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general freedom local leaders national politics & policies political challengers U.S. Constitution

Wag that Tail, Dog

Maine, ranked choice voting, democracy, constitutionality, law,

Last November, Maine voters passed a ballot measure, Question 5, to begin electing their federal representatives to Congress, and their governor and state legislators, using Ranked Choice Voting. This selection mechanism allows voters to rank their choices, thereby removing the “spoiler effect” that often pushes citizens to support the lesser of two popular evils.*

Last month, Maine’s State Senate submitted advisory questions to the Maine Supreme Court about the new law’s constitutionality.

It is indeed constitutional. “Those who argue that ranked-choice voting conflicts with the Constitution,” explained Marshall Tinkle** in the Bangor News, “seem to be reading things into it that simply are not in the text.”

Last week, the Maine Supreme Court heard oral arguments. Justices Donald Alexander and Joseph Jabar seemed concerned about ranked-choice voting making it easier to vote for the person and not the party.

That’s not unconstitutional. But is it somehow bad?

“We are going to have a lot of people abandoning the political parties if ranked-choice voting remains,” argued Alexander. Or perhaps the parties might better serve voters?

The attorney representing the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting, James Kilbreth, reminded the justices that the voters have spoken, and as to the resistance by legislators in implementing their will, he remarked, “This is the tail-wagging-the-dog kind of problem.”

The courtroom broke out in laughter when Chief Justice Leigh Saufley responded, “Mr. Kilbreth, it’s a fairly large tail.”

I’m a big fan of ranked choice voting***, but the court’s decision is not about the policy. It’s about whether the dog (the people) will wag the tail (the legislators) or vice-versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Portland, the state’s largest city, has used ranked choice voting since 2011.

** And Tinkle should know, since he “wrote the book” on the subject — the reference book, The Maine Constitution.

*** I serve on the Board of Directors of FairVote, an organization that promotes ranked choice voting and other methods to make every person’s vote count.

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Thought

Aristotle

One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics.
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Accountability moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility term limits too much government

Ida-Heave-Ho

Gov. Butch Otter, Idaho, veto, asset forfeiture, term limits,

“Is there any chance the vetoes can be overridden?” asked a reader in response to yesterday’s commentary on Idaho Gov. Butch Otter’s veto of two pieces of common-sense legislation.

It’s a good question, because the bill reforming civil asset forfeiture and the bill easing regulations that block employment in cosmetology both passed by wide margins. Unfortunately, the answer is NO. 

According to the Gem State’s constitution, the governor has ten days after legislation reaches his desk or, at the session’s end, ten days after the legislature adjourns to decide whether to sign or veto a bill. If he vetoes after adjournment, it cannot be overridden — unless the legislature comes back into session.*

Only the governor can call legislators back into session, which is exceedingly unlikely if a new session would entail a veto override.

It turns out that Idaho is one of only six states where legislators are unable after adjournment to override a veto. Still, the problem’s simple enough to solve: legislators could propose a constitutional amendment changing the process.

Senator Steve Vick did just that, in 2014 and again in 2016. But though his amendment garnered the two-thirds majority needed in the Senate, the House never took it up. He plans to reintroduce it next year.

There’s another constitutional change needed: term limits for the governor. A 2015 poll found a whopping 84 percent of Idahoans favor such limits. Yet, legislators may be squeamish, knowing that those same voters (by that same margin) also want legislators term-limited.

“Sometimes it is amazing,” Idaho Politics Weekly’s Bob Bernick explained, “how elected officials can just ignore the will of voters.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Gov. Otter also vetoed the legislature’s repeal of the state sales tax on groceries, the timing of which legislators are challenging in court.

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Thought

C. S. Peirce

The early Greek philosopher, such as we read about in Diogenes Laertius, is certainly one of the most amusing curiosities of the whole human menagerie. It seems to have been demanded of him that his conduct should be in marked contrast with the dictates of ordinary common sense. Had he behaved as other men are supposed to do his fellow-citizens would have thought his philosophy had not taught him much.

