“Rig The Vote”: Deep Inside The Evil Lair Of The Republican Party
If you can’t win by playing fair, cheat.
That seems to be the plan of Republican lawmakers in several battleground states that stubbornly keep going for Democrats during presidential elections. Thanks in part to gerrymandering, many states already have — and will continue to have in the near future — Republican-controlled legislatures.
Republican lawmakers in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin are considering whether to abandon the winner-take-all approach to awarding Electoral College votes and replace it with a proportional allocation.
That change would heavily favor Republican presidential candidates — tilting the voting power away from cities and toward rural areas — and make it more likely that the candidate with the fewest votes over all would win a larger share of electoral votes.
One day I will have to visit the evil lair where they come up with these schemes. They pump them out like a factory. Voter suppression didn’t work in November, and it may even have backfired in some states, so they just devised another devilish plan.
Pete Lund, a Republican state representative in Michigan, “plans to reintroduce legislation that would award all but two of Michigan’s 16 Electoral College votes according to congressional district results,” said an article Friday in The Detroit News.
The paper continued, “The remaining two would go to the candidate winning the statewide majority.”
Lund, who proposed a similar bill in 2012, made Republicans’ intentions completely clear, saying, according to the article: “It got no traction last year. There were people convinced Romney was going to win and this might take (electoral) votes from him.”
These bills are a brazen attempt to alter electoral outcomes and chip away at the very idea of democracy, to the benefit of Republican candidates.
The Detroit News also reported that, according to an analysis by Mark Brewer, the state Democratic Party chairman: “Romney would have gotten nine of Michigan’s electoral votes and Obama would have received seven in 2012 under Lund’s proposal. Instead, Obama garnered all 16 Michigan electoral votes en route to his national tally of 332.”
Meanwhile, Obama beat Romney in the state by a margin of nearly 450,000 votes.
Virginia’s bill is further along than Michigan’s. It’s already being debated.
For reference, although Obama won the state of Virginia and all of its electoral votes last year, as he did in 2008, according to The Roanoke Times on Friday, “If the system had been in effect for the 2012 election, Republican Mitt Romney would have won nine of Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, and President Barack Obama would have won four.” Keep in mind that in November, Obama won the state by almost 150,000 votes.
Republicans in Virginia are just as forthright about their intention to tilt the electoral playing field in their favor.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that the sponsor of Virginia bill’s, Charles W. Carrico Sr., a Republican, “said he wants to give smaller communities a bigger voice.” Carrico told The Post, “The last election, constituents were concerned that it didn’t matter what they did, that more densely populated areas were going to outvote them.”
Yes, you read that right: he wants to make the votes cast for the candidate receiving the fewest votes matter more than those cast for the candidate receiving the most. In Republican Bizarro World, where the “integrity of the vote” is a phrase used to diminish urban votes and in which democracy is only sacrosanct if Republicans are winning, this statement actually makes sense.
David Weigel of Slate explained the point of the Virginia plan this way: “Make the rural vote matter more and make the metro vote count less.”
Luckily, as the Roanoke paper noted Friday, Ralph Smith, the powerful Republican Virginia state senator, isn’t on board:
“Smith said this morning that he opposes the legislation, calling it ‘a bad idea.’ Smith sits on the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee, which will hear the bill next week. Without Smith’s support, it’s unlikely the bill could get to the Senate floor.”
Paul Bibeau, who writes “a blog of dark humor” from Virginia, points out a numerical oddity about the effects of the Virginia law that turns out, upon reflection, to be more stinging than funny: “This bill counts an Obama voter as 3/5 of a person.”
That is because, as Talking Points Memo says, “Obama voters would have received almost exactly 3/5 of the electoral vote compared to their actual population — 30.7 percent of the electoral vote over 51 percent of the popular vote.”
This is not where we should be in 2013, debating whether to pass bills to reduce urban voters to a fraction of the value of other voters and hoping that someone with the power to stop it thinks it’s a “bad idea.”
