Pew: Two Thirds of Americans Support National Popular Vote
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 65% of Americans support the National Popular Vote. Even the old ones:
"Younger adults are somewhat more supportive of changing the system than older adults. About seven-in-ten Americans under 50 (69%) support this. That share drops to about six-in-ten (58%) among those 65 and older."
If you find yourself in this majority then here are 9 things you can do today to advance the cause.
It's not just a desire to have a president of the country who represents the will of the country that is currently thwarted. Last year Pew found that:
"Today, a 61% majority of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases."
58% of Americans favor stricter gun laws. 57% want the Federal Government to take on health care. 63% support free college.
Why can't we have nice things? Apparently because the founding fathers thought we needed protection from the 'tyranny of the majority'. So you'd expect minorities to be well protected by this system.
Same sex marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision in 2015. Public support for same sex marriage was at 27% in 1996 (when Clinton passed The Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA). It's now at 70%. We crossed the 50% line around 2010, when Obama said:
"I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage."
Our majority tyranny protection system failed, Obama failed, Clinton failed. What carried the day was campaigning that convinced the majority that they were wrong on this issue, and arguably the AIDS crisis humanizing a minority for many people.
I wasn't around for the civil rights movement but I think it followed a very similar pattern. The system didn't inherently recognize the rights of the minority. Support was slowly built in public opinion until the Supreme Court eventually stepped in like someone in 2023 who thinks they just discovered Taylor Swift.
While the founding fathers may not have contemplated gay marriage or that black people might be just people they were clever enough to understand that the constitution was a living document and would need to be amended. We just need to get back into the habit.
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Does America Need A Third Party (Again)
Open to Debate just released a podcast about the need (or not) for more parties in American politics: Does America Need A Third Party.
Andrew Yang argued in favor. In fact he thinks the right number is probably five - break the democrats in half, break the republicans in half and throw in his Forward party. There is a great case for the first four of these - see this WaPo article from last year. I've suggested forcibly breaking them up, antitrust style. Another approach would be term limits for parties. Yang is growing on me. Reforming the electoral system is a much better platform than universal basic income.
Daniel DiSalvo argued against the motion. Actually he mostly just said that even if everything is broken nothing is going to change so why bother. I think that's 99% right, but not really in the spirit of a debate.
Open to Debate is a rebrand of Intelligence Squared US, which debated the same issue in 2021. In that case the status quo won the day, probably as it was defended by PJ O'Rourke, however the actual vote was 50% more parties and 40% keeping two. Unfortunately I don't know who won this time because Open to Debate has given up on the competitive format and even spirited questioning. You have some back and forth, and some carefully chosen and curated questions like a Biden presser. The original (UK) Intelligence Squared seems to have given up on the big issues and puts out Burgundy vs Bordeaux and people with a book release to plug. Canada is the only real hope right now with the Munk Debates.
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Is Sortition Having a Random Moment?
I have long been a proponent of Legislative Service, a specific flavor of sortition where the upper chamber in a bicameral system is replaced by a randomly selected 'jury' on a per-bill basis. You'd serve for a couple of weeks and act as a check and balance on professional politicians who propose the legislation. It might also work well if you find your country in need of a revising body (Bibi, call me). The British government didn't bite, and the concept rarely gets much press, until this week.
In the New York Times, Adam Grant suggests sortition to randomly select politicians:
"In ancient Athens, people had a choice about whether to participate in the lottery. They also had to pass an examination of their capacity to exercise public rights and duties. In America, imagine that anyone who wants to enter the pool has to pass a civics test — the same standard as immigrants applying for citizenship. We might wind up with leaders who understand the Constitution."
Having aced the US citizenship test I'm not sure it's a particularly high bar. I do take the point that we couldn't do much worse than we are now, at least for the top job, but I think there is still a role for professional representation.
Bruce Schneier organized a conference on rethinking democracy. The whole debrief is worth a read, here's the section on sortition:
"Sortition is a system of choosing political officials randomly to deliberate on a particular issue. We use it today when we pick juries, but both the ancient Greeks and some cities in Renaissance Italy used it to select major political officials. Today, several countries—largely in Europe—are using sortition for some policy decisions. We might randomly choose a few hundred people, representative of the population, to spend a few weeks being briefed by experts and debating the problem—and then decide on environmental regulations, or a budget, or pretty much anything."
Much closer to my vision, including having a system of briefing people on the issue. I'd make this adversarial, like a jury trial.
But before this in the US: demolish the electoral college, and then diversify our choice of politicians - either by ranked choice voting or like this.