C.S. Peirce, Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, Kenneth Laine Ketner, ed. (1992).
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Today

New Amsterdam

Orthodox Jews burn hametz in preparation for Passover

On April 20, 1657, freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (which was later renamed New York City).

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Accountability general freedom local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

A Bad Haircut

Gov. Butch Otter, Idaho, asset forfeiture, licensing, veto

Eric Boehm over at Reason excoriated Idaho Gov. Butch Otter for giving libertarians “the double bird salute.” Boehm wondered if the governor, in vetoing two bills earlier this month, had been merely “trying to make libertarians mad.”

That’s not exactly fair.

The two blocked bills, one reforming unjust civil asset forfeiture and the other easing pernicious regulation of cosmetology, did certainly appeal to libertarians. But they also appealed to conservatives and liberals. And both passed with bipartisan support.

House Bill 139 would have reduced the number of training hours for a cosmetology license and allowed folks to fix hair at special events like weddings without a license, etc. “The fact that many lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, liberals, moderates and conservatives, are working together to advance legislation in the interest of economic opportunity and prosperity,” argued Wayne Hoffman of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, “is a thing of beauty for a profession that’s all about beauty.”

But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Those who run cosmetology schools probably like more mandated hours and folks in the profession might wish for less competition. Governor Otter said as much, complaining that HB 139 was written “without input from interested parties or due regard for the health, safety and welfare of the public.”

Just how dangerous is a bad haircut?

Putting safety in context, Hoffman explained that the current mandated hours of training for a cosmetology license “is more than is required to become an EMT in Idaho.”

Gov. Otter vetoed HB 202, the civil asset forfeiture reform, at the behest of “law enforcement” — the very interested parties who gain from taking people’s stuff without bothering to charge or convict them of a crime.

That makes no sense . . . according to Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Today

The Revolution Begins

On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began when the “shot heard around the world” was fired between the 700 British troops on a mission to capture Patriot leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock and to seize a Patriot arsenal and the 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the Lexington town green. The Battle of Lexington ended with eight Americans killed and ten wounded, along with one wounded British soldier.

In Concord, a couple of hours later, British troops were encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. The British commander ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans, but on the 16-mile journey they were constantly attacked by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. By the time the British reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties. (See Liberty’s Kids for a video on these events, or the video featured on this page.)

On April 19, 1782, John Adams secured the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government.

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Thought

Patrick Henry

Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds. . . . Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.

Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention (June 5, 1788), speech regarding the Federal Constitution.
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Accountability general freedom moral hazard responsibility term limits

Trouble Over Term Limits

Paraguay, term limits, democracy, General Alfredo Stroessner, Cartes’s Colorado Party

Americans are hardly alone in strongly supporting term limits. All over the world, people who care about limited government also care about limited terms for officials wielding government power.

Especially the people of Paraguay, who remember all too well the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner. He seized power in 1954, securing it with fraudulent elections and the arrest, torture and murder of thousands of political opponents, until being removed by a 1989 military coup.

After that ugly 35-year episode, strict term limits were established in the Paraguayan Constitution: one five-year term for the president — no re-election possible.

Fast-forward to the last few weeks, when the country’s Senate violated its own rules by holding a secret session — of which even the head of the Senate was unaware — and approved a constitutional amendment allowing re-election of the president. Under Paraguay’s constitution, amendments can be enacted by the House and Senate — without a vote of the people.

Before the House could vote, however, protests erupted against the deeply unpopular term limits change. (A recent poll showed 77 percent of Paraguayans opposed the amendment.) Angry crowds battled police on the streets of Asunción, the capital, after trashing and setting fires in the National Congress building. Meanwhile, police killed one demonstrator when they attacked the Liberal Party headquarters, prompting Pope Francis to urge dialogue in this 90 percent Roman Catholic country.

Yesterday, President Horacio Cartes announced he would not seek re-election in 2018, whether the constitution is changed or not.

The head of Cartes’s Colorado Party, which was associated with Stroessner decades ago, told Reuters that any change is now “practically impossible.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Camille Paglia

Society is a system of inherited forms reducing our humiliating passivity to nature. We may alter these forms, slowly or suddenly, but no change in society will change nature.

Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, p. 1.