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 25, 2013
“Desperate And Delusional”: A Truly Harebrained GOP Scheme To Prevent President Obama’s Second Term
The election is over — but not in the minds of a handful of true-believer conservatives.
A plot has been hatched over the last week to, in a last-ditch effort, deny President Obama a second term and install Mitt Romney as the next president.
Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips argued in a column last week at World Net Daily that states that voted for Romney could simply boycott the Electoral College, thereby depriving it of the two-thirds quorum it needs to elect a president. At that point, the House of Representatives would pick the president. And guess who controls the House? The GOP.
The cause was then taken up by Idaho state Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll (R) this week, with Nuxoll tweeting that the scheme is the GOP’s “last chance” to install Romney as president.
The problem? Even if Phillips’s theory were practical — and getting one-third of states to flout the will of the country would be a neat trick — it’s based on a totally false premise.
Phillips cites the 12th Amendment as proof that the Electoral College needs a two-thirds quorum (i.e. having enough states present to conduct a vote), but in fact, the 12th Amendment only governs quorums in the House. There is nothing in the law, it appears, that prevents the Electoral College from electing a president even if some states don’t participate.
In fact, even World Net Daily, the conservative Web site on which Phillips’s column was posted, has acknowledged this fact, adding an editor’s note that says the entire crux of the column is faulty.
“Since this column was posted it has been discovered that the premise presented about the Electoral College and the Constitution is in error,” the website wrote. “According to the 12th Amendment, a two-thirds quorum is required in the House of Representatives, not the Electoral College.”
The scheme enunciated by Phillips, of course, is just the latest bit of conservative backlash against the Electoral College. When Romney was leading Obama in national polls but trailing in swing-state polling, some conservatives called for a national popular vote.
As of now, Obama is winning the popular vote by just more than four points in the swing states, but by about 3.5 points nationally. So while a national popular vote would have meant a slightly closer race, there really didn’t wind up being that much of a difference.
There may be an Electoral College revolt in the coming years, but this won’t be it.
By: Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, November 28, 2012
“Line-Drawers’ Art”: The GOP’s Gerrymandered Advantages
When Republicans claim that this was a status quo election, they point to their continued hold on the House. The 2012 congressional vote, some have said, didn’t undo the party’s 2010 successes.
True enough, but that’s not because Americans didn’t vote to undo them. It’s because Republicans have so gerrymandered congressional districts in states where they controlled redistricting the past two years that they were able to elude a popular vote that went the Democrats’ way last week.
As The Post’s Aaron Blake reported, Democrats narrowly outpolled Republicans in the total number of votes cast for congressional candidates. The margin varies depending on whether you count the races in which candidates ran unopposed and those in which members of the same party faced off (as happened in several California districts). But any way you count it, the Democrats came out ahead — in everything but the number of House seats they won.
Consider Pennsylvania, where President Obama won 52 percent of the votes cast, and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey defeated his Republican rival, 53 percent to 45 percent. Yet Democrats won just five of that state’s 18 U.S. House seats. They carried both districts in the Philadelphia area — by 85 percent and 89 percent, respectively — and three other districts, by 77, 69 and 61 percent. Of the 13 districts where Republicans prevailed, GOP candidates won seven with less than 60 percent of the vote; in only one district did the Republican candidate’s total exceed 65 percent of the votes cast.
Why such lopsided numbers? Because Republican-controlled redistricting after the 2010 Census packed Democratic voters into a handful of imaginatively shaped districts around Pennsylvania’s urban centers and created a slew of GOP districts in the rest of the state. The overwhelming Democratic margins in the two heavily African American Philadelphia districts didn’t require constructing oddly shaped districts, but carving up the rest of the state to minimize districts that Democrats might win required politically driven line-drawing of the highest order.
So it went in several other swing states. Obama won Ohio by two points, and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown won by five, but Democrats emerged with just four of Ohio’s 16 House seats.