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Washington Post Misleads With Statistics On First Republican Debate
The photo above is how WaPo decided to illustrate their poll results after the first Republican debate. They say:
"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came out on top Wednesday night, with 29 percent of Republican voters who watched the debate saying he performed best."
And his head is much much bigger so it's clear who won. Except buried in the small print this is a three percentage point difference in a small poll with a +/- four percentage point margin of error. In other words, flat.
To be clear I want neither of these gentlemen installed in the White House. But this is pretty crappy data reporting.
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10 Electoral College Votes Closer
Minnesota just joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, bringing us 10 Electoral College votes closer to not being governed by Presidents with a minority of the popular vote. If your state isn't there yet then do something!
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Coronation
In 1994 Prince Charles promised to be a defender of faith rather than the faith. The BBC has some disturbing news on his coronation plans:
"Despite changes designed to reflect other faiths, the three oaths the King will take and form the heart of the service remain unchanged, including the promise to maintain "the Protestant Reformed Religion"
Less than half of the UK now claim to be Christian. An established religion is as much of an embarrassing relic as the monarchy itself. This is disappointing, but the shocker is that we're being asked to pledge allegiance:
"The order of service will read: "All who so desire, in the Abbey, and elsewhere, say together: I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God."
Modern democracy or Game of Thrones? I personally refuse to bend the fucking knee. At least with his mother there was a polite pretense that the allegiance worked the other way round.
Let's disestablish the Church of England, kick out the lords and elect an upper chamber (or establish legislative service) and re-join the EU as a humble republic.
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Fuck the Electoral College
With the depressing news that Trump is running again I reassured myself that he didn't win the popular vote last time and updated my page on the national popular vote interstate compact. We've inched ever so slightly closer to electing the President based on the will of the people but we're still not close enough. Based on 2021 Census population estimates a vote in Wyoming is worth four times as much as a vote in Texas. That should infuriate you regardless of your political persuasion. The President should be accountable to every state. Sign a petition, call your representatives, donate - do everything listed here - and don't let this happen again.
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Why did San Francisco Redistrict the Pacific?
I am enjoying this interactive map of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors Districts way too much, because it raises more questions that it answers.
List most (many? some?) San Franciscans I'm used to seeing the Supervisorial Districts on a land map of the city, maybe with a shout out to Treasure Island. In 2022 these districts were redrawn with some local drama - a few blocks moved from District 4 to District 7 and vice versa. But I saw no coverage whatsoever of the maritime impact of this process.
When you load the map you probably immediately notice the imperial reach of District 6, sweeping up to the Richmond Bridge and nudging aggressively against Oakland and Alameda. District 2 is brazen in its denial of any part of the Golden Gate to Marin County. But to appreciate the full scope you need to zoom out enough to see that District 4 encompasses the Farallon Islands and surrounding waters, making it the largest district by a pretty good margin. Although it probably also means that it contains more mice than people.
Why are the Farallon Islands in District 4? It looks like these should be a territory of District 7 (this is my district and I'm feeling envious as the Islands are straight out to sea from my house). Things get weird when you go back to the map of 2011 districts. Back then, District 4 had a tiny slice of water off of Ocean Beach, but District 1 extended north and south plugging the Golden Gate and abutting District 7's territorial waters. The Farallon Islands were still part of the city but not demarcated by the map.
So with all the drama around moving a few houses between Supervisors, how was there time for such a maritime land grab by District 4? How did District 1 lose its stranglehold on traffic into the Bay? Why was any of this changed at all? Some half hearted Googling produced no answers. If you know, please leave a comment and if I find out I'll report back.
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The BBC helpfully fails to explain the US political system
The BBC thinks we're in better shape going into the midterms than I thought:
"The Democrats currently control all three branches of government - but that could change after the US midterms"
Pretty sure the judiciary flipped a while back. Screen capture above as hopefully they will fix it.
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Change in Presidential Vote from 2000 to 2020 by US County
This animation shows how the presidential vote in each county changed from 2000 to 2020. Every step in the animation shows the lift from 2020 with counties that voted more Republican shaded red and Democrat blue.
The blue shift towards Obama and then the Red shift towards Trump make a lot of sense. I find it really interesting how little changes between Trump and Biden.
Note that the colors represent the change in share of the vote and not an absolute measure. A country that went from 70% Republican to 60% Republican would be shaded blue due to the shift towards the Democrat vote. The vote is interpolated linearly between elections and so when you're looking at 2016 to 2020 for instance the animation shifts each county towards the votes that they will cast in 2020. Like the electorate I ignore third parties.
Data is from Harvard Dataverse. The animation and any errors introduced in its fabrication are all me.
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