Diogenes of NY

Americans are rightfully proud of the right to express their political opinions at the ballot box and expect a peaceful transition of government leadership to whoever wins a general election. Nevertheless, in most election cycles, substantial numbers of Americans are more motivated to vote against one candidate than wholeheartedly in favor of the other. Why don’t we have more, and better choices for our leaders?

Who Are Democratic Party Members and Primary Voters?

As they are currently constituted, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are dominated by the ideologically extreme ends of their memberships. On the Democratic side, union members accounted for 22% of Democratic National Convention (DNC)  delegates, and unions are major money contributors to the Democratic Party. Unions spent $1.1 billion on politics from 2005-2011 and another $3.3 billion on other activities such as lobbying, of which 92% was spent on the Democratic Party . This is so despite the fact that only 12% of workers nationally are union members, and 40% of union members are Republicans Party members or vote that way. Another 8% were “Greens” who favor much higher fossil fuel costs and more EPA Regulatory Rules which are cost multipliers for many businesses.

Who Are Republican Party Members and Primary Voters?

On the Republican side, as much as 50% of primary voters are Evangelicals and Pro-Lifers, about 10% of party members are Tea Party supporters who oppose new taxes as a means to repair the Federal fisc, and about 10% are also NRA members who believe that Americans should be able to carry assault weapons. There is considerable overlap amongst these segments.

Why Is the Composition of Political Party Members and Primary Voters a Problem?

The Democratic Party has about 30% of its membership with far left, non mainstream core beliefs. The Republican Party has about 30% of its membership comprised of those with far right non mainstream core beliefs. These extreme views are disproportionally represented in America’s political process because 30% of Americans consider themselves to be independents not allied or involved with determining policy positions in either party. Paradoxically, it is the vote of these independents that determines the outcome of general elections.

In order to incorporate the support of their extremist radical wings, each political party is forced to move away from centrist platforms that would likely appeal to the greater portion of the electorate. In particular, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate is perennially hobbled by conservative social policy declarations required to be made during the primaries to secure the nomination, only to attempt to backtrack during the general election campaign. As a result of these discrepancies between party participants and the general electorate,  the American Republican and Democratic parties are among the weakest in the world with respect to being able to present to voters a team of candidates united by coherent principles and a program for governing the country.

Why Does America Only Have Two Political Parties?

America’s founding fathers made many compromises in order the secure the approval by the states of a federally empowered central government under the Constitution. One of many checks and balances on federal power was the adoption of a bicameral legislative body with disproportional power given to smaller states in the Senate. Another was the adoption of the Electoral College. This indirect presidential election scheme is further reinforced by the congressional election methodology.

The main reason for America’s majoritarian character is the electoral system for Congress. Members of Congress are elected in single-member districts according to the “first-past-the-post” (FPTP) principle, meaning that the candidate with the plurality of votes is the winner of the congressional seat. The losing party or parties win no representation at all. The first-past-the-post election tends to produce a small number of major parties, perhaps just two…. Smaller parties are trampled in first-past-the-post elections.

—Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Price of Civilization, 2011

What Can Be Done to Fix the Problem?

In what may well be a surprise to most of the American electorate, there are two other national political parties, the Libertarian and the Green Party. While the Libertarians manged to place their candidate on every national ballot, they won no states and received no electoral votes. As I wrote in Why Do We (Still) Have the Electoral College?, a proportional voting or parliamentary system is the solution. Such systems are  inherently much more open to minority parties securing better representation than third parties do in the American system. Currently, Maine and Nebraska are the only states that proportionally split their electoral vote, but there is no legal impediment to the adoption of such policies in every other state.

What Would a Proportional Direct Vote World Look Like?

A direct proportional vote within each state would have the practical effect of making presidential elections a popular vote. It would not truly be one because votes would be sub-totaled by each states’ Electoral College votes, and there could be rounding errors. The change could be implemented without requiring a Constitutional Amendment.

Candidates would place greater efforts on larger population centers which might skew heavily toward another party, because electoral votes would be available at the margin. Voter participation would likely rise dramatically, particularly in deeply partisan states, because every vote would count. From a public policy standpoint, this would be presumed to be good for America. The following chart shows that the US election system is responsible for one of the lowest voluntary voter participation rates in the developed world.

The rise of more centrist third, fourth or even fifth parties could unleash a torrent of choices for American voters. Because each of these smaller parties would need to build governing majority coalitions, compromise would be required for political success. The current gridlock  in Washington would be history. More independents would be co-opted to participate in the system because their narrower concerns would be better addressed by smaller parties.