In Wisconsin, Obama prevailed by seven points, and Democratic Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin by five, but their party finished with just three of the state’s eight House seats.
In Virginia, Obama and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine were clear victors, but Democrats won just three of the commonwealth’s 11 House seats. In Florida, Obama eked out a victory and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson won by 13 points, but Democrats will hold only 10 of the Sunshine State’s 27 House seats.
In these five states, where both Obama and Democratic Senate candidates won, Democrats will hold 25 House seats in the next Congress to the Republicans’ 55. If the control of these House seats reflected the Democrats’ statewide margins in presidential and Senate contests, the Democrats would likely be at parity or in the majority in the new House.
Now, this isn’t to say Democrats don’t play similar games. On Election Day, they picked up five House seats in Illinois after a Democratic-controlled redistricting in 2011, so they will hold 12 of the 18 Illinois House seats come January. But Obama carried his home state by a 16-point margin, and the Democratic pick-ups help create a delegation that fairly reflects the state’s partisan balance.
A model for a fairer war to carve congressional districts — so that they more closely reflect actual voter sentiment — exists in California. Years ago Golden State voters entrusted redistricting to a nonpartisan commission. Last week’s election was the first conducted using the new boundaries. Some longtime incumbents (among them Democrat Howard Berman and Republican David Dreier) were displaced, and some rising constituencies were empowered; California’s new congressional delegation will include five Asian Americans, nine Latinos and 18 women — all Democrats. But no one is arguing that the new members don’t reflect the state’s balance of power. Obama carried California by 21 points; Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein won by 23; and Democrats are likely to hold 38 of the state’s 53 seats when the counting concludes (two races are still out).
Republicans love to proclaim their affinity for the marketplace and the genius of competition. But it’s precisely by suppressing competition, and crafting uncompetitive districts, that they maintained their hold on the House last week. Any notion that House Republicans have a mandate of their own that they can bring to a fight with the president is spurious. Their grasp on the House derives not from voter sentiment but almost entirely from the line-drawers’ art.
By: Harold Meyerson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 13, 2012
“Never Underestimate GOP Cynicism”: Those Who Think Sandy’s Effects Won’t Matter Because It Primarily Affected Blue States Should Think Again
For all the speculation about the effect of Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath on the election, one important aspect has gotten surprisingly little attention: How many people will be unable to vote because of power outages, floods, and impaired transportation systems? How many will be deterred from voting because they are dealing with serious dislocations in their lives? And what new forms of Republican mischief will all this invite?
Other things being equal, President Obama seems to have been the winner so far because of his impressive handling of the crisis. Chris Christie surely helped on the image front.
But other things are not equal. Four days before the election, at least three million Americans are without power. And so are thousands of neighborhood polling places.
Bus and subway lines are not fully operating, and there are gas shortages, especially in New Jersey. Both factors raise obstacles to people getting to the polls.
Hundreds of thousands of people—conceivably more than a million—may not be able to vote in their usual polling place. Some may not bother to vote at all.
As always, lower-income voters, who tend to favor Democrats, have fewer options and backup plans than more affluent voters. Any competent political scientist will confirm that it’s always a challenge to persuade lower-income citizens that voting can make a difference in their lives. The aftermath of the storm is just one more obstacle to full participation.
Last-minute shifts in polling venues are both confusing to voters and to local election officials, many of whom are volunteers. People who registered may not show up on lists if they are voting outside their usual location, leading to more ballot challenges than usual, even without Republican skullduggery.
Some jurisdictions are printing up paper ballots as a fallback, but the preparations seem surprisingly lackadaisical. At the very least, all of this introduces new uncertainty and new opportunities for ballot challenges.
Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, passed after the 2000 election debacle, federal law requires local officials to permit provisional voting if there is some question about whether a citizen is entitled to cast a ballot. But provisional voting invites legal appeals, and God help us if the number of challenged ballots in a key swing state exceeds the margin separating the candidates. Worst case, we could see the courts getting involved, with ominous echoes of the Supreme Court’s theft of the 2000 election.
