There must be a less excruciating way to find the least qualified person in the country.
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There must be. . .
Tag: democracy
This week, Krist Novoselic, rock-n-roll bassist of Nirvana fame and fellow board member of FairVote.org, appeared on Fox Business’s Kennedy to explain ranked choice voting.
Krist compared a single ranked ballot under the proposed system to two ballots under the current method. Often, a voter will mark the ballot for one candidate in the primary, and, if the candidate doesn’t make the cut, for another in the general election.
Ranked choice voting sort of collapses multi-candidate primaries and the shorter list of the general election into one, allowing voters to rank their choices so that when their first choice doesn’t make it, their less valued candidates get counted.
So if you prefer a candidate unlikely to win you aren’t “wasting” your vote by marking that candidate first, as today in most American elections, because your vote goes to your second choice.
The current system encourages “strategic voting,” where we deny our preferences to work around the defects of the electoral system. We end up voting for candidates we do not like, to avoid even worse, promoting mediocre and downright bad elected officials.
In Maine, Question 5 on the November ballot, sets up a ranked-choice ballot system for “the offices of United States Senator, United States Representative to Congress, Governor, State Senator and State Representative for elections held on or after January 1, 2018.” It has a not insignificant amount of support, from Mainers across the political spectrum.
But not from the state’s governor (and voicemail-performance-artist) Paul Le Page. He dubs it a way for “loser” candidates to get a “second chance.”
Just like a politician! He focuses on politicians’ chances not voters’ options.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The people, without permission, The New York Times recently explained, in
- Colombia, rejected a peace deal deemed too soft on the communist FARC guerrillas; in
- Britain, decided to leave the European Union; in
- Thailand, ratified a new constitution; and in
- Hungary, rejected the European Union refugee resettlement plan.
I’ve not perused the Colombian accord. I’m actually not permitted to vote there — though I once stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Bogotá. In lieu of moi, who better to decide than the Colombian people?
Brexit, too, was a decision for the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, not me.
Thailand is under military rule. Passage of the referendum was promoted as a pre-condition for moving toward democracy; campaigning against the constitution was outlawed. When a gun is held to your head, there is no democracy.
An unbelievable 92 percent of Hungarians rejected the EU plan to set migration policies for Hungary. But turnout below 50 percent invalidated the result.
“Though such votes are portrayed as popular governance in its purest form, studies have found that they often subvert democracy rather than serve it,” claims the Times report, “Why Referendums Aren’t as Democratic as They Seem.”
Without offering any studies.
The problems with these four ballot questions, to the degree there were any, weren’t caused by democracy, but a lack thereof.
Nonetheless, asensible academics pontificated that people are too stupid to be permitted to vote. A London School of Economics professor said referendums are “risky.” They “range from pointless to dangerous” claimed an Irish political scientist. A hyperbolic Harvard professor posited that referendums are “Russian roulette for republics.”
But which is worse: clueless academics, tyrannical pols, or . . . democracy?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Why is it when some politicians or pundits get a brilliant idea about how to make the country better, involving (of course) making people do as the government dictates, it only applies to other people?
Sunday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New York Times columnist and Times-styled conservative David Brooks bemoaned the electorate’s disunity due to the unprecedented unpopularity of Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton: “We could have a winner at 42 percent. Look at those poll numbers. . . . And so, that’s almost like a minority government. I think we’ve just got to do something about it.”
Do something? What?
Brooks explained, “Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago has an idea that every kid who graduates from high school spends the next three months in some sort of national service. So a kid from Martha’s Vineyard or Marin County is with a kid from Mobile, Alabama, and just three months, it would make a difference.”
Chicagoans will warn against emulating Mayor Emanuel.*
“I thought national service was going to be a given,” host Chuck Todd then offered. “I mean, my God, we’ve been talking about national service my whole adult life and I can’t believe we’re not there.”
News Flash: The problem with our politics is not the fault of teenagers. Nor would forcing young people to put their dreams on hold the better to toil in some social engineering scheme solve anything.
Want national service? Begin with politicians and TV talking heads.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* A whopping 62 percent of Chicagoans disapprove of their mayor and fully 40 percent want ole Rahm Never-Let-a-Crisis-Go-to-Waste Emanuel to immediately resign. The mayor’s delay in releasing an incriminating police video, until after his re-election, has been the most incendiary issue. But also consider some ugly facts about systemic breakdown in city governance: the number of murders this year is already higher than last year, four out of ten freshman in Chicago high schools fail to graduate and 91 percent of graduates going on to college require remedial courses.
