WEBVTT NOTE Democracy: How the Game Has Been Stacked Against You 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:18.000 I want to make a couple simple points today about my views of what is wrong with the current U.S. election laws and then try to convince you that both of the, pardon me, what's wrong with government in this country today? 2 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:21.200 and I'll point out two effective... 3 00:00:21.200 --> 00:00:22.800 Now, Richard, we only have one hour. 4 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:24.600 Okay, okay. 5 00:00:24.600 --> 00:00:36.800 I'll focus on two problems and try to convince you that they have caused by the same two policies. 6 00:00:36.800 --> 00:00:42.000 And so I'm not going to engage in a rant on government, but you're right, Mark. 7 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:48.000 I probably could go on for at least an hour and ten minutes on that topic and I won't do that. 8 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:58.000 Basically what I believe is that under our current election laws, 9 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:08.000 we all know that third party candidates and their supporters are effectively disenfranchised. 10 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:20.000 They're disenfranchised because of ballot access laws, they're disenfranchised because of debate access laws, or maybe they aren't laws, policies, is that what we should say, John? 11 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:21.000 Probably, yeah. 12 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:36.000 Okay, and also by the winner-take-all type of elections that we have in this country. 13 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:48.000 Now, it's not just that third parties voters are disenfranchised. What I would like to argue is essentially all voters are disenfranchised. 14 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:55.000 And so it's more serious than those in the Libertarian Party might believe. 15 00:01:55.000 --> 00:02:12.000 A second observation that I make, and I can't support this with data, but it's the observation that politics between the two major parties is more polarized than it has been in my memory. 16 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:23.000 And I think the consequence of this is to make me thoroughly disgusted with the political process. 17 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:30.000 Process. I look at the people who are supposed to represent us and they don't resemble anyone 18 00:02:30.400 --> 00:02:37.400 who I know or who I want to know. And so, at one point, I think people said cynically 19 00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:48.280 that they would like to be governed by a random sample of the population, which for those 20 00:02:48.280 --> 00:03:01.280 for those of us who are in the public education system is slightly frightening, but when I look at our governing officials, it couldn't be any worse in my opinion, okay. 21 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:17.280 Now, first of all, let me talk about some evidence when I say that almost everyone in this country is effectively disenfranchised. 22 00:03:17.280 --> 00:03:23.040 I could go back to the argument, well, with any large number of voters, the idea of any 23 00:03:23.040 --> 00:03:29.600 vote being a decisive vote is extremely small, and so in that sense, if we vote in large 24 00:03:29.600 --> 00:03:37.080 numbers, there's no way to expect every voter to end up being decisive in every election 25 00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:44.080 or ever being decisive, and I know no way around that except to be governed by very small political 26 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:18.440 All 80 of them stayed with the party who held them initially. 27 00:04:18.440 --> 00:04:24.040 There were 20 state senate seats and all 20 of them stayed with the same party that had 28 00:04:24.040 --> 00:04:25.840 them originally. 29 00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:33.060 There were 53 house seats and all 53 of them stayed with the party that had them initially. 30 00:04:33.060 --> 00:04:38.840 And so what I would suggest is that in California if I wanted to, I could predict the winner 31 00:04:38.840 --> 00:05:01.160 Now, is that disturbing to you that the same party wins the same districts every time? 32 00:05:01.160 --> 00:05:08.360 I guess some people might say, well, that's what the public wants. 33 00:05:08.360 --> 00:05:18.920 Democrats, I'll show you that I think this is the result of some contrived things. 