Tag: democracy

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ballot access national politics & policies

The Incumbency Fraud

election integrity, voter suppression

“There’s nothing that shortening the period by which people can vote early does to combat any perceived fraud,” Democratic Party attorney Marc Elias said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “It’s really just a cover for what they’re really trying to do, which is to make it harder to vote.”

At issue is a new law courtesy of Iowa Republicans, along with numerous bills pending in other states, addressing what Republicans call “election integrity” and Democrats call “voter suppression.”

Host Chuck Todd informed viewers that a poll found two-thirds of Floridians wanted more early voting days. Not fewer.

Hardly surprising, since that’s easiest for voters. And while voting should be easy, ease is not the only consideration.

The Iowa “law shortens the early voting period to 20 days from the current 29,” the Associated Press reported, “just three years after Republicans reduced the period from 40 days.”

Here’s why I support that change, though it would be better even shorter*:

  • We should vote together. Not weeks apart. With three, four, six weeks of early voting, election day ballots can be cast with a different set of facts than those cast so many weeks earlier. 
  • The longer the time during which ballots are cast, the greater the expense in running for office. Candidates must be in touch when voters make their decisions. Since incumbents hold an average four-to-one spending advantage over challengers, more expensive campaigns give incumbents an even greater advantage.  

So, while early voting doesn’t cause fraud, by making elections more expensive it fosters what we might call “the incumbency fraud.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* One provision in H.R. 1, which passed the U.S. House on a party-line vote, requires that states allow at least 15 days of early voting. The overall bill is terrible; plus, we are better off with the states as laboratories of democracy, rather than marionettes of Washington. But my preference would be not more than 15 days.

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insider corruption Voting

Democrats’ Shadow Play

shadows, Democrats, Democrat Party

There is more than one way to rig an election.

Sometimes all you need is a monkey wrench. A little chaos might help you get your way.

Last February 3, Democrats voted in the Iowa caucuses, placing Bernie Sanders in the lead. But a major “foul-up” occurred. “The state party was unable to report a winner on caucus night,” explains Tyler Pager at Politico, “the mobile app to report results failed to work for many precinct chairs, the back-up telephone systems were jammed and some precincts had initial reporting errors.”

The chaos certainly did not help winner Bernie Sanders, disabled from making publicity hay while the sun shined. There was enough darkness for democracy to die in.

The Iowa Democratic Party commissioned an audit to throw some belated light on the brouhaha, and the results are in: the Democratic National Committee is mostly to blame. 

“According to the report, the DNC demanded the technology company, Shadow, build a conversion tool just weeks before the caucuses to allow the DNC to have real-time access to the raw numbers because the national party feared the app would miscalculate results.” But the DNC and Shadow used incompatible database formats, spawning chaos. 

In a generous mood? Call it sheer incompetence. 

But the mess sure . . . smells . . . suspicious.

“The caucuses are a cherished tradition for Iowans,” reports Reid J. Epstein at The New York Times, “but an increasing number of national Democrats say they are outdated and undemocratic.”

Well, they are when you make them so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people partisanship

Mainstream Disinformation

Joe Biden, election, nightmare

“A historic crime and disgrace.” 

That is how left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald characterizes U.S. media coverage of the 2020 presidential race.

Back in October, he resigned from The Intercept, a publication he co-founded with the aim of providing “fearless, adversarial journalism that holds the powerful accountable.” Its editors, you see, refused to publish his writing unless he removed “all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”

When the New York Post, the nation’s fourth largest newspaper, reported on emails from a laptop belonging to his son, Hunter Biden, Facebook and Twitter quickly blocked folks from sharing the news. Arguing the story was “hacked,” Twitter shut down the Post’s account for the critical final weeks of the campaign.*

“We will not waste our time,” declared National Public Radio, on “stories that are just pure distractions.” Now, with Hunter acknowledging the FBI criminal investigation of the family business, the state-media outlet’s Distraction Meter appears out of whack.

