The post Oregon knows how to vote by mail appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Oregon has conducted all of its statewide elections entirely by mail since 1998. A Huffington Post article explains how it works:
The process is simple. It’s secure. And it means residents don’t have to worry about leaving their houses and risk getting the coronavirus in order to vote. They don’t even have to worry about putting a stamp on their ballots; Gov. Kate Brown (D) signed a law last year that requires the state to pay for ballot postage.
…There are so many benefits to Oregon’s vote-by-mail system that it’s a wonder why other states haven’t already made mail-in voting an option for every voter, never mind during a public health emergency. The system is simple: Ballots are mailed to all registered voters’ addresses three weeks before each election, along with a pamphlet of information on candidates and issues. Voters mark them, sign them and drop them in a mailbox. Election officials verify every signature ― clerks are trained in forensics and will contact you if your signature doesn’t match ― and tally the results, which are easy to reproduce for recounts. They’re also hard to manipulate, which reduces the risk of foreign interference in U.S. elections.
“You can’t hack paper,” said the governor. “You can replicate and verify the results.”
It’s also cost-effective. Brown said while her state still operates some polling stations, its vote-by-mail elections cost 20% to 30% less than in-person voting because of reduced costs from staffing polling stations and ballot counting systems. Beyond that, Oregon has one of the highest voter participation rates in the country.
Let’s all be more like Oregon.
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]]>The post Life after the Voting Rights Act appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder—to overturn the “pre-clearance” requirement in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—continues to have major ramifications for voting rights in America. Just before the decision came down in 2013, The Brennan Center for Democracy looked into its crystal ball and envisioned what would happen if the Court decided against pre-clearance. The predictions were ominous, and, unfortunately, they began to materialize, just days after the Supreme Court’s opinion went live. Here are the general categories into which new voting rights abuses were likely to fall, according to the Brennan Center’s prescient predictions. Check them against what has actually happened. I’m republishing this post because of its continuing relevance in the Trump era of diminishing American democracy.
Jurisdictions could try to revise discriminatory changes blocked by Section 5.
To give you a sense of the scope of this category, consider that 31 such proposed changes have been blocked by the Justice Department or the federal courts since the Voting Rights Act was last reauthorized just eight years ago. In just the past six months, after the 2012 election, many such challenges have been rejected.
Jurisdictions could put in place broad discriminatory practices they were previously “chilled” from implementing by Section 5’s pre-clearance requirement.
In South Carolina v. Holder, a Section 5 challenge that preceded the 2012 election, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, an appointee of George W. Bush, highlighted the deterrent effect of the statute — how it prevented state lawmakers from moving forward with the most obviously discriminatory practices, and how these officials narrowed the scope of their proposed voting change to track the requirements of the Section. That deterrent effect will be gone.
Jurisdictions might implement those discriminatory practices they tried but failed to get past the Justice Department under Section 5.
The Brennan Center reports that 153 such voting measures have been submitted and then withdrawn in recent years after federal officials questioned the discriminatory nature of these proposed laws. Even if just half of these policies were to be reconsidered and adopted in the absence of Section 5 they would significantly change the voting rights landscape in several Southern states.
Finally, the most obvious impact — jurisdictions might try to adopt restrictive new voting measures they neither contemplated nor dared submit for preclearance under Section 5.
For best effect, those lawmakers could do so on the eve of an election, forcing voting rights advocates to scramble and practically daring the federal judiciary to enjoin the measures. We wouldn’t likely go back to the age, as John Lewis recounted, where black voters would have to guess the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. But we wouldn’t be too far off, either. Just last election cycle, in Texas, lawmakers sought to impose what amounted to a poll tax on indigent — or carless — registered voters.
If you think these predictions sound hysterical, Orwellian and unlikely to occur in this country, think again. In the past seven years, states and local jurisdictions enacted legislation on many of the fronts outlined by the Brennan Center. We need to stay on full alert.