It may seem comforting to Democrats that most of the hardest-hit states are safely blue. But think again. Although Obama seems narrowly ahead in the projected electoral count, the popular vote seems to be almost a tie. To win it, Obama needs to roll up big margins in states deep blue like New York—where turnout could well be depressed. He would of course still be president if he won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote. But in terms of the national psychology (and his own self-confidence as a fighter), Obama would have more of the appearance of a mandate if he won the popular vote.
One of the hard hit states, Pennsylvania, is still close enough that Republicans are throwing money into it. At this writing, between 250 and 300 Pennsylvania polling places are still without power, along with 307,000 Pennsylvania citizens. On balance, any fallout from the storm that depresses turnout is not good for Democrats.
Mercifully, the talk from earlier in the week that a state might actually try to postpone Election Day has faded. It’s clear that only Congress has the right to set Election Day. If elections were not postponed during the Civil War, it’s unthinkable that they’d be postponed a week after a hurricane. Even The Wall Street Journal editorial page discouraged the idea of delaying the election (maybe because Obama’s lead is widening?)
But after what we’ve seen in the past several elections in Republican voter-suppression efforts, never estimate the cynicism of the GOP or its appetite for fishing in troubled waters. The best antidote to all of this is a big general turnout and a stormproof margin of Democratic victory.
By: Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect, November 3, 2012
“The Ultimate Christie Conspiracy”: He’s Really Nice Because Conservatives Secretly Know Mitt Romney Is Winning
As you’ve probably seen, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — a prominent Republican and Romney endorser — has recently repeatedly praised President Barack Obama for his and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Sandy. Christie has likely done this because … he is grateful and the federal government has been helpful, but the political press needs stuff to write about, so people have written about it as a political act.
Most conservatives are just sort of ignoring this development, as liberals gleefully publicize pictures of the men joining together to inspect the damage along the Jersey Shore and compliment each other for the cameras. But some are weighing in. Here are the conservative explanations for Chris Christie’s recent effusive praise of Barack Obama: The Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis says the force of Christie’s praise is suspect: “The issue here is about the degree to which he is going out of his way to help Obama politically — and the context of the timing.” He thinks this indicates a personal schism between Christie and Romney.
But my favorite explanation comes from genius political analyst Joel Pollack at Big Government, one of the increasingly easily ignorable stable of dumb blogs and lie-generation machines founded by the late Andrew Breitbart.
Here is Pollack’s theory: Christie is praising Obama because Mitt Romney is so far ahead that it doesn’t matter.
But the truth about Christie’s outreach to Obama is blindingly obvious: Mitt Romney is now running away with this election, freeing Christie to praise the president without fear that doing so will tip the scales.
Oh. I see! But … aren’t all the national polls essentially tied? Yes, but you forgot about skewing.
Romney’s lead in the national polls may appear small, but it is likely much more significant, since the electorate that shows up on Tuesday will include proportionally fewer Democrats than most polls have assumed thus far.
Oh. I see! (There aren’t any links to anything in that paragraph btw.)
Democrats and journalists have clung desperately to one illusion after another–first, that Obama was winning in Ohio, until that was no longer true; next, that Obama had an edge in early voting, until that was wrong; and finally, that Obama had a stronger ground game, until that began to fall apart.
Now that Obama is on defense in blue states such as Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Michigan, a Romney victory is within reach.
Haha sure. OK. The evidence that Obama is losing Ohio is one Rasmussen poll — the only poll showing Romney leading in Ohio, by the way — and the “ground game” link is just a Robert Stacy McCain blog post about how he met an excited Romney canvasser and went to an Americans for Prosperity event.
Also Obama’s visit to New Jersey “merely highlights the fact that he abdicated that leadership on 9/11.”
In conclusion, Chris Christie was really nice to Barack Obama because all conservatives secretly know that when you unskew the polls Mitt Romney is winning in all swing states, the end.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, October 31, 2012
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