"Fixing the System"

Given that Election Day is tomorrow and we have been discussing voting/elections in class, I found this Op-Ed pretty interesting. In the piece, journalist Joe Nocera gives ideas for how to increase voter turnout in the United States and decrease the prevalence of highly polarized candidates. 

His ideas: 

• Move elections to the weekend
• Nocera argues that weekend polling would make it easier for many to vote, especially blue-collar workers. 

• Term limits for the Supreme Court
• This idea is taken from Norman Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute who thinks justices should be given one 18-year term to allow older people to receive nominations and decrease the partisan politics of judicial nominations. 

• Open primaries
• Nocera references the open primary system in California as proof that open primaries with the top two primary vote-getters running against each other in the general election makes politics less partisan. 

• End gerrymandering
• Gerrymandering allows parties to gain power and elect strongly polarized candidates, so he thinks equal districts would elect moderate candidates. 

• Bring back the small donor
• The power of big money can be discouraging for many, Nocera argues that a small donor matching system like that of NYC could create donor diversity and greater political participation. 

Do you agree with his ideas? We have discussed many of these topics in class; would it be feasible to change things like national campaign donation practices and create Supreme Court term limits? Any other ideas to increase voter participation and end partisanship? Are these goals we should be focusing on right now? 

Voting protections

I came across an article about the federal trial that began Monday in which a Wisconsin voter ID law is being challenged under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Wisconsin law requires voters to have a state-issued ID. This past June, the Supreme Court struck down part of the law, but did not rule on section now being challenged, which prohibits procedures that discriminate on race or other protected groups. The Advancement Project and the American Civil Liberties Union both brought cases against the law, saying that the law makes it harder for minorities to vote. A county judge has already blocked the law, but opponents of the law want ensure the requirement will not go back into effect. Proponents of the law argue that all citizens can obtain an ID and that the law helps limit voter fraud in the state.

The topic is very fitting to what we have been discussing in class and brings up the issue of voting in America. Particularly, this questions the function of the government in regulating voting. What is the balance between protecting the right of citizens to vote and protecting citizens from voter fraud?

The First Rule of Holes

So today in class we briefly discussed the fact that Rand Paul has gotten into a bit of trouble for his plagiarizing. His website initially added footnotes, and is now taking down entire transcripts.

My mom always taught me that the first rule of holes is that "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." Obviously, Rand Paul has not learned this rule. If you didn't know too much about the Paul family stubbornness, you would think that now that he is in trouble for plagiarism, Rand would back off a bit and try not to do any other unwise things while the spotlight is on him. You would be mistaken.

He has jokingly(?) said that he wishes he could challenge his accusers to a duel. Yes, with guns. I would really advise reading the actual article here, because the punchline to this joke is that the only thing holding him back from the duel is the fact that Kentucky makes state-level officeholders swear an oath that they haven't participated in a duel, so if he did, he couldn't run for state office in Kentucky. Ha ha! Obsolete Kentuckian constitutional provision duel jokes!

On a related note, the Washington Post has published an article which discusses whether the plagiarism controversy will affect Paul's chances in the 2016 presidential campaign. Personally, I don't want to talk about that, because I'd like a break before we get back to presidential politics. Seriously, we haven't even had the midterms yet. People need to calm down. 

Anyway, everyone should take this as a lesson in the importance of accurate citation, lest you be pursued by what Paul calls "the footnote police." It could be vital to your chances of becoming the president.

Nomination, Convention, Campaign

The 2012 nomination contest in one graph.

Voting, shmoting

Turnout data

Forecasting elections

Exit poll

So this is Interesting...

I was wondering what became of some of the candidates from the GOP primary in 2012. Here's an interesting piece I ran into about Herman Cain. Apparently, the Devil was to blame for the sexual harassment allegations against him. No, that is not an Onion article. Just thought you all might be interested to find out that one of the Devil's main priorities was derailing the presidential campaign of pizza moguls.

Lobbying and Polarization

Lobbying:

We talked about lobbying a couple classes ago and I recently came across this article which summarizes a study by Utah State University Professor Benjamin Blau on lobbying by banks during the financial crisis. The basis of Blau's article was that politically connected banks got more from the bailout than banks that spent less on lobbying and campaign contributions. This fact is pretty intuitive, but it is still interesting to see how it has played out recently through the data.

Polarization:

We talked about polarization quite a bit on Wednesday. I commented in class that I thought the problem was bigger than just polarization in politicians/parties. I think it is that people in our country are more polarized, more disunited than ever before. Like Professor Pitney said in class (and I am paraphrasing here), "there are two radically different America's now." One possibility for the cause of such polarization in the public I was thinking about in class and decided to do some more research on is the role mass media plays. The way we get our information now by countless internet sources and television channels is much different that the more limited set of options our parents and grandparents had. Before everyone generally watched the same few, more centrist, news channels. Tulane Professor James Carville also seems to think this is a problem. In his article for The Hill titled, "Disturbing polarization in media worsens political partisanship", Carville points to media as a significant factor.

I think a lot of people will look back at this point in American political history and wonder how things got so damn screwed up. It wasn’t always a given that there would be mindless gridlock on Capitol Hill, unchecked extremism and a general lack of leadership. 

Sure, one could point to the corrupting influence of lobbyists and interest groups on Congress. Or to gerrymandering. Or to Citizens United, which allows money to literally control politics and has made political parties less relevant, and allowed the proliferation of the ultra conservative Tea Party. There are plenty of others. 

But perhaps as much as anything is the disturbing fragmentation of the media. Today, conservatives can get all their information from conservative outlets, and liberals can get all their information from liberal outfits. And you can spend your whole life never being challenged, never having to hear or think about or confront viewpoints that are different from your own.

Carville sounds nice here, and his point seems logical. However, this interesting academic article by Princeton Professor Markus Prior comes to a different conclusion. Through his study Prior finds that those who use partisan media are already partisan. Or in other words, there is no evidence that media caused polarization.

In the 1970s, about a quarter of Americans identified strongly with a political party. Media in the broadcast era were probably too centrist for these people’s tastes. Technological change has made it economically viable to cater to smaller audience segments.6 Nobody should be surprised that some strong partisans turned to more ideologically congruous media formats when they became available. But that audience migration alone does not constitute evidence that partisan media polarize Americans. The difference between the media-catching-up-with-partisan-fringes view and the media-pushing-Americans-to-partisan-extremes account is large and of critical importance for the trajectory of American politics in a high-choice media environment. Research to date does not offer compelling evidence that partisan media have made Americans more partisan.Most voters are centrist. Most voters avoid partisan media altogether or mix and match across ideological lines. And those who follow partisan media closely and select mostly one side are already partisan. 

This weekend I stumbled across a short article on the creation of a super PAC by former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. The purpose of the super PAC, according to its website, is to

"support candidates who are committed to restoring strong American economic and national security through independent expenditures and campaigns and issue-oriented education."

Bolton is one of the most right-wing foreign policy voices in the GOP and has been an outspoken critic of the Obama administration. According to the Politico article, Bolton intends to use this super PAC to "prod candidates on foriegn policy issues during the 2014 midterm elections." This article raised a couple of questions for me:

1. How much influence does Bolton really believe he will have in the 2014 elections? Is the creation of his super PAC merely a symbolic gesture to draw attention to his views on foreign policy?
2. How much can a personal super PAC really expect to raise without strong support from a corporation or other extremely wealthy donor?

The link to his super PAC website his here.