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]]>The post Are we witnessing the end of representative government? appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Back at the turn of the century, as Chair of the Missouri Advisory Council On Alcohol and Drug Abuse, I appeared before committees working-up the state’s mental health budget. The legislature maintained this great fiction that they controlled state operations down to one percent of every state employee’s time. Using their power, a committee – thence the whole legislature – might slash a line item from 12.45 FTEs [Full Time Equivalent employees] down to 10.75 FTEs.
Of course, that mythical level of oversight never happened. Still, it made the elected Representatives and Senators think they accomplished something.
And, even in these Republican times, the Missouri Legislature holds hearings and goes over the thick budget books for state departments in intricate detail. Even expending just a trifle of money ($10,000 or $25,000 in a $30 billion budget) leads to debate, negotiations and tremendous angst.
Not this week.
The same legislature which traditionally sweats nickels gave accidental Governor Mike Parson unprecedented authorization to seek and spend over $6 billion without further or meaningful oversight.
Also, the Missouri legislature, by law, must pass a balanced budget for the new state fiscal year in early May. Nope.
The latest plan has the governor calling a special session – probably in mid to late June – to pass a kinda budget. Instead of detailed hearings and intricate review, the House and Senate will listen to a quick overview from bureaucrats and pull-out the rubber stamp.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Congress gave the Federal Reserve Board broad power to act in virtual secrecy. Politico reports:
The new law would absolve the board of the requirement to keep minutes to closed-door meetings as it deliberates on how to set up the $450 billion loan program. That would severely limit the amount of information potentially available to the public on what influenced the board’s decision-making. The board would only have to keep a record of its votes, though they wouldn’t have to be made public during the coronavirus crisis.
Remember, the Federal Reserve already acts deep in the shadows. How they “find” trillions of dollars to prop-up the economy on short notice is pretty much a head scratcher. Yes, they do, after all, print money. Still, it would be a nice to believe that somehow people elected by their neighbors get to review and question how our economy is manipulated. Not this year. The current president sees the Fed as just another loyal serfdom obligated to respond to his whim,.
Donald Trump, alas, ignores rules—and truth—every day. Note how when he signed the latest stimulus bill, he refused to abide by its oversight provisions. And, his new hobby is firing federal Inspector Generals, even the ones he appointed.
Donald, like Mike here in Missouri, prefers to rule by decree. “I know what’s best for you” ought to be on both their business cards. Dictate, don’t negotiate. If it works for Vladimir Putin or Recep Erdağon it ought to work for Trump and Parson.
Too bad it is working.
For decades, historians have charted the move towards an imperial presidency in this country. Yet it continues. And, Missouri governors of both parties have yanked more power to their office—the disposal of Eric Greitens being the rare exception to that trend.
My fear? When COVID 19 heads to the history books, the extra control seized by government executives “during the emergency” won’t go away. Kind of like today’s Federal Assembly in Russia. What began almost 30 years ago as a true parliament has reverted to the old Supreme Soviet, existing to say yes to the tyrant’s whims (including changing the law so the tyrant can rule as long as he wants).
Remember, Republicans elected to Washington and Jefferson City voluntarily ceded much of their power. Will their successors ever get that power back? Probably not
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]]>The post New York State bags plastic bags appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>On March 1, 2020, New York State’s Bag Waste Reduction Law will go into effect. As of that date, all businesses collecting sales tax will be banned from handing out plastic carryout bags—with some exceptions, like produce bags for bulk purchases of fruits and vegetables and bags given out by pharmacies for prescriptions. This is a major step toward New York making good on its commitment to waste reduction. After all, New York State’s retailers currently hand out a mind-boggling 23 billion plastic carryout bags a year. As we all know, those bags don’t magically disappear. They end up in landfill where they take from ten to one hundred years to decompose. They end up littering streets and highways. Caught in the branches of trees, littering the landscape, and floating in waterways and oceans, they pose a serious hazard to wildlife.