34 00:05:18.920 --> 00:05:26.400 Second example, from the 2000 races in the state of Massachusetts. 35 00:05:26.400 --> 00:05:31.800 There were 10 incumbent Democrats running for reelection. 36 00:05:31.800 --> 00:05:43.200 Of the ten, five of them ran unopposed, and three of the other five ran by opponents who 37 00:05:43.200 --> 00:05:46.960 had never entered any political race before. 38 00:05:46.960 --> 00:05:55.600 Now, I'm not suggesting that the best credentials that a candidate can have is having run for 39 00:05:55.600 --> 00:06:05.880 were held prior to political office, but I do think that we know that people who jump 40 00:06:05.880 --> 00:06:14.880 into elections at a fairly high level either are there trying to make a name for themselves 41 00:06:14.880 --> 00:06:20.040 so that they can maybe win another race later on, or they might be third party candidates 42 00:06:20.040 --> 00:06:27.720 who want to avail themselves of an opportunity to express their views. 43 00:06:27.720 --> 00:06:34.100 But certainly we do not have novices unless they are famous individuals running against 44 00:06:34.100 --> 00:06:39.480 incumbents and expecting to have a close race. 45 00:06:39.480 --> 00:06:45.920 So you know we might say that there were only two of ten congressional races where there 46 00:06:45.920 --> 00:06:52.600 There was the pretense of having a contest. I don't have the results, but I suspect that 47 00:06:52.600 --> 00:06:58.680 neither of those outcomes were very close. 48 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:08.600 In the last three U.S. congressional elections, over 75% of the races were won by what is 49 00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:14.600 is generally considered a landslide margin of 60 to 40 or more. 50 00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:20.600 90% were won by 10 percentage points or more. 51 00:07:20.600 --> 00:07:27.600 And 10 percentage points is a pretty substantial margin. 52 00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:37.600 40% of the state legislative races, the incumbent ran unopposed. 53 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:47.600 In the 2002 U.S. Congressional elections, eight incumbents were defeated. 54 00:07:47.600 --> 00:07:56.600 In 2004 elections, seven incumbents were defeated. 55 00:07:56.600 --> 00:08:06.600 And we know that more than eight and seven in those two years had engaged in shameless acts since their prior election. 56 00:08:06.600 --> 00:08:27.600 In this country, 90% of the voters go to polls where there is no election where the underdog has any chance of winning. 57 00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:37.600 90% of the voters go to polls and they vote in elections where the underdog has no chance of winning. 58 00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:40.600 That's right. 59 00:08:40.600 --> 00:08:55.600 Now, if that is true, it's hard to argue that anyone is franchised in a meaningful way. 60 00:08:55.600 --> 00:09:02.640 Yes, I understand that a lot of people think that voting is a response, a civic duty. 61 00:09:02.640 --> 00:09:12.400 I think a lot of people think that voting is fun, and those are certainly good reasons to vote, 62 00:09:12.400 --> 00:09:18.880 but they aren't reasons to convince ourselves that voters are franchised. 63 00:09:25.600 --> 00:09:46.600 So the consequence is that the outcome is determined by who the incumbent is or by who wins the party primary and it's not determined by the voters. 64 00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:57.600 Okay, so I hope that I've made a fairly convincing case that almost all voters are effectively disenfranchised. 65 00:09:57.600 --> 00:10:10.600 Now the second point that I promised to make is that elections today have resulted in congresses and legislative bodies 66 00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:18.600 and other bodies which are more polarized than they ever have been to my memory. 67 00:10:18.600 --> 00:10:38.600 And one piece of evidence is that today I'm told that if you know information about the income, the age, the race, the occupation, the religion, the education of a voter, 68 00:10:38.600 --> 00:11:08.600 that you know what party he's going to vote in with a high degree of precision and so if we have voters who are die-hard Democrats and voters who are die-hard Republicans as opposed to a large number of voters who flip-flop and again I'm ignoring third parties just for the sake of simplifying the discussion but if we don't have any movement of voters between 69 00:11:08.600 --> 00:11:15.600 and the two parties, that in and of itself will tend to make the parties polarized. 