Is it odd to see government employees and politicians — public servants — hold onto particular laws with a death grip?
Maybe not. In Texas, municipal government employees have been working mightily to prevent citizens from repealing local ordinances. According to a report by WOAI News Radio, the Texas “State Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee on Monday heard horror story after horror story from citizen groups which have tried to circulate petitions calling for repeal of local ordinances.”
It’s not shocking, I suppose, since those laws may give politicians and bureaucrats more power. And perhaps there’s pride of authorship.
But, despite any merit (or demerit) these laws may possess, public servants are still public servants, which means: serve the public.
Which means: uphold democratic processes.
Government is all about processes, really. This shouldn’t be too hard.
Which is why there’s no excuse for what has been going on:
- “municipal governments . . . employ ‘tricks’ and intimidation in an attempt to halt citizen petition drives”;
- they cite “bogus city ‘statutes’ which invalidate signatures”; and
- “will claim that more signatures are required than the citizens group has managed to collect.”
Basically, these government bodies are setting unreasonably high and arbitrary hurdles for petitions to get on the ballot — such as requiring “birth dates and Social Security numbers” of signers.
That often does the trick. One would have to be very careless to put one’s Social Security number onto a public document — one that anyone could see. And photograph.
For later nefarious use.
The fact that these government tactics are all illegal justifies the Senate committee probe into the malfeasance — and demands action.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On Sunday, at Townhall, I addressed the whining attacks on referendums and “democracy” that followed the Brexit referendum.
The most outrageous? A broadside from Jason Brennan.
“To have even a rudimentary sense of the pros and cons of Brexit,” argues this Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, “a person would need to possess tremendous social scientific knowledge. One would need to know about the economics and sociology of trade and immigration, the politics of centralized regulation, and the history of nationalist movements.”
In other words, most Brits needn’t worry their pretty little heads about deciding their future; experts have everything under control.
Brennan has a new book coming out, Against Democracy, wherein he posits that we need “a new system of government — epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable.”
Sound familiar? ’Tis the old Platonic whine in new wineskins.
This Philosopher King is necessary, you see, because citizens don’t posses the advanced degrees to judge whether Brennan is right or wrong. We can’t even find a Holiday Inn Express in the phonebook. Or a phonebook.
Nonetheless, why not consult other known knowers?
The late William F. Buckley, Jr., well-educated and well-spoken on political matters, once declared that he would “rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory, than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
“Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else,” warned journalist Glenn Greenwald, an expert on such hooey.
“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”
Most decisions in a free society are thankfully made by individuals (not voters, bureaucrats, or academics) about their own lives.
But when legitimate decisions of governance must be made, I’ll take democracy over rule by experts.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The biggest political story of the month? Brexit.
The people of Great Britain will vote, this week, whether to remain in, or exit, the European Union. (Britain+exit=“Brexit,” you see.)
Establishment forces in Britain have engaged in hysterical, hyperbolic overkill, warning of grave disaster were Britain to leave the union. America’s President Barack Obama contributed to this, recently, when he warned that an independent Britain might find itself placed “at the back of the queue” in trade talks.
Tragically, things got more troubling last week when anti-Brexit, pro-union campaigner Jo Cox, a Member of Parliament and prominent Labour Party activist, was brutally slain last week in front of her local library. The man had just left a mental health facility, after requesting help.
At first, major media reported that the killer had shouted “Britain First,” an old patriotic motto as well as the name of a pro-Brexit political party, while shooting and stabbing her. Of the several eyewitnesses to have allegedly testified to this murderous shout, only one is sticking to the story . . . a member of the British Nationalist Party, which is antagonistic to Britain First. Other eyewitnesses deny the story.
Next, both sides promised to cease campaigning, out of good taste. Still, polls fluctuated, while remaining close.
Much of the furor has risen over immigration policy, especially fears about EU laxity towards Muslim refugees.
But the bedrock issue is Big Government. The EU is not effectively controlled by citizens; indeed, membership representation is mostly show, a mockery of republican government.
That is why, if I were British, I’d vote to Brexit.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
How does that old, pithy anti-term limits slogan go, again? “We already have term limits, they’re called indictments!”
Wait . . . is that it?
Must be. This election year — the year of the outsider, the year of unbridled contempt for establishment, Washington, D. C., politicians — has seen only one incumbent congressman defeated by the voters.
Just one. It came late last month in the wake of a 29-count felony indictment charging Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) with bribery, theft, bank and mail fraud, racketeering, and more.