Here’s the thing. This new paradigm calls for behavior modification and creative problem solving that calls on the adaptability of 19.54 million New Yorkers. Will this change prove to be too burdensome? Will New Yorkers pull their kids out of schools, quit their jobs, put their houses or apartments up for sale, and flee to more plastic-tolerant states? Probably not — even though they’d have the choice of resettling in one of the forty-two states that have yet to jump on the “ban” wagon.
Chances are New Yorkers are going to be just fine, just like their adaptable counterparts in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, and Vermont. The truth is that New York’s food shoppers have been voluntarily making the switch on their own for a few years now. They’ve been showing up in increasing numbers in grocery stores with their own quirky collections of reusable bags. If the grocery store experience proves true for the rest of the retail economy, it’s safe to say that protests by consumers or producers demanding the restoration of our constitutional right to create plastic-bag waste will be few and far between.
Still, there may be challenges ahead when home stockpiles of plastic shopping bags disappear. Here are some not-so-serious ones I can think of.
The solution to some of these conundrums might be to use a paper bag. Under the new law, paper bags will still be available at retailers for a fee if a city or county decides to adopt a state-authorized, five-cent paper bag reduction fee. If, however, paper bags aren’t your thing, don’t worry, New Yorkers. We’ll adapt.
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]]>The post Don’t confuse Iowa caucuses with real elections. They’re a completely different animal. appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>If the Iowa Caucus debacle has you worried about the way American elections operate, please remember that a caucus is not an election. The Democratic caucuses operate outside of the official election system. They’re run by the party, not by the professional election administrators who oversee regular elections. The harried precinct chairmen you saw on TV last week (Feb. 3) are not employees of a county election jurisdiction. The Iowa Secretary of State and the county auditors who supervise elections in their areas have no official role in the caucuses, so they do not regulate the events. People attending the caucuses are not voting, and the results are not counted, recorded or checked by the county auditor’s office. Election officials don’t set the date or manage the caucus sites. Caucuses don’t run like official election days, with all-day voting hours that make them more accessible to a broad electorate. Unlike the poll workers you see every election at your local precinct or vote center, the people running the caucuses are, essentially, well-meaning amateurs who do the job, perhaps, once every four years.
So, the chaos and incompetence of Iowa’s caucuses should not be regarded as an indicator of problems in the American election system, or a harbinger of things to come as the 2020 election evolves. In real elections, there is a vast army of behind-the-scenes workers and procedures designed to ensure precisely the elements that seem to have been missing in the Iowa caucuses: orderliness, integrity, accuracy and timeliness of reporting, and overall security. For the past twelve months, I have been observing the backstage work at my local election headquarters for an upcoming book, and I have come to feel confident that, in the official world of elections, people are trying hard to get it right, and succeeding most of the time.
If Iowa’s Democratic Party had opted for a primary election, rather than caucuses, the situation could have been very different. Real primary elections fall under the jurisdiction of state election laws, so they are conducted by elected or appointed officials who specialize in the job. In a primary election, all the elements and safeguards that combine to make elections tick would have been in play. I’m not saying that everything would have been perfect: Elections are never flawless. Even most well-thought out election plans can break down because of weather, technology failures, power outages, staffing issues or a myriad of other bumps in the road.
In fact, if Iowa had conducted a primary election, the customized reporting app that apparently failed might not even have been involved. In a primary, which comes under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of State, participants would have cast ballots using state-approved voting equipment, with the results reported according to established procedures. Also, presumably, Iowa election administrators would have applied widely held standards for vetting and pretesting their electronic systems, anticipating and preventing a confidence-destroying failure like the one making headlines in Iowa’s aftermath.