America is a center/center-left nation. We are ethnically and racially majority minority for the first time in our history. It’s about time that our politics and our politicians better reflected this new reality and gave new voices a chance to be truly heard.

When Americans are asked what the most important issues are in this presidential election, they cite jobs and the economy. By any objective measure, the Obama presidency has been one of poor economic growth. No matter what hand a President is dealt, at some point, he owns the record. Since Mr. Obama is poised to be re-elected, some other factors must determine who we choose to vote for.

Do we want to vote for someone who looks like us?

In the 2008 heyday of hope and change, strong minority turnout helped push Mr. Obama to victory, especially in such swing states as Virginia and New Mexico. But as another election approaches, the minority thrill is gone. According to the Census Bureau, Hispanic voter registration has fallen 5% across the U.S., to about 11 million. Black registration is down by 7%

About 40% of whites who voted in 2008 crossed the racial divide and voted for a black man, while only 4% of blacks who voted did so for a white man. Most of Hilary Clinton’s supporters in the Democratic presidential primaries in 2008 were women, and for many, that was her greatest asset. We remain racially polarized on a political level in 2012, as the following chart shows. Each candidate’s total support among voters is broken down by race.

If we are ever to become a truly multicultural society, we need to make choices based on issues rather than appearance, race, ethnicity or gender. But how de we do that when so many voters are either incapable or don’t care to understand the issues and have no concept of macroeconomics? It’s almost perverse that we make naturalized citizens learn about our constitution and pass a civics test before earning their passports. Only about a quarter of the native born electorate could pass these tests. Is it any wonder how poor a job public education is doing in science and math compared to the rest of the world when in our public schools we don’t even properly teach our children their future rights and obligations as citizens?

Do we want to elect someone who promises to look out for us even if we doubt the ability to deliver?

President Obama has consistently promised that he would make the economy fairer and more level. Somehow his policies have had the opposite effect. The most recent report by the Census Bureau indicates that annual household income fell in 2011 for the fourth straight year. Between 2009 and 2011, income for the middle fifth of the population declined 1%, while income for the top fifth increased 4%. Seniors, dependent on their savings saw interest rates fall by over 31% (Jan. 23, 2009 to date), while inflation further reduced the value of their savings by 9%.

President Obama promised to create jobs. Since January 2009 the civilian labor-force participation rate has fallen by 2.2 percentage points, representing a loss of over five million jobs. His policies, though, have juiced the stock market. An investor willing and able to take risks profited by over 65% if he bought stocks tracking the Dow at President Obama’s inauguration.  The administration’s policies are hurting the poor more than they are hurting the workers and net taxpayers of America, i.e., the millionaires and billionaires.

Do we chose ideology over prosperity?

Without doubt, some of what comes out of the Republican Party with regards to social issues is simply hateful and fighting the tide of history. Opposition to gay marriage and “legitimate” rape are only two dark examples. The president’s economic policies have clearly hurt most Americans, whereas the policies advocated by the Republicans at least have a chance to improve the economy, and yet the Republicans are behind in the election race. Is it possible that America has reached a tipping point and finally prefers the “social equality” espoused by Democrats (equal shares of the pie) instead of unequal shares of a growing pie, also/known/as capitalism? Mr. Romney inelegantly makes the case that the “takers” in the 47% of Americans who do not pay income taxes, are now poised to overwhelm the “makers” he seeks to represent. Mr. Romney may know more about economics than Mr. Obama, but the public thinks he doesn’t understand the economic problems of average Americans.

Do we choose to vote for someone we want to spend time with?

As we approach the first presidential debate this evening, how will Americans decide who wins? Most of the audience will have long ago decided who they will vote for, if they vote (less than 60% of eligible voters will cast ballots.) Will any of the few truly undecideds in the electorate be swayed by the arguments that can be communicated within this rigid time frame?

Apart from their purely show-business aspect, do the debates in any significant way enhance our appreciation of the minds or the characters of the presidential candidates? Mostly the debates will show how quickly the candidates can organize and regurgitate sound bites and parry attacks without becoming flustered. A fast response has little to do with genuine thought, which requires brooding over a subject, laboriously working through its complications. Quickness of response, so central to the debater, is a useful  but minor skill that has little to do with handling difficult questions and serious problems.