In all the other congressional primary contests pitting incumbents against challengers across the country so far this year, a solid 100 percent were won by the incumbent — zero won by challengers.
Rep. Fattah, whose corruption trial began in federal court on Monday, has pled not guilty to all charges, proclaiming his innocence. “Chaka Fattah’s lifestyle is not on trial,” his defense attorney told jurors. “Philadelphia politics are not on trial. [Congressional] earmarks, donations, grants to nonprofits are not on trial.”
But Congressman Chaka Fattah certainly is.
The incumbent’s previous re-election had been a breeze — completely unopposed in the all-important Democratic Primary, and then garnering 88 percent of the vote against his sacrificial GOP challenger. That was in 2014, before the felony charges.
Following the indictment, the Washington Post reported that Fattah “found it difficult to raise money after the party establishment all but abandoned him.” So, even in this single instance, the FBI and the party establishment, more than voters, sent this 22-year incumbent packing.
I have a new slogan: “We don’t have term limits, and we need ’em!”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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An article in Politico calls Curly Haugland a “rule-mongering crank,” a “gadfly,” “stubborn” (twice), a “pain in the ass,” and a “pedantic curmudgeon.”
And merely in the first paragraph!
Who is this Curly fellow, you ask? Haugland’s a successful small businessman in Bismarck, North Dakota, and a member of the Republican National Committee. He’s also a no-nonsense member of the party’s Rules Committee.
Long before Trump was an issue in the party (or even “in” the party), Mr. Haugland was urging Republican leaders to do something anathema to Washington-types: follow the rules.
“The rule says, specifically,” Curly told CNBC, “that it’s a vote of the delegates at the convention to determine if there’s a majority, not a primary vote. . . . The media has created a perception that the voters will decide the nomination. Political parties choose their nominee, not the general public.”
The entire electorate chooses the president, of course, but it seems fair enough that parties choose their own nominee. They might be wise to do it through primaries including the broader public or through state conventions reserved to party members or any number of ways. But however done, it should be by the rules.
And without taxpayer money.
Delegates have been free to vote their conscience throughout the history of the GOP, from just prior to the Civil War, when Lincoln gained the nomination at a contested 1860 convention, until today. It’s been a rule. The only exception was in 1976, when President Ford’s campaign worked to change the rule, binding delegates to block Ronald Reagan’s insurgent candidacy. Coincidentally, the leader of that ’76 effort was Paul Manafort, who today is running Trump’s convention effort.
Curly Haugland’s beef isn’t with Trump, but with the media and the RNC leadership, for not telling folks the truth.
No telling if GOP delegates will vote their conscience in Cleveland, but thank you, Mr. Haugland, for speaking truth to power. Republican delegates may be listening.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
P.S. If you missed the first two commentaries in this series, here they are:
Fat Lady Score – It’s a time for choosing.
Listen to Whom? – People in political parties have rights, too.
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Please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money.
Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!
Last Saturday, The Washington Post’s top-of-the-front-page headline blared, “50 donors with outside impact.”
If that doesn’t curdle your blood, readers were further warned of a new “Gilded Age.” Yes, in concentrated fundraising the Post heard “echoes of the end of the 19th century, when wealthy interests spent millions to help put former Ohio governor William McKinley in the White House.”
McKinley. The horror. The echoes.
Hopefully, self-immolations can be kept to a bare minimum as Americans discover the report’s main (only) thrust: 41 percent of $607 million contributed to 2,300 super PACs this election cycle has come from just 50 donors . . . at least, if you also aggregate gifts from the relatives of these 50 folks and their business interests as well.
Isn’t that terrifying? Destructive of democracy? Are our elections simply being bought by the billionaires?
No. No. And no.
Any common sense analysis of this year’s presidential contests, both Republican and Democrat, must acknowledge that big money did not trump. Pun intended. Sen. Bernie Sanders is now outraising Hillary Clinton with millions of small donations — not “millionaires and billionaires.” Jeb Bush’s massive financial warchest made no discernible difference. Even the Post concedes “the mixed impact that big-money groups have had on the presidential contest so far.”
Mixed? Name a single state where “big spending” determined the outcome.
Ideas matter. And securing the resources to advance and advertise ideas obviously matters, too. Same goes for candidates — and their ideas.
More money, more campaign spending, means more ideas and candidacies can reach the political marketplace. That’s where voters, not big donors, do the deciding.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Common Sense Needs Your Help!
Also, please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money.
Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!