Last year, I asked you to help support science. This year, I am asking you to pitch in to help end the corruption of U.S. democracy through a donation to Equal Citizens. Equal Citizens is pursuing several important projects such as fixing the Electoral College, ending SuperPACs, and ending voter suppression. There is tons of information concerning the specifics of how they are doing this on equalcitizens.us.
Equal Citizens does not bombard one’s mailbox with constant requests for donations like some other organizations. Indeed, they haven’t done this kind of a campaign in a year. To help support them, I am hosting a fundraiser through Facebook where I have committed to matching up to $500 of donations. Won’t you add your support as well? You can do so through my Facebook fundraising page or directly through the Equal Citizens site. Thank you!
{ 19 comments }
MFB 10.23.18 at 8:58 am
On the whole, these are worthy goals (some worthier than others) for the Democratic Party to pursue. It does, however, worry me that this is being pursued, not through the mobilisation of the electorate or of the extra-parliamentary public, but by spending a load of money on court action. In effect, this places the agenda in the hands of the sponsor, and thus in the hands of one of the oligarchs who caused the trouble in the first place.
I suppose you can argue that legal action sponsored by very wealthy people is only one tool in the hands of supporters of the Democratic Party and that mass mobilisation and the forthcoming mid-term elections are two other similar tools. I suppose that might be true. But somehow, despite lacking much knowledge of contemporary Democratic party politics, I can’t help feeling a little uneasy.
Paul Davis 10.23.18 at 6:07 pm
@MFB … there’s no inherent reason to view this as “legal action sponsored by very wealthy people”. It may indeed turn out that (say) 86% of the money to support the legal action comes entirely from people in the top income or wealth decile. But it’s also possible that it could be spread more evenly through the income/wealth range.
Note that in general, the cases EC seems to want to take on cannot, in general, be settled by mobilisation of the electorate, because they ultimately are constitutional questions. Take their “end SuperPAC” plans … Alaska already has a law banning them, but SpeechNow is blocking the enforcement of that law. Maybe mass protests would nudge the SCOTUS one way or another, but we continue to live in a constitutional republic in which certain decisions are not left to majoritarian voting.
nastywoman 10.24.18 at 6:07 am
– as I gladly and hopefully ”generously” helped to support the science project with… dough… there – indeed – seems to be… something just too ”ironic” in fighting ”the corruption of U.S. democracy through donations”?
Like… somehow I never have and never will give any ”donations” to any ”political” parties or ”causes” – it’s just too… too?
”Ironic”?
Ed 10.25.18 at 12:44 pm
“U.S. democracy” is a human concept. Humans can be corrupt, but concepts are just concepts. Money is better spent exposing corrupt humans.
F 10.26.18 at 8:17 pm
I have some serious concerns about this group. The first issue I investigated was “fixing the electoral college”. What is this group’s strategy to fix the electoral college? They want to outlaw winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes. However, if they succeed in this the most likely solution is for all states to allocate electoral votes by congressional district (or proportional by state popular vote).
The problem is both of these “solutions” actually exacerbate the Republican advantage in the electoral college. For instance, Obama’s 2012 win (51-47 popular vote) goes from a 332-206 win in the EC to a 275-262 squeaker if you allocate proportionally. Trump’s 2016 win gets thrown to the House, where he wins anyway.
The website totally fails to address this. This proposal is hopelessly naive, which isn’t totally surprising coming from Lessig.
Kenny Easwaran 10.27.18 at 8:16 pm
Notably – if you move to the vote by congressional district, the 2012 Obama win doesn’t just become a “squeaker”, but instead Romney wins 282-255:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/02/03/mitt-romney-would-be-president-right-now-if-we-linked-electoral-votes-to-congressional-results/
(Surely there’s a slight miscalculation there – the total only adds up to 537, which Nate Silver has taught us is not the total electoral vote.)
Eszter Hargittai 10.27.18 at 9:34 pm
Isn’t the point though that if there is a different system then the entire run-up to the elections will play out differently and so we’d have different results in the first place? That is, it doesn’t make sense to go back and recalculate the results given that you are still just calculating the outcome of that prior system.
Z 10.27.18 at 10:35 pm
However, if they succeed in this the most likely solution is for all states to allocate electoral votes by congressional district (or proportional by state popular vote).
Or that radical idea: one man, one vote.
Mike-SMO 10.28.18 at 6:30 am
The objectives of “Fixing” the Electoral College and stopping “voter suppression” are right out of the Progressive playbook. Those actually mean allowing the progressive “Blues” approved ways to cheat during elections and thus gain illegitimate power to control the Republic. That may sound good in the blue coastal ghettoes but along the inland water-ways, not so much.
I obviously will not donate anything to this hostile project, but, what can I do to obstruct this attempted “coup” besides vote in November?
I have seen Chicago, Saint Louis, Detroit, and Baltimore. That is what you are proposing.