But there’s more. “[A]s soon as these [Hunter Biden] documents became known,” Greenwald told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, “the operatives in the intelligence community, the CIA, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former NSA Director] Michael Hayden — all of the standard professional liars — issued a letter claiming that this material was the hallmark of Russian disinformation, even though they had no basis for thinking that.”**

This, he points out, “gave the media permission to lie to the public continuously” by enthusiastically repeating the baseless claim. 

Most ominously, there was again “domestic interference on the part of intelligence agencies in order to manipulate the outcome of our election,” Greenwald explains.

The election is over. Our national nightmare is not. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* There were two huge problems with Twitter’s excuse: (a) the Post’s revelations were not from a hack, and (b) stories are continually written from information hacked and unlawfully leaked to the media — and then shared widely on Facebook and Twitter without any impediment.

** Greenwald is best known for breaking the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information showing unconstitutional NSA spying on Americans, while working for the UK Guardian. Mr. Snowden claimed his “breaking point” in deciding to release the information “was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.”

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

Signs of the Times

Donald Trump, sign, censorship

Texas A&M University’s Student Code of Conduct office is harassing a student for posting pro-Biden signs on campus last November.

Don’t believe it? 

Well, ya got me. The signs were pro-Trump, not pro-Biden.

I committed this small and fleeting deception to make a point. The fact that posting of signs, announcements, etc., on a university campus, including the Texas A&M campus, is nothing unusual. The kids these days (along with those of the last umpteen centuries) have always engaged in political debate on campus, trying to promulgate their views.

Doing so doesn’t typically cause big problems with officials of U.S. universities. Unless — and, alas, increasingly — the message being promulgated contradicts approved establishmentarian political themes.

According to a CampusReform.org report, Dion Okeke, president of Students for Trump, received a letter from the school’s Student Conduct Office saying he’d better meet with the Student Conduct office about posting the signs. Otherwise, he could face charges of improper student conduct, and his registration could be placed on “administrative hold.”

Universities doubtless have rules about sign placement. Okeke’s sign-posting sounds like a minor infraction at worst.

If it even was an infraction at all.

Are the veiled and not-so-veiled threats in the letter signed by Jessica Welsch, assistant coordinator of the Student Conduct Office, a proportionate response to any alleged sin by Dion Okeke? No.

Meanwhile, a Texas A&M student who perpetrated a hoax about alleged racism last summer is not in any trouble with the school.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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judiciary national politics & policies

Biden’s Court-Packing Scheme

Joe Biden, Supreme Court, court packing, election, Democracy

Hold on! What scheme am I talking about?

Joe Biden hasn’t said that he agrees with other Democrats (including former Democratic presidential candidates) who propose that the U.S. Congress act to dramatically expand the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Joe Biden hasn’t said that at all. 

In his first and so-far-only debate with President Trump he refused to say, because if he did then that would become the issue.

“The issue is the American people should speak,” he said, and then turned to the camera. “You should go out and vote. . . . Vote and let your senators know how strongly you feel. Vote now. Make sure you in fact let people know.”

Know what, precisely? To vote to allow a Democratic administration to seize control of the Court, overcoming any constitutional objections to his (or her) socialist schemes?

But then Biden turned against the voters, when asked on Friday, whether voters deserve to know where he stands on court-packing: “No, they don’t deserve” to know. “I’m not going to play his [Trump’s] game. . . .”

So, officially, we “don’t know” whether Biden supports packing the High Court the way FDR tried in 1937.

Do voters deserve better from Biden? 

They do not! 

O, those voters — always demanding to know positions and agendas and things. Playing right into the hands of the opposition. 

Come on, man! Ya gotta vote for the guy to know what’s in him.

I know what’s on your mind. You’re asking, “Are you saying that Joe Biden’s coy covertness toward the imposition of one-party authoritarian government exemplifies a crude disdain for voters’ legitimate desire to know what their vote will get them and is even more disqualifying than his stealth court-packing scheme?”

Please. Don’t put words in my mouth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall Voting

Worms for Early Bird Voting?

ballot box, voting, democracy, money, pandemic

Election Day is six weeks away. Yet, in my home state of Virginia, voting began last week.