70 00:11:20.960 --> 00:11:27.960 Second success of polarization, well I watch the news and I sometimes watch Fox and I realize 71 00:11:27.960 --> 00:11:39.640 I realized that Fox executives are smart enough to know that we have a very polarized group 72 00:11:39.640 --> 00:11:49.720 of citizens, many of them whom are presumably voters, who have their minds made up on everything, 73 00:11:49.720 --> 00:11:56.600 and so now what we have is both sides get their own version of the truth. 74 00:11:56.600 --> 00:12:01.160 I'm not sure that Fox is any more guilty of this than the other networks, although they 75 00:12:01.160 --> 00:12:08.560 are more open about it. I mean, where else do you hear someone say every 30 seconds fair 76 00:12:08.560 --> 00:12:20.080 and balanced? And, you know, that absolutely, absolutely drives me crazy, okay? Or let's 77 00:12:20.080 --> 00:12:27.000 Let's think about this. We have, allegedly, two parties fighting for the middle. In what 78 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:38.000 way can we think of DeLay and Pelosi as being similar? I can't imagine the two of them having 79 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:48.440 a civil conversation, much less, say, having an affair, unless she has some type of peculiar 80 00:12:48.440 --> 00:13:07.440 I've never seen two individuals who are so different, and if we think of them as being two of the party leaders, I would say that in and of itself is fairly strong evidence of polarization. 81 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:13.640 But, you know, we look at the maps. They're red and blue. 82 00:13:13.640 --> 00:13:22.040 And we have two excruciatingly close presidential elections consecutively. 83 00:13:22.040 --> 00:13:34.440 And it's clear in a very real sense that the country is very evenly divided. 84 00:13:34.440 --> 00:13:47.440 But it's not because we have two candidates fighting for the middle and most of the voters just can't decide which of the two to vote for. 85 00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:59.440 It seems like we have polarized the public, or at least for some reason the candidates are so polarized that we split the electorate, 86 00:13:59.440 --> 00:14:09.040 but in very different ways and it for better or for worse certainly affects the legislative process. 87 00:14:10.880 --> 00:14:17.040 You know, we look at things like the Shavo case, we look at the things like appointment of federal 88 00:14:17.040 --> 00:14:27.680 judges and it's increasingly an ugly process. It may be that I'm just getting old and cynical but 89 00:14:27.680 --> 00:14:57.680 I can remember times, I may even have the time periods juxtaposed, so this may not have been exactly the same time, but I can think of leaders like Everett Dirksen for the Republicans from Illinois, and maybe Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota. And while they both had their foibles, I can imagine the two of them sitting down and discuss things that 90 00:14:57.680 --> 00:15:05.420 things civilly, and I could imagine sitting down and feeling comfortable spending an evening 91 00:15:05.420 --> 00:15:12.320 with either one of them or both at the same time. If I had to think contemplate spending 92 00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:19.680 an hour with Tom Delay, I'm not going there. I just won't do that. 93 00:15:19.680 --> 00:15:25.680 Well, apparently he was a fun guy earlier in his career because his nickname was Hot Tub Tom. 94 00:15:25.680 --> 00:15:31.680 Well, that's a side of him I've never seen. 95 00:15:31.680 --> 00:15:38.680 I'd say you were missed if I didn't say. I knew you when you were young and cynical. 96 00:15:38.680 --> 00:15:42.680 Well, okay. 97 00:15:42.680 --> 00:15:58.680 Okay, well, I've done the easy part. I know that I have, in general, a cynical crowd here and so I've described the sorry state that we are in and now I'd like to provide my explanation. 98 00:15:58.680 --> 00:16:08.680 When I say my explanation, let me give credit where credit is due. Much of what I'm saying today comes from what I think is, in general, a fine book. 99 00:16:08.680 --> 00:16:18.680 It's a book titled Fixing Elections, The Failure of America's Winner-Take-All Politics by Stephen Hill. 100 00:16:18.680 --> 00:16:26.680 And Stephen Hill is very liberal, and his examples here all show that bias. 101 00:16:26.680 --> 00:16:34.680 But I think he makes some excellent points, and I've seen things in a completely different way since I read the book. 102 00:16:34.680 --> 00:16:37.680 And so that's my idea about a good book. 103 00:16:37.680 --> 00:16:57.680 Also, it was interesting to me because this was copyrighted in 2001 and he spent a lot of time talking about the 2000 presidential election and he says very clearly in here that he is quite confident that we will have a replay in 2004. 