In the final analysis, Americans usually vote in presidential elections for the candidate with the greater empathy, or likability. The clear exception here would be Richard Nixon, who it seems nobody liked very much. In this election, it’s not even close. Mr. Romney is another rich old white man, and Mr. Obama is seriously cool!

A Lame Duck session of Congress in the United States occurs when the legislative body is in session after an election has been held, but the term of the newly elected Congress has not yet begun. Lame Duck members have been defeated or did not stand for re-election.The term “lame duck” was originally applied to bankrupt businessmen in 18th century England, whose impairment rendered them vulnerable, like “a game bird injured by shot.”

Starting in 1789, the terms of the President, the Vice President and the incoming Congress began on March 4, four months after the elections were held. This was a reasonable delay at the end of the 18th century, when a newly-elected official might require several months to put his affairs in order and then undertake the journey from his home to the national capital. The adoption in 1935 of the 20th Amendment shortened the interval between an election and the beginning of a legislative term. American national elections are now held on the 1st Tuesday in November in even numbered years. The first session of a Congress takes place on January 3 of the following (odd numbered) year, and the President is sworn in on January 20th of every other even numbered year.

The eight week interregnum encompassed the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays and was thought to allow  for a more reasonable transition for members of Congress. Congressional business that was required to be undertaken in the last 2 months of any congressional term was expected to be of such importance as to warrant attention from a lame duck session. Procrastination and deadlock are not a recent Congressional phenomenon. Since 1935, there have been 18 lame duck sessions out of a possible 38. It is fairly certain that 2012 will see a 19th session.

This year’s session promise to be one of the most active in many years. Big-ticket items — including the expiring Bush tax rates, budget sequestration and an increase in the debt ceiling — will have to be dealt with by Dec. 31. Votes on those politically tough issues are unlikely during campaign season, and the probable increase in Republican congressional members provides a last chance for Democrats to further their legislative agenda. Other issues that require action from Congress include the expiration of the payroll tax cut, extending unemployment benefits, reversing cuts to doctors’ Medicare payments, spikes in the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and the estate tax and the renewal of a tax-extenders (special interests ) package. All pending bills die at the end of a Congress and must be reintroduced at the start of a new two-year term, so they can’t simply wait to be dealt with by the new (presumably more Republican) Congress.

Some might argue that a Lame Duck session frees up Congress to put needed legislation forward without the threat of an election hanging over their heads. The theory is that a clearly approaching deadline allows for compromises to be reached across party lines. This cynical approach to government is completely contrary to the spirit our democratic traditions. One of the rights of our citizens is to be able to hold our elected officials accountable for their votes, and to vote the incumbents out if we so choose. Do we want to enact important legislation during a Lame Duck session? Under time pressure to accept compromises, members of Congress routinely vote on thousand page bills even their staff hasn’t properly reviewed and considered, and often haven’t even fully read.

One wonders why today we have a delay of more than a week or two between elections and the term of a new Congress or President? Technology has long made overnight travel possible from anywhere in the US to Washington. Under a parliamentary system there are usually no fixed dates for elections or the beginning of terms, so that a new session of parliament will always begin with its first meeting after an election has been held. Often the previous parliament is simply dissolved by the head of state at the request of the head of government. It is time to end the spectacle of a dysfunctional Congress made to appear even more inept with Lame Duck sessions.

Last week America celebrated her birthday. 236 years later, the United States remains one of the great bastions of freedom. Our citizens generally abide by the rule of law, property and civil rights as we go about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of course we have criminal activity by some individuals and corporate interests, which we (mostly) expect our police and regulatory system will deal with. We also believe that illegal behavior from our public officials, once exposed, will not be tolerated.

Beyond their salaries and benefits, most elected officials receive the esteem of their fellow citizens not only for their public service but out of respect for their offices. Many who are elected do so not for money, ideology, or a lust for power. They are motivated by the desire to serve and “make a difference”, and the belief that they are qualified to do so.

The implicit bargain citizens make with their officials is that in return for the prestige and power of their offices, our politicians will serve us faithfully to the best of their abilities free of the corruption that plagues many foreign governments. There are a bevy of regulations in place to prevent conflicts of interest, taking bribes, trading on inside information or otherwise allow politicians to unduly profit from their positions. Furthermore, we expect our officials not to commit “acts of moral turpitude” (see Anthony Weiner), not lie to us, and basically not break the laws of the land.

