dollars, and get a bunch of retirees to haul themselves down to the polls, only to do it all again before you know it? Hardly.
The other objectionable thing about special elections is that because they’re almost always the only election happening at that moment, they not only get an inordinate amount of attention, the results also get absurdly over-interpreted. This is a symptom of what we might call the Consequential Imperative among the press (note: if you have a better moniker for this that could propel me to the front rank of contemporary neologism-coiners, hit me up on Twitter). The Consequential Imperative is the impulse, the desire, the need to assert that whatever a journalist happens to be reporting on is very, very important. So for instance, if your editor sent you down to Florida to do a week’s worth of stories on the special election that just concluded there, you are extremely unlikely to write that this election was a contest between a couple of bozos, and means next to nothing for national politics (unless you’re Dave Weigel, who for some reason seems to be almost the only reporter capable of saying such a thing). It’s the same impulse that causes every gaffe, polling blip, and faux-controversy of every campaign to be presented as though it could dramatically alter the outcome of the election, despite all the experience telling us it won’t.
What happens after every special election is this: The losing side says, “This means nothing!”, while the winning side says, “This is a bellwether, signifying more victories to come for us!” And the press almost always agrees with the winning side, whichever party that happens to be, because the Consequential Imperative dictates that, like every other political event, this one must be of great consequence.
So in the case of yesterday’s special election in Florida, we get articles like “Why a Republican Wave In 2014 Is Looking More Likely Now” (National Journal) and “Florida Loss Big Blow to Democrats’ 2014 Hopes” (Politico), explaining that the results of this low-turnout election in one district in Florida can reasonably be extrapolated to tell us what will happen in the November 2014 elections.
As it happens, this race was decided by less than 3,500 votes. To believe that it emphatically means one thing for election outcomes all over America eight months from now, whereas if those 3,500 votes had gone the other way it would have just as emphatically meant the exact opposite, is just absurd. But, you may be saying, that’s because the Republican won! And if the Democrat had won, I’d be saying it really was significant! Well, no. Special elections don’t mean anything beyond deciding which person is going to represent that district until the next election. They may be interesting for one reason or another in and of themselves, but they’re never a harbinger or a bellwether of any national trend. If you ever catch me saying otherwise, feel free to call me a hypocrite and a fool.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, March 12, 2014
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