To its credit, the Iowa Democratic Party thought ahead and created a paper trail that may have saved the day. But Iowa’s caucus disaster offers a cautionary tale about relying too heavily on inadequately vetted technology. It’s also a warning about the process employed to buy new election technologies: If news reports are correct, the Iowa Democratic Party may have skipped some important checkpoints in its quest for a company to supply a reporting app and may have awarded the contract to a well-connected but inexperienced tech start-up. In addition, this would probably be an appropriate moment to reconsider the concept of caucuses themselves (particularly holding the first one in Iowa).
Iowa’s caucus debacle was an own goal, a self-inflicted screw-up that has added unneeded confusion to the process of nominating a presidential candidate in a critical election year. But caucuses are a bug in the system, not a feature, and that’s how they should be viewed. Iowa’s caucus process does not represent the rest of the U.S. election system. Don’t let it undermine the essential trust in voting that keeps our increasingly fragile democracy alive.
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]]>The post New York says no to Trump’s offshore drilling expansion appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>New York State has approximately 2,625 miles of coastline. There are, of course, a myriad of reasons for protecting the state’s coastline. Beyond the coastline’s beauty and its role as an irreplaceable habitat for wildlife and endangered species, there is the indisputable fact that those 2,625 miles of coastline support industries that are vital to New York States’ economy—industries like commercial fishing, tourism, recreation, and shipping that employ more than 345,000 workers and contribute billions to the state’s revenues. It’s no surprise, then, that when Donald Trump signed what he called his “America-First Offshore Energy Strategy” in 2017, the response from New York, as well as other coastal states, was immediate and vehement. By declaring his intention to reverse an Obama-era ban on drilling in Alaska and parts of the Atlantic and his intention to open up previously protected areas of the Outer Continental Shelf to gas and oil exploration, Trump threw down a gauntlet that coastal states could not ignore.
That initial salvo was followed up with the announcement in 2018 that the Interior Department intended to hold forty-seven lease sales for oil and gas drilling between 2019 and 2024 in more than two dozen previously protected areas, nine of which would have been along the Eastern Seaboard. Since that initial signing and the Interior Department’s announcement, every state on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts has declared its opposition to offshore drilling. Legislatures on the East, the West, and the Gulf coasts have crafted various legislative responses to protect their coastal assets. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 200 municipalities, 1,200 local officials, and 40,000 businesses in coastal areas have declared in no uncertain terms their opposition to the Trump administration’s embrace of the oil and gas industries’ reckless pursuit of profits that fail to take into account the environmental costs of oil spills, climate change, and habitat destruction.
This past week, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation—passed with the overwhelming support of the newly elected Democratic majority in the state legislature—prohibiting all oil and gas exploration in coastal waters. In a statement at the signing, Cuomo declared, “This bill says no way are you going to drill off the coast of Long Island and New York, because we must lead the way as an alternative to what this federal government is doing.”
New York’s legislation bans the use of state-owned coastal areas for oil and natural-gas drilling. The legislation also seeks to prevent the Office of General Services as well as the Department of Environmental Conservation from authorizing any leases intended to increase oil or natural gas production in federal waters. Going even further, the legislation prohibits the development of any infrastructure associated with the development or production of oil or natural gas from the coastal waters of New York State.
With this signing, New York State joins California, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oregon, all of which have enacted their own laws preventing the expansion of federal leasing for oil and gas exploration off their shores. Similar legislation has been introduced in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
On a positive note, the courts have stepped into the fight for preserving America’s coastal waters. On April 25, 2019, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt revealed that the Trump administration’s plans to hold lease sales and expand offshore drilling in federal waters along the East Coast and the Arctic have been suspended indefinitely, following a federal court ruling upholding a ban on drilling in Alaska and parts of the Atlantic put into place during the Obama administration.
Watch the video below, called “Why Trump Is Wrong about Offshore Drilling,” for a brief history of how offshore drilling has been traditionally regulated and an explanation of the dangers of opening up new areas to drilling.