104 00:16:57.680 --> 00:17:21.680 And again, it's because of the polarization. What he's suggesting is that of the people who voted for Republican in 2000, how many of them will vote Republican in 2004, and the answer is almost all of them, and the same for the Democratic Party. 105 00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:32.680 And so the only way we can change things is import or export voters from one side or the other. 106 00:17:32.680 --> 00:17:37.680 We just aren't going to change any minds any longer. 107 00:17:37.680 --> 00:17:44.680 Or I'm not sure if it's minds that were voting patterns is what we're not going to change. 108 00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:49.680 People have made up their mind. 109 00:17:49.680 --> 00:18:18.680 I teach at Auburn University, which is by and large a joy, but I am astounded teaching in the business school having primarily comfortable students from conservative backgrounds who know that everything that George Bush says is true and everyone, everything that any Democratic says is false. 110 00:18:18.680 --> 00:18:27.680 And, you know, we have a generation of people who have made up their minds. 111 00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:29.680 Now, how did they make up their minds? 112 00:18:29.680 --> 00:18:35.680 I guess maybe it was by watching fair and balanced reports on Fox News. 113 00:18:35.680 --> 00:18:39.680 But they are really made up. 114 00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:45.680 And they would have loved this book if a conservative had done the same thing. 115 00:18:45.680 --> 00:18:50.040 They hated the book because he didn't. 116 00:18:50.040 --> 00:18:55.340 I had one very bright student who's going to Duke to law school and get a masters in 117 00:18:55.340 --> 00:19:02.040 economics next year, and she said she had never read anything that made her madder than 118 00:19:02.040 --> 00:19:03.560 this book. 119 00:19:03.560 --> 00:19:08.360 And I said, well, wait till you listen to your law professors at Duke and you'll find 120 00:19:08.360 --> 00:19:12.840 something that makes you even madder than that. 121 00:19:12.840 --> 00:19:20.040 Okay, now let's talk about an alternative to what I call winner-take-all, or it's first 122 00:19:20.040 --> 00:19:28.280 candidate past the post. We know that some places we require runoffs, but very often 123 00:19:28.280 --> 00:19:34.020 whichever candidate gets the most votes in each district is the winner. And so if we're 124 00:19:34.020 --> 00:19:40.420 talking about congressional races, and we have a state with ten congressional districts, 125 00:19:40.420 --> 00:19:45.660 We have ten independent elections and ten winners. 126 00:19:45.660 --> 00:19:49.780 And the election laws are going to vary about whether you need a majority and whether you 127 00:19:49.780 --> 00:19:52.380 have to have a runoff or not. 128 00:19:52.380 --> 00:20:02.420 But in essence, if you do not have the largest number of votes in any of those districts, 129 00:20:02.420 --> 00:20:05.020 what you get is zero representation. 130 00:20:05.020 --> 00:20:13.020 And so we could imagine a situation where we have, let's just avoid the issue of run-offs, 131 00:20:13.020 --> 00:20:21.820 let's suppose that we have 55% Democrats, no matter what the others do, the Democrats, 132 00:20:21.820 --> 00:20:30.260 unless you can get more than the next strongest party, you win no seats. 133 00:20:30.260 --> 00:20:35.000 Now that seems natural to most Americans and they seem to think, well, could it be done 134 00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:41.000 Well, I should point out that it is done in other ways. 135 00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:49.000 We have proportional representation in France, in Ireland, in Australia, sort of in the United Kingdom, 136 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:51.000 but we also have it in the United States. 137 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:55.000 I mean, where do we have proportional representation? 138 00:20:59.000 --> 00:21:01.000 I'm sorry? 139 00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:06.000 No? On what election? Well, what about the presidential primaries? 140 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:16.000 I believe it's the case that in all the democratic states, if there are ten... 141 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:25.000 What are the... I'm trying to think of the word for the people who go to the... 142 00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:26.000 Electors. 