Asking for a friend……..
J-D 10.28.18 at 7:03 am
One of their projects is to get a court ruling confirming the right of presidential electors to vote for whomever they like, regardless of anything they may have previously told the ordinary voters about their intentions. How exactly is that supposed to help? Anything?
J-D 10.28.18 at 7:07 am
Mike-SMO
What leads “you” to think that the “electoral college” and “voter suppression” are “good ideas”? My “country” seems to manage well enough without “them”: I don’t think “we” have become a whole lot like “Chicago”, “Saint Louis”, “Detroit”, and “Baltimore”.
Orange Watch 10.28.18 at 6:46 pm
JD@10:
Securing the right for electors to vote for whomsoever they choose without fear of reprisal from bad-faith elector laws or summary dismissal and replacement prior to the state legislature certifying the elector vote could potentially reduce the attractiveness of electors to would-be minority rulers. Right now, electors are ostensibly independent actors but in fact they are of course effectively just a number of votes for a state to allocate according to a methodology of their choice. Given the minuscule number of bad-faith electors over the centuries, it would likely change very little, but if we’re stuck with the archaic patriarchal nonsense of the Electoral College, it would be better for it to actually behave in the manner it claims to. And all it would take for the GOP’s current love affair with the Electoral College’s putative “safeguard against mob rule” would be for the rights of bad-faith electors to be established prior to 10 or 20 choosing to swing a close election by exercising those rights. If that happened, the GOP would turn on the EC immediately and without mercy.
J-D 10.28.18 at 11:41 pm
Orange Watch
On the contrary, it would have exactly the opposite effect. Somebody who did not have majority popular support but who thought there might be a chance of getting elected President by securing the support of a majority of the electoral college would be encouraged to make the attempt, not discouraged, by an explicit affirmation that the electors can do whatever they like, regardless of previous pledges.
Better how, and for whom? It certainly wouldn’t contribute to the supposed goal of Equal Citizens of making all votes count equally.
If they swung it to the Republican candidate, Republicans would love it.
F 10.29.18 at 8:18 pm
“Isn’t the point though that if there is a different system then the entire run-up to the elections will play out differently and so we’d have different results in the first place?”
I have tremendous doubts that this would meaningfully change. Structural factors matter, possibly more than anything else.
What are these things that will play out differently? Will gerrymandering and/or democratic vote concentration suddenly lessen as a result? Seems unlikely. Will different advertising/campaigning meaningfully change results? The stability of polling data suggests that large swings in opinion are unlikely, and turnout is more likely to be influenced by the general political climate.
F 10.29.18 at 9:32 pm
“Or that radical idea: one man, one vote”
This is, of course, the right answer. But it’s actually impossible for this group’s lawsuit to result in that outcome because that requires either the NPV compact or a constitutional amendment, not a declaration that winner-take-all allotment of electoral votes is unconstitutional.
J-D 10.29.18 at 10:13 pm
F
Under the current system, the basic strategic advice for somebody campaigning for the Presidency is: ‘Focus your campaigning efforts on those States which you estimate are likely to be close, and within those States focus on the areas where you estimate there are likely to be large numbers of voters open to being persuaded to vote for you.’
If, for example, the system was that whichever candidate obtained a plurality in the popular vote won the election, the basic strategic advice would be: ‘Focus your campaigning efforts on those areas where you estimate there are likely to be large numbers of voters open to being persuaded to vote for you.’
If the the current system of allocating electoral college votes by State was retained. but each State’s electoral votes was distributed in proportion to the popular vote, then the basic strategic advice would remain as it is now; but if all States adopted the Congressional-district system currently used by Nebraska and Maine, then the basic strategic advice would become: ‘Focus your campaigning efforts on those Congressional districts which you you estimate are likely to be close, and within those Congressional districts focus on the areas where you estimate there are likely to be large numbers of voters open to being persuaded to vote for you.’
I don’t know what kind of broader impact would result from differences in campaign focus, or how much, but there would have to be something.
Orange Watch 10.29.18 at 11:16 pm
J-D:
Better for rule of law. Unwritten norms are more precarious than actual laws, and unwritten norms that contravene written laws are antithetical to rule of law.
And your point re: minority rule is weak at best. Minority rule needs to be predictable to BE minority rule; o/w it’s just an individual electoral anomaly. The possibility of elections being unpredictable is a bug to would-be minority rulers, not a feature. Even if bad-faith elector protection is enacted, candidates will still be the ones selecting their elector slates, so the idea of a candidate running on the explicit hope of turning their opponent’s chosen electors is not terribly credible.
J-D 10.30.18 at 4:06 am
Z
F
Myself, I don’t favour disfranchising people who are not men, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.
J-D 10.31.18 at 12:32 am
Orange Watch
That might be a bad thing when the laws are good, but if the laws are bad that could be a good thing.
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