Is it responsible to cast a ballot so early? 

You may know with metaphysical certainty how you’re voting for president — even in the event of some major cataclysm — but have all the state rep and city council and ballot measure campaigns also played out fully enough for you?

Here in Virginia, we get few candidate races in our split-up state and federal elections, much less ballot issues to decide. I could have made all my (very few) choices months ago. But I trust that in a more competitive and healthy representative democracy we would more want to hear out the candidates.

A lot can happen in six weeks. And you cannot change your vote once it’s cast.*

The new Democratic-controlled Legislature — in reaction to the pandemic, to prevent crowding at the polls — expanded the early voting period this year. It started September 18 and ends October 31.** 

There are costs to expanding early voting — including making campaigns more expensive to run and win. Disabled from marshaling advertising into a two-or-three-week period before the vote, campaigns are forced to sustain publicity for a month. Or longer. 

While better-funded incumbents have little difficulty with the added cost, it cripples challengers. It especially handicaps grassroots ballot initiative proponents battling public employee unions or the Chamber of Commerce. 

Make the voting process comfortable and easy for citizens. But let’s be certain not to make it comfortable and easy for incumbents and special interests.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* In Sweden, you can change your early vote, informs my friend Bruno Kaufmann, a journalist and direct democracy advocate. They call it “second voting.” 

** Though several other states routinely allow more than six weeks of early voting.

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Accountability incumbents

When More Is Better

Congress, representation, democracy,

On Monday, we considered how to get better representation in Congress for the 700,000 folks residing in our nation’s capital city, Washington, D.C.

Today, let’s tackle how the rest of us get any semblance of representation. We are sliced up into 435 congressional districts, each comprised of roughly 700,000 people electing a “representative” supposedly doing our business in Washington. 

Are they doing our business? 

The nearly universal and long-standing public disapproval of Congress answers that question.*

As the framers of the Constitution saw it, Congress would be the first and most powerful branch of government, as it would be closest to the people. The original idea was to create in members of Congress a “fidelity to their constituents,” James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57, which “would be found very insufficient without the restraint of frequent elections. Hence . . . the House of Representatives is so constituted as to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people.”

Madison goes on to say that congresspeople “will be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to cease.”

Yet well-funded congressional incumbents sporting 90 percent-plus re-election rates cycle after cycle, decade after decade — serving 20 and 30 and 50-plus years — cannot plausibly feel either compelled or dependent.

Looming large over the problem? Huge population districts. 

The more voters in a district, the more expansive and expensive campaigns must be . . . and the bigger the need for help from special interests . . . and the more powerful those groups’ influence.

Conversely, the smaller a district is, the more influence constituents individually have on their representative.

It may seem paradoxical, but it isn’t: citizens will wield more power when there are more representatives in Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* In April, after sending stimulus checks to the entire country, Congress did more than double its approval rating, though it is still seen unfavorably by a lopsided two-to-one margin.

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ideological culture local leaders political challengers

Sans Champion, Again?

Rep. Justin Amash, democracy, presidential race,

For a moment there — a few weeks — a comparatively youthful candidate with a gentle, conscientious and respectful temperament seemed poised to challenge the major parties’ sausage-twisting septuagenarians,The Donald and Sleepy Joe. A congressman from Michigan had entered the Libertarian Party’s hat-strewn ring, offering us something serious for Death Race 2020.

Then, Saturday, Rep. Justin Amash sent a series of tweets announcing that he was ending his presidential bid.

Presidential campaigns aren’t easy. And between outrageous anti-democratic ballot access hurdles and the pandemic, it has gotten even more difficult. 

Win or lose — and Amash was going to lose — I’ll miss what the Great Lakes State representative might have gotten a chance to say to audiences across the country. 

About partisanship. 

About political control. 

In Washington. 

“That’s why we have so much discord,” Amash told constituents at a 2019 town hall, “because members of Congress are just following the party line all of the time.”

Party bosses?