143 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:40.000 Electors, yeah. Or, in the case of the primary, it's not electors, but ten delegates. If there are ten delegates at stake and you get 20% of the vote, you get two of them. 144 00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:53.000 And so, for the Democratic Party, there's no state where they give the one who gets the most votes all the delegates from that state. 145 00:21:53.000 --> 00:22:04.280 Has that ever struck you as being undemocratic? No. And I believe that in the Republican Party, 146 00:22:04.280 --> 00:22:12.000 about a third of the states do it this way, and there are a lot more that are winner-take-take-all. 147 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:19.400 You might say, well, gee, but how would it work if we did it for, let's say, a congressional 148 00:22:19.400 --> 00:22:26.040 Delegation. Well, let's go back to an example where a state hypothetically has ten delegates 149 00:22:26.040 --> 00:22:36.040 for the U.S. Congress or ten representatives, ten seats. Now the way we do it today is we 150 00:22:36.040 --> 00:22:42.000 divide the state up into ten districts and we have ten individual fights and the one 151 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:49.360 who gets the most votes in each of the districts ends up controlling the race. 152 00:22:49.360 --> 00:22:55.720 What we could do is we could have a statewide election where you in essence vote for parties 153 00:22:55.720 --> 00:23:03.280 rather than candidates and what that would mean is that if you got 50% of the votes then 154 00:23:03.280 --> 00:23:10.520 you would get 50% of the winners and if you got 30% you would get 30% and if you got 10% 155 00:23:10.520 --> 00:23:18.520 you would get 10% which means that in large states like California a third party that 156 00:23:18.520 --> 00:23:26.520 could get someone in the US Congress by having just a little bit more than 2% of the total vote. 157 00:23:26.520 --> 00:23:33.520 And so I am convinced that under proportional representation, 158 00:23:33.520 --> 00:23:41.520 what we would find is third, fourth, fifth and sixth parties would thrive. 159 00:23:41.520 --> 00:23:47.520 Now, I'm sure that there are a lot of people who would say, well, that's a bad thing. 160 00:23:47.520 --> 00:24:17.520 I think that you could talk to a governor or any other elected official in this state and they would think about it and decide this sounds like some type of a communist idea or something like that but I don't think that it is and I don't think that this is really a revolutionary way of doing things but what I would like to try to convince you is the outcome I think would be very different 161 00:24:17.520 --> 00:24:27.520 There are two very healthy ways. One is that third parties would be a viable alternative, and not just third, but third, fourth and fifth parties. 162 00:24:27.520 --> 00:24:42.520 Now, a second thing we need to think about. If you vote for a party, what the party does is if there are 10 seats at stake, is they list their candidates in order. 163 00:24:42.520 --> 00:24:52.520 And, if they get all the vote, then all ten of their candidates are selected. If they get 20 percent, the first two are. 164 00:24:52.520 --> 00:25:05.520 Now, if the party were deciding in which order, I know it gives the parties more power, but if you were in charge of the Democratic Party here in Alabama, 165 00:25:05.520 --> 00:25:13.520 How would you decide which person to put number one, which person to put number two, which person to put number three? 166 00:25:17.520 --> 00:25:20.520 How well they did in the partner. 167 00:25:20.520 --> 00:25:25.520 About this is, okay, I'm not sure whether we have... 168 00:25:28.520 --> 00:25:33.520 I mean, I'm sure it would have to be party laws, party rules that would decide this. 169 00:25:33.520 --> 00:25:45.520 But if the party were trying to decide what strategy should we use in figuring out how to rank our candidates? 170 00:25:45.520 --> 00:26:02.320 I'm going to take a poll, but what I would suggest, let's suppose that, you know, it's 171 00:26:02.320 --> 00:26:07.920 pretty even, okay, that the Democratic Party is sure of getting four, they'll probably 172 00:26:07.920 --> 00:26:12.060 get five, they may get six, okay. 173 00:26:12.060 --> 00:26:19.660 What I would suggest is that there would be a very strong argument for listing at least 174 00:26:19.660 --> 00:26:27.820 centrist types of candidates for those marginal slots because at least thinking voters, if 175 00:26:27.820 --> 00:26:34.820 there are such a thing, would realize that in an evenly split state each party is going 176 00:26:34.820 --> 00:26:39.180 to get their first three or four and it's the, you know, what we're doing is we're 177 00:26:39.180 --> 00:26:46.180 Do we want our sixth choice or do we want their fourth choice? 