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]]>The post Arkansas legislators take a stand against “Stand Your Ground” bill appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Last week the National Rifle Association suffered a resounding defeat in the State of Arkansas.
I imagine that this week most Arkansans will be resting a bit easier and feeling a lot more secure out on their streets, in parking lots, and in other public places following the defeat at the hands of the state’s judicial committee of a Stand Your Ground bill introduced by Republican State Senator Bob Ballinger. Following a hearing characterized by heated testimony and a passionate plea by State Senator Stephanie Flowers for senators to reject the proposal, the bill was defeated by a vote of four to three—with three Democrats and one Republican voting “nay” and three Republicans voting “aye.”
In their wisdom, Arkansas’ state senators delivered a blow to the National Rifle Association’s long-term legislative priority of expanding the Stand Your Ground law to all fifty states. Since 2005, when the NRA lobbied hard and successfully for the first Stand Your Ground law in Florida, twenty-four states have followed suit with their own iterations of the law—including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
What are Stand Your Ground or “no-duty-to-retreat” laws? The laws effectively remove an individual’s duty to retreat before using deadly force, as long as the individual reasonably believes that he or she is facing bodily harm or imminent death. Stand Your Ground can be invoked while an individual is present in virtually any place where the person has a legal right to be.
Here’s how Everytown for Gun Safety characterizes the dangers of Stand Your Ground:
Stand Your Ground laws upend centuries of traditional self-defense doctrine and threaten public safety by encouraging armed vigilantism, allowing a person to kill another person in a public area even when they can clearly and safely walk away from the danger.
The record on the fallout of invoking the Stand Your Ground defense is horrific. Americans were first made aware of how far justice could be thwarted with the shooting death by George Zimmerman of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and the subsequent not-guilty verdict on charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter after Zimmerman claimed he was acting in self-defense—even though Trayvon was unarmed.
The data since that first highly publicized incident demonstrates the extreme danger posed by these laws.
A pattern of extreme racial bias and racial disparity has become ever clearer since the unjust verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. According to a study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine:
The impact of Stand-Your-Ground laws revealed a disturbing pattern of racial bias. Individuals (i.e., defendants) in Florida were more likely to avoid charges if the victim was black or Latino but not if the victim was white. Indeed, individuals are nearly two times more likely to be convicted in a case that involves white victims compared to those involving black and Latino victims.
Here’s what Everytown for Gun Safety observes about the dangers and injustices of Stand Your Ground:
These laws are associated with increases in homicides and injuries across different demographics and neighborhoods, while disproportionately impacting communities of color. They encourage the escalation of violence in avoidable situations and do not deter crime.
Watch and listen below to the despair, the frustration, and the justifiable anger of Arkansas State Senator Stephanie Flowers as she pleads for the life and safety of her son and for the lives of all Arkansans of color who would have born the brunt of the law’s assault on public safety had it passed.
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]]>The post Ballot initiatives: Downside of uptick in voter turnout appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>If you are frustrated with gridlock and/or intransigence in your state legislature, as many voters are, one way to get your issue considered is to gather signatures and take your proposal directly to voters with a ballot initiative. But that grassroots process—which has proliferated in recent years, as you may have noticed by measuring the length of your November 2018 ballot—is becoming much more difficult in many states.
Currently, 24 states—mostly in the Western half of the country—enable citizens to bypass the legislature with ballot initiatives. Here’s a list of who allows what.
Requirements vary. In general, if you want the next statewide ballot to include, for example, an anti-gerrymandering proposal, or an increase in the tax on gasoline, or an amendment to your state’s constitution, you must get a minimum number of registered voters to sign petitions.
In most states where this direct-democracy process is available, the number of signatures required to qualify for inclusion on the ballot is pegged to the number of voters who voted in the most recent governor’s race.
And that’s the problem. Voter turnout is the key. Low turnout in a governor’s election makes it easier to get petition signatures in later elections. While high turnout—ironically, something that we normally view as a fundamental [small-d] democratic value—works against grassroots signature-gathering efforts.