On June 26th, the third longest serving member of Congress, Charles B. Rangel, won the Democratic primary for the 13th House District in New York, all but guaranteeing his reelection in November. Each congressional district represents about 700,000 Americans, of which about 540,000 are of voting age. In the primary, only 39,000 votes were cast, about 7% of eligible voters, and Mr. Rangel received a plurality of less than 50% amongst the 4 candidates on the ballot, with an advantage of about 1000 votes over second place candidate State Senator Adriano Espaillat.

Such a low level turnout allows those narrow interests who have directly benefited from an official’s support to legally hijack the will of the larger community. (Curiously, the 13th District, which includes Harlem, Washington Heights and a portion of Bronx, has historically been majority black, but with demographic changes and redistricting it is now majority hispanic. Mr. Espaillat would have been the first Dominican-American in Congress and presumably was counting on widespread hispanic support in the race, but historically blacks vote at roughly twice the rate of hispanics, nullifying their numerical advantage in this contest.)

Mr. Rangel was first elected in 1970, defeating Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in the Democratic primary. In 1967, the long serving Mr. Powell had been excluded from his seat by Democratic Representatives-elect of the 90th Congress following ethics violations and allegations of corruption, but Powell was re-elected in 1968 and regained his seat in a 1969 Supreme Court ruling. In 1970, Mr Rangel won the primary by only about 250 votes out of 25,000 cast.

Irrespective of whether one agrees with Mr. Rangel politically, he was once in-arguably  an effective leader of Afro Americans and Democrats in the House of Representatives, and a champion for the development of his Harlem district. He is a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus and a former Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the chief tax writing committee of the House.

In an eerie echo of his predecessor, in November 2010, Mr. Rangel was found guilty on 11 charges by the House Ethics Committee, and subsequently received a sanction of censure from the entire House. He was only the 23rd congressman in history ever to receive this penalty, and the first in over 30 years. The bipartisan committee stated “public office is a public trust [and Rangel] violated that trust.” Among the violations were:

• improper solicitation of millions of dollars from corporate officials and lobbyists (who had business before the House Ways & Means Committee) for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at The City College of New York
• failure to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars of income and assets on financial disclosure forms and IRS returns
• maintaining a rent-stabilized unit in a Harlem luxury apartment building for his campaign committee
• maintaining multiple rent-stabilized apartments for his personal use, saving over $30,000/year in rent
• failure to pay income taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic

Mr. Rangel served his constituents for over 40 years. The violations of House Ethics regulations occurred over at least the last 10 years. He is now 82 years old, and has said that he will retire in 2014. Does such a politician with such long service deserve a final term so as to finish his career with dignity?

Despite renown for compassion, as Diogenes I am astonished that Charlie Rangel remains in Congress. One could hardly present a better case for term limits. Rangel started as a leader of his community, and over time came to believe he was “entitled” to more than the public ever envisioned. As a long time member and later chair of the House Ways & Means Committee, there is no one who should have been more exacting in their effort to comply with the rules. These infractions were wide ranging and long lived, not even close to being acceptable. If he knowingly committed these violations he is corrupt. If he didn’t know he was an idiot. Either way, Rangel is unworthy of elected office.

We should expect and demand that our publicly elected officials adhere to a higher than average code of personal moral and financial conduct. Shame alone will not deter the corrupt from trying to hold on to power. As citizens we need to exercise our right to vote to prevent those malefactors from keeping their offices. If not, as H.L. Mencken said “people deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard!”

Americans tend to think of the presidential election as a direct vote of the people. Most are aware that there is a subtotal of votes by state, with that state’s total “electoral votes” going entirely to the highest vote getter in that state. This is why we know that there are “battleground states” which have a relatively even split of voters, and are therefore hotly contested by the candidates.

Such an understanding would be incomplete. America’s founding fathers had only recently completed a revolution against a distant power that imposed “taxation without representation”, and were acutely apprehensive about ceding too much power to a central authority. They created an entirely new form of government, a federal republic of independent states with many checks and balances upon the powers of a national government.  Congress was organized as a bicameral body, one with representation apportioned strictly by population (the House of Representatives), and another (the Senate) with equal votes for each state, regardless of its size or population. This format was intended to preserve the rights of the smaller states, and prevent them from being overwhelmed in government by the larger states.

The Electoral College (EC) today has 538 Electors. Each state is entitled to a number of electors equal to that state’s representation in Congress (Senate + House). Because each state has two Senators and at least one Representative, every state has at least three electors. Since the 23rd Amendment passed in 1961,  Washington, DC has also had 3 electoral votes.  Currently California has the largest number of electors: 55.