178 00:26:46.180 --> 00:27:00.180 And so I think that it would be incumbent upon both parties to have, let's say, less divisive individuals than Tom DeLay on the marginal slots. 179 00:27:00.180 --> 00:27:09.180 And so I think that overall, it would end up with the parties being less polarized than they are today. 180 00:27:20.180 --> 00:27:29.180 So summing up then, I would say that if we leave the winner takes all, the third parties become very viable. 181 00:27:29.180 --> 00:27:35.180 The parties list more centrist candidates first. 182 00:27:35.180 --> 00:27:39.180 The second thing, I've omitted this up to now, 183 00:27:39.180 --> 00:27:44.180 if it's the case that we can predict the winner 184 00:27:44.180 --> 00:27:49.180 by knowing which party he is from in most congressional races, 185 00:27:49.180 --> 00:27:55.180 where does the election really get determined? 186 00:27:55.180 --> 00:28:09.180 If I know that the Democratic candidate is going to win this race in Massachusetts, where is the race decided in the Democratic primary? 187 00:28:09.180 --> 00:28:15.180 Now what do we know if we have almost all the seats divided up this way? 188 00:28:15.180 --> 00:28:23.180 We have the party primaries deciding who the candidates are, and if we could make some generalization, 189 00:28:23.180 --> 00:28:27.180 The polarization, what type of voters tend to vote in the party primaries? 190 00:28:27.180 --> 00:28:31.180 The polarized ones. 191 00:28:31.180 --> 00:28:35.180 So I would suggest that the selection process is one that 192 00:28:35.180 --> 00:28:39.180 under the current rules we select much more polarized 193 00:28:39.180 --> 00:28:43.180 candidates because all they're concerned about is 194 00:28:43.180 --> 00:28:47.180 they win the primary. They might be a right wing nut or 195 00:28:47.180 --> 00:28:51.180 they might be a left wing nut, but it doesn't make any difference 196 00:28:51.180 --> 00:28:57.180 Okay, let me go on to what might be a little bit more important. 197 00:28:57.180 --> 00:29:02.180 Second explanation is redistricting. 198 00:29:02.180 --> 00:29:07.180 And it's not that redistricting is new. 199 00:29:07.180 --> 00:29:11.180 It's just that redistricting is new. 200 00:29:11.180 --> 00:29:15.180 It's not that redistricting is new. 201 00:29:15.180 --> 00:29:19.180 It's not that redistricting is new. 202 00:29:19.180 --> 00:29:27.180 It's just that it's practiced a whole lot more often and with a greater vengeance than it ever was before. 203 00:29:27.180 --> 00:29:33.180 By law, the federal government is required. I should be careful. 204 00:29:33.180 --> 00:29:36.180 John Soff, please, is in attendance. 205 00:29:36.180 --> 00:29:40.180 And when I start talking about what the Constitution requires, 206 00:29:40.180 --> 00:29:47.180 well, most of the time when you're dealing with an American audience, you can say anything and they'll believe you. 207 00:29:47.180 --> 00:30:12.180 and John sits over there and he won't, but it is the case, but we are required to conduct a census every 10 years and as a result of the census then the congressional seats are reallocated among the states. 208 00:30:12.180 --> 00:30:29.180 And so if a state gets more delegates or representatives, more seats or fewer seats, then they are forced to redistrict, but that doesn't affect very many states. 209 00:30:29.180 --> 00:30:37.180 Now, we have the same type of thing occurring within a state, is that if a state is growing in overall population, 210 00:30:37.180 --> 00:30:43.180 and Human Action, Man Economy and State, The Theory of Money and Credit 211 00:31:07.180 --> 00:31:37.180 The interpretation of one man, one vote principles by the federal courts, the states know that if they do not redistrict frequently, there will be challenges and they will be forced to do so, and so what we find is that almost every state redistricts every ten years, and even after that started, well there was sort of a gentleman's agreement, we'll redistrict and then we'll live with that, 212 00:31:37.180 --> 00:31:57.180 In 2002, the Republicans in Colorado gained control, and they decided we'll do a better job of redistricting, and that was followed by the fiasco in Texas in 2003 and 2004, where the Republicans got control and the Democrats fled the state. 213 00:31:57.180 --> 00:32:26.980 Texas in 2003 and 2004, where the Republicans got control and the Democrats fled the state to avoid a vote coming up and they were trying to decide whether the Texas, what is the police group there that, Texas Rangers, whether they were authorized to go to New Mexico to make arrests or not. 214 00:32:26.980 --> 00:32:37.980 and bring these people back and so we've had this occurring annually in certain states. 