California offers an instructive example. To get an issue on the ballot in California, you must gather signatures equal to or greater than 8 percent of the number of ballots cast in the preceding gubernatorial election. In the 2014 election, only 30 percent of voters cast ballots. That meant that, in the next two election cycles (when there was no governor’s race scheduled), supporters of any ballot measure needed just 365,880 valid signatures. “The bar was so low,” reports The Hill, “that California’s ballots were inundated by initiatives: 15 citizen-sponsored ballot measures in 2016 and 8 more in 2018.”
But voters came out in much higher numbers in the 2018 election. “The result is that in 2020 and 2022, using the same 8 percent threshold, initiative supporters will need to collect more than 623,000 valid signatures, a 70 percent increase,” according to the Hill’s reporting.
A similar scenario is playing out in other initiative-petition states. Here are some examples:
ARIZONA
COLORADO
OKLAHOMA
Getting signatures on statewide initiatives is not free. And the need for more signatures means a need for more money. According to Ballotpedia, the average cost to get one signature varies from state to state, but signature-gathering consulting firms [yes, they exist—it’s not all high-minded volunteers] charge about $6 per valid signature. So, for example, if you want to get signatures in Colorado in 2020, you’re going to need around an additional $156,000. [Most petition gatherers try to get approximately 75 percent more signatures than the requirement, in order to account for signatures that will inevitably be ruled invalid.]
Some state legislators are ticked off about the uptick in ballot initiatives, and they’re working on placing more obstacles in the way. “What we’re seeing is death by a thousand paper cuts, says Lauren Simpson, of Americans for a Better Utah, “making it incrementally more difficult for citizens to pass laws on their own through ballot initiatives Our legislature, as a whole, is uncomfortable with citizen ballot initiatives.”
But, while legislative ploys may be devious and undemocratic, and while increased voter turnout has had the unintended consequence of raising the bar for citizen initiatives, at least this trend is happening in states where citizens have the option to get needed changes by grassroots efforts. In 26 other states, there’s no option at all for ballot measures, and no sign that politicians are eager to create one. That’s the biggest hurdle of all.
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]]>The post New York votes in unified government and goes full-on progressive appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>Elections matter. If there’s any doubt about why, take a look at what’s happening right now in New York State. In the 2018 election, Democrats took control of the New York State Senate for the first time in a decade. This long sought-after victory means that New Yorkers can now boast of having unified government—with a Democratic governor, Senate, and Assembly.
Taking full advantage of their overwhelming mandate, New York State Democrats are barreling ahead with legislative priorities on hot-button issues like reproductive rights and gun control. Stalled for years by the Republican majority in the Senate, these are previously drafted progressive reforms that were ready to go once Democrats took back the Senate. Even Governor Andrew Cuomo appears to be unpacking his more progressive instincts.
We’re just at the beginning of New York’s new political adventure but already the Democratic majority has demonstrated that they can get their act together and pass major pieces of legislation that are sure to make progressives giddy, while making New York State a healthier, safer, and more just place to live for everyone. On the red side of the aisle, I imagine that conservative pols and their constituencies must be seething. If anything can be said with certainty in the world of politics, it’s that New York’s Democrats and progressives should savor the moment and make the most out of the next two years because the backlash is surely waiting in the wings.
Reproductive rights
After passing easily through the state’s Senate and Assembly, on January 22nd, marking the 46th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade, Governor Cuomo signed into law The Reproductive Health Act (RHA). RHA protects New Yorkers’ right to choose no matter what happens on the federal level as legal challenges to Roe v. Wade make their way to the new conservative majority now sitting on the Supreme Court.
The Reproductive Health Act, which takes effect immediately, updates and codifies New York State law with federal case law and puts New York’s reproductive laws (not updated since 1970) in accordance with the original decision in Roe v. Wade (1973). The bill maintains the legality of abortion within twenty-four weeks of a pregnancy or at “any time when necessary to protect a woman’s life or health.” Breaking with past precedent and breaking new ground, the bill expands access to abortion by authorizing healthcare professionals besides physicians—like nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants—to legally perform the procedure.
Gun control
An astounding six gun-control bills passed in the state’s Senate and Assembly since the swearing in of the new Democratic majorities. Praising New York State’s legislators, Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit organization founded and led by parents and family members whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, called the legislation “monumental gun violence prevention measures.” Those measures include:
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]]>The post Hope for change in 2020 Iowa caucuses, but… appeared first on Occasional Planet.
]]>The 2020 Democratic Iowa caucuses could become more [small-d] democratic, if changes proposed by the state party are approved—and if they work—which is a big if. Overall, it’s a hopeful sign, for at long last, someone is trying to do something about the crazy system Democrats use for choosing their presidential nominee.
As is well known, the Iowa caucuses are among the [unfortunate] critical first contests in the nomination process. The Democratic caucuses in 2016 were a huge political mess for the party: At the end of the night, the party awarded a razor-thin victory to Hillary Clinton, enraging supporters of Bernie Sanders, who cried foul. [Republicans had a similar—perhaps even worse—fiasco in 2012, when the Iowa party declared Mitt Romney the winner of its straw poll [not a caucus]—but later—after Romney had seized the momentum generated by the first win—figured out that Rick Santorum had actually won.]
In the wake of those problems, the Democratic National Committee recently issued new guidelines for caucuses. The goals include two key points aimed at boosting turnout:
But the DNC doesn’t specify how to accomplish these goals, leaving the nitty gritty to state parties.
According to Steven Rosenfeld at Common Dreams, the changes under consideration would be…
“…the most sweeping and radical changes to [Iowa’s] first-in-the-nation caucuses in 50 years, including potentially adopting online elements that could increase participation by upward of 100,000 voters, according to party leaders. The mix of offering same-day registration to any voter willing to join the party and an ability to remotely caucus will pose unprecedented outreach, organizing and turnout possibilities for Democratic candidates.”
Obstacles abound. The Iowa Democratic party is still debating how to implement the goals, which add complexity to an already complex caucus set-up. Rosenfeld explains it like this:
“The biggest challenge is not what will likely draw the early headlines: that Iowa likely will be conducting online voting in 2020’s caucuses. Nor will it concern what online technology, vendor, security and authentication would be used. Instead, the party will have to create a counting process where the votes coming into its 1,679 caucus sites are electronically tabulated in an open and coordinated fashion with each round of voting in the caucus sites—where participants break off into groups for each candidate.
Under Iowa’s caucus rules, presidential candidates with less than 15 percent of the votes are excluded from subsequent voting rounds. The caucus ends when all of the remaining contenders are above that threshold. In a typical caucus, supporters of the apparently marginal candidates realign with others, literally by moving across the room to join other groups as the voting continues. To keep this event’s spirit alive, which the Iowa party and DNC say is crucial, the participation and tabulation of voting has to be sequential, coordinated, transparent and verifiable.”
Got that? Me neither. And then, combining in-person caucusing with potential remote alternatives—such as on-line voting, mail-in voting [with ranked-choice ballots], tele-voting and/or proxy voting—could be a logistical and technological nightmare. In addition, the party needs to select technology vendors who can make it all work, and educate voters about the new procedures. It should also be noted that the state election authority, the office with the most experience in conducting elections, is not in charge of the caucuses. That’s the job of the state’s political parties, who do not have the same level of expertise or, presumably, credibility.
I congratulate the Democratic party and Iowa democrats for the impulse to improve the system. But I can’t help thinking that this stubborn insistence on holding caucuses—and being first—and allowing a rural state that doesn’t really represent the majority of Democrats to wield so much power—is the essential flaw in the system.
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