The electors meet in their respective state capitals about a month after the general election to cast their votes for president and vice president. These electors, who together form the EC, are the ones who actually elect the president. If no candidate gets a majority of the electoral vote, the House of Representatives elects the president. This happened in 1800 and again in 1824. The choice in the House is made on a one-state/one-vote basis, which means, obviously, that the single representatives of Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, and North and South Dakota which combined represent about 1.4% of all Americans, have voting power equal to the combined delegations of California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, which represent about 40.3% of us. States rights are one thing, but does this sound remotely democratic to anyone?

States with many buffalo and few people, like Wyoming, derive disproportionate influence in national elections from the EC and are not keen on changing it. Since every state gets at least three electors, low-population states have far more political power than they would have in a direct election system. The number of voters per elector is about four times smaller in the three-elector states than in the more populous states. Direct election of the president would eliminate the current bias in favor of the Republicans, since there are five predominantly Republican three elector states and only two states and Washington, D.C. are mostly Democratic three elector entities. The Electoral Map below shows the current votes of each state and indicates whether their populations are overwhelmingly Democratic, Republican or mixed. It should be noted that the colors shown are for the states’ voting history in presidential elections. In practice, many of the states are “purple”, with the parties splitting the governorship and control of state legislatures.

Electoral Map of the US by 270towin.com

It is curious to note that every state elects it’s “president”, a/k/a Governor with a strictly popular vote? If one person, one vote is the right way to pick every governor, why not the country’s president?

Some might argue that the Electoral College hampers democracy because it prevents 3rd party candidates from prevailing unless their support is concentrated in fewer states rather than widespread thinly across the country. But broad distribution of support is also required in order to be able to govern, so perhaps that is a good thing?

Having an EC affects voter turnout in various ways. Differences in turnout between swing states and non-swing states under the current electoral college system suggest that replacing the EC with direct election by popular vote would likely increase turnout and participation significantly.The Electoral College depresses voter participation in much of the nation. If one knows their vote will be overwhelmed by the other party’s advantage in that state, their vote doesn’t “count” and we retard participation. Also, a state with low voter turnout gets precisely the same number of electoral votes as if it had a high turnout. By contrast, a well-designed (more) direct election system could spur states to get out the vote.

Of course, one might question the notion that higher voter participation in elections would be a social positive. Some might note that one of the reasons the founding fathers created the EC was that the general public could not be entrusted to wisely choose their president directly. Of course, this was a time when women were disenfranchised and slaves, who of course could not vote, we counted as 3/5ths of a human in determining the apportionment of the slave states’ electoral votes and congressional districts.

Another artifact of the EC is that our candidates mostly campaign in the battleground states that might go either way in a general election. In 2004, for example, a full 99% of all advertising expenditures by the two major-party candidates were concentrated in only seventeen of the states. Florida and Ohio alone accounted for more than 45% ($111 million) of the $235 million spent in all of these states.

Perhaps the most powerful argument for scrapping the EC is that it does not serve the nation well when we have a closely contested election. On four occasions, 1876, 1888, 1960, and 2000, the winner of a plurality of the popular vote was not elected president.

So with all these problems, why don’t Americans demand an end to the EC? Isn’t it merely a relic of a bygone age? Getting rid of the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment. Amending the constitution is (by design) an exceptionally difficult process requiring not only 2/3 majorities of both houses of Congress, but also by the legislatures of 3/4 of the states.

A major criticism of the EC is its winner-take-all character. If Florida’s 25 electoral votes had been split in 2000 13 for George Bush and 12 for Al Gore, then Gore would have been president. There is nothing in the constitution mandating winner-take-all. The manner for choosing electors is regulated by state, not federal law. In fact, two states, Maine and Nebraska, do not use winner-take-all. In those states, the winner of each congressional district gets one elector and the winner of the state as a whole gets an additional two.

Diogenes believes that the fastest, easiest, and best to be hoped for solution to the problems posed by the Electoral College would be for each state to have directly proportional allocation of its electoral votes to each candidate. This would preserve a large measure of the disproportionate influence of smaller states in presidential elections while forcing candidates to run more truly national campaigns that would engage much higher proportions of the electorate. Any state that wanted to adopt this system need only pass a state law to do so. No constitutional amendment would be required.