“Right now, you have a system in which the Speaker of the House controls the entire process,” charges Amash. “That was true under Republicans and it’s true under Democrats. Under [Speaker] Paul Ryan, for example, we had for the first time in Congress’s history an entire term where we weren’t allowed to amend any legislation on the House floor. 

“And so far under Speaker Pelosi the same thing has happened,” he added. “No amendments have been allowed on the House floor.”

“You need the House to be a deliberative body where everyone participates,” Amash declares, “and everyone has a chance to offer their amendments, to offer their ideas.” 

Great point. 

We sure could use a champion for it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Rep. Justin Amash, democracy, presidential race,

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ideological culture political economy too much government

Ex-Californians

Texas, California, democracy, migration, immigration,

California, “the U.S. state most synonymous with all varieties of growth — vegetal, technological, and human — is at the precipice of its first-ever population decline,” writes Derek Thompson of The Atlantic. And folks in other states like Texas and Idaho are none too happy. 

You see, the Californians fleeing are finding new homes elsewhere. Especially in Texas and Idaho.

Oddly, Mr. Thompson breezes by the biggest source of anxiety: ideology. “Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a warning on Twitter to Californians moving to his state: ‘Remember those high taxes, burdensome regulations, & socialistic agenda advanced in CA? We don’t believe in that.’ The sentiment was echoed in various warnings in Dallas newspapers about the awful ‘California-ing’ of North Texas.” Thompson quickly moves on to interrogate how real the general exodus from the Golden State is.

Which is interesting — but much more important is the main worry about all immigration: will these new citizens vote to overturn the order that attracted them in the first place?

There is certainly anecdotal evidence that this can be a real problem.

Also not mentioned in the The Atlantic squib is just how messed up California now is.

What can be done? The idea humorously floated by an Idaho politician — a “$26 billion wall to keep out people moving from the Golden State” — is just a joke.

And secession/expulsion of the 23rd state in the union is not realistic, either.

What is realistic is for non-California politicians to float in the U.S. Congress a willingness to break up the state into separate pieces, creating at least two new states. At least then, Jefferson State citizens could put up with West California émigrés. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. There are very serious political problems of representation in California that breaking up could help fix, by increasing the number of legislators and minimizing the ratio between representatives and the people they serve.

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Texas, California, democracy, migration, immigration,

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general freedom international affairs

Totalitarianized

Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, democracy, freedom,

Legislation introduced last April to allow the extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to mainland China motivated millions into the streets in protests that have not yet ended . . . 

. . . including a major pro-democracy rally scheduled for tomorrow in Causeway Bay.

Traveling to Hong Kong and Taiwan months ago, the glimpse I caught of Hongkongers’ courageous struggle spurs me to applaud George Will’s judgment in Sunday’s Washington Post: “Nothing more momentous happened” in 2019. 

The extradition bill has been withdrawn, sure, but Hongkongers know well that without real democracy they have no long-term hope of avoiding the repressive rule of the Chinese Communist Party . . . which may no longer be “communist,” but remains totally totalitarian.

Ask a million Uighurs. 

Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-installed chief executive, has long labeled the protesters “selfish rioters.” But new pro-democracy candidates won nearly 90 percent of seats in last month’s local elections, demonstrating which side the public is on. 

This year began with newly un-term-limited Chinese President Xi Jinping threatening military action against Taiwan. The island nation of 24 million, some 100 miles off the coast of the mainland, has been offered the same “one country, two systems” arrangement China has with Hong Kong . . . what Mr. Will dubbed “a formula for the incremental suffocation of freedom.”

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, is “loathed by Beijing,” reports the South China Morning Post, “because her party refuses to accept the idea that Taiwan is part of the so-called one-China principle which denies the island’s independence.” 

Her opponent in the upcoming national election on the 11th, like some in the NBA, “favours much warmer relations with mainland China.”

The Taiwanese, however — like Hongkongers — appear increasingly resistant to being totalitarianized.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

2019 Commentaries on Hong Kong and Taiwan

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Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, democracy, freedom,

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