215 00:32:37.980 --> 00:32:45.700 Now there's one other thing that has happened, partly because of the polarization of voters. 216 00:32:45.700 --> 00:32:51.940 Voters are more predictable than they were in the past and also because of a great deal 217 00:32:51.940 --> 00:32:57.880 and more demographic information that's being made available it's possible to 218 00:32:57.880 --> 00:33:05.500 discern on very narrow neighborhoods what the proportion of various types of 219 00:33:05.500 --> 00:33:13.880 voters are and so what has happened is is software has developed whereby you 220 00:33:13.880 --> 00:33:18.980 can tell it you know cut the state up into ten districts make sure that the 221 00:33:18.980 --> 00:33:31.980 The population in each district is equal within a fraction of one percent, and other than that, anything goes. 222 00:33:31.980 --> 00:33:39.980 Okay, now let's think about this. I was going to do an overhead, but it was so simple I was embarrassed to put it up. 223 00:33:39.980 --> 00:33:47.980 Let's suppose that this window right here is the outline of a state. Let's think of it as being square, okay? 224 00:33:47.980 --> 00:34:00.980 And let's also think of the population as being perfectly evenly distributed so that the number of voters is directly in proportion to the area. 225 00:34:00.980 --> 00:34:09.980 And what that means by law is that we have to cut up the state into 10 exactly equal congressional districts. 226 00:34:09.980 --> 00:34:16.980 Now for simplicity, let's suppose that we know that everyone in the southern part of the state is a Democrat 227 00:34:16.980 --> 00:34:20.980 and everyone in the northern part of the state is a Republican. 228 00:34:20.980 --> 00:34:27.980 Well, one thing we could do is we could draw the districts horizontally 229 00:34:27.980 --> 00:34:32.340 and there would be five evenly sized ones in the bottom that would be a hundred percent 230 00:34:32.340 --> 00:34:37.820 democrat and five evenly sized ones in the top that would be a hundred percent republican. 231 00:34:37.820 --> 00:34:47.300 The state would be split fifty-fifty and we would have no competitive elections whatsoever. 232 00:34:47.300 --> 00:34:55.380 Now we could take the same state and split it up on ten vertical divisions and each one 233 00:34:55.380 --> 00:35:03.900 One would be 50% Republican and 50% Democrat and we would have 10 very competitive elections 234 00:35:03.900 --> 00:35:12.420 and I guess on average we would have the same outcomes, 5 Republicans and 5 Democrats, although 235 00:35:12.420 --> 00:35:19.060 I would argue that the candidates that we would select in races like that would be different 236 00:35:19.060 --> 00:35:25.360 than the ones that we would select in the prior races. 237 00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:36.360 If we have 100% Republican districts, the winning candidates would very likely be the Tom delays of the world. 238 00:35:36.360 --> 00:35:47.360 Now, what is gerrymandering? Well, it comes from Elbridge Gary, who was the governor of Massachusetts in 1812. 239 00:35:47.360 --> 00:35:52.360 John, am I correct? I knew that you would be there to correct me on this one, so I checked that up. 240 00:35:52.360 --> 00:35:56.360 I think his name is L. Bridge, Gary, not L. Dridge, is that correct? 241 00:35:56.360 --> 00:36:02.360 Okay, I saw that somewhere and I hadn't noticed that before, but I thought I would catch you on this. 242 00:36:02.360 --> 00:36:08.360 But it's either a typo in the last book that I read or his name was L. Bridge. 243 00:36:08.360 --> 00:36:14.360 But he was the first one who was given credit for redistricting with a strategic purpose. 244 00:36:14.360 --> 00:36:17.360 And let's take a simple example here. 245 00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:22.800 If I were, if the Republicans got control of this state, 246 00:36:22.800 --> 00:36:26.960 one thing that would occur to me is, well, why don't we take 247 00:36:26.960 --> 00:36:30.800 the original District 1 down there and keep it that way? 248 00:36:30.800 --> 00:36:35.440 And maybe keep the original District 2 down there 249 00:36:35.440 --> 00:36:40.160 and keep it that way. Maybe even take the original District 3 that way and leave 250 00:36:40.160 --> 00:36:42.560 it that way. And so what we have done, we would have 251 00:36:42.560 --> 00:36:46.400 30 percent of the states, 30 percent of the voters crammed into three districts 252 00:36:46.400 --> 00:37:16.400 of Money and Credit, The Theory of Money and Credit, The Theory of Money and Credit, The 253 00:37:16.400 --> 00:37:26.400 We don't put the necessary redundant voters into the Democratic districts where once they get 50%, putting additional voters in there doesn't do them any good. 254 00:37:26.400 --> 00:37:32.400 And so we waste their votes in that district and take them away in the other. 255 00:37:32.400 --> 00:37:39.400 Now, having seen that, the Republicans might get even more ambitious and they might say, 256 00:37:39.400 --> 00:38:09.400 Well, hell, why don't we give them only two? And so if you do two down there, and eight vertical ones, then that sounds good, but now you have five-eighths of each one Republican and three-eighths Democrat, and so you're running a slight risk of losing one of those races, and if you push too hard, and you say, let's only give them one, so you're losing one of those races, and if you push too hard, and you say, let's only give them one, 257 00:38:09.400 --> 00:38:17.400 You give them one and you cut it up nine ways and then it's five to four and then you run a risk of losing some of these races. 258 00:38:17.400 --> 00:38:24.400 You give them one sure race and you have nine somewhat competitive races. 259 00:38:24.400 --> 00:38:28.400 Now that is essentially the game that is being played. 260 00:38:28.400 --> 00:38:34.400 It's not as simple as all this because population isn't evenly distributed 261 00:38:34.400 --> 00:39:01.400 And we don't have areas that are 100% Republican or 100% Democrat, but you can see with the correct software packages, if you're in control of deciding the, it's sort of like you choose your voters, the voters don't choose the candidates, and that's the game that is essentially played here, okay. 262 00:39:04.400 --> 00:39:24.360 Now, I have a few more minutes, I think, so let me describe this. There's a terminology 263 00:39:24.360 --> 00:39:38.200 So here I think I have straight, it's called, maybe I have it written down here, it's called 264 00:39:38.200 --> 00:39:50.800 slamming, gee I should remember this, oh well. One thing you can do is cram all of one party's 265 00:39:50.800 --> 00:40:20.800 And another thing that you can do is you can, quote unquote, kidnap candidates. And the way that you kidnap candidates is if a candidate lives close to another congressional district, then particularly if you might have a democratic city that has, that's all in one district and it's a democratic district, then you might have a 266 00:40:20.800 --> 00:40:35.800 in the Democratic area and you have two congressmen who live relatively close together, well what you can do by playing with the lawns a little bit, you can put two Democratic incumbents up against each other and there you get the predicted result. 267 00:40:35.800 --> 00:40:49.800 We know that Democratic incumbents always win Democratic districts and when you have two incumbents running in a Democratic district, they always win, the Democrat always wins that one as well. 268 00:40:49.800 --> 00:41:00.800 Given the advantages of incumbents, the worst thing you can do is kidnap them and put them into a race against someone in the same party. 269 00:41:00.800 --> 00:41:11.800 Now bear with me a little bit. What I want to do is to read a couple of excerpts from an article that appeared in the New Yorker pertaining to this. 270 00:41:11.800 --> 00:41:28.800 It's dated December 2003. With his western twang, loping swagger and ever-present cowboy boots, Charlie Stenholm doesn't have much, doesn't much look like or sound like anybody's idea of a victim. 271 00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:40.800 Since 1979, he has been the congressman for a sprawling district west of Dallas, and his votes have reflected the conservative values of the cattle, cotton and oil country back home. 272 00:41:40.800 --> 00:41:48.800 He opposes abortion, fights for balanced budgets, and voted for the impeachment of President Clinton, that's extremely important. 273 00:41:48.800 --> 00:41:53.800 His website features photographs of him carrying or firing guns. 274 00:41:53.800 --> 00:42:04.800 Through it all, though, Stenholm has remained a member of the Democratic Party, and for that offense, he appears likely to lose his job after the next election. 275 00:42:04.800 --> 00:42:08.800 Well, he did lose his job. 276 00:42:08.800 --> 00:42:14.800 Stenholm was a principal target of one of the more bizarre political dramas of recent years. 277 00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:21.680 The Texas redistricting struggle of 2003, following the 2000 census, all states were obligated to 278 00:42:21.680 --> 00:42:28.880 redraw their boundaries, etc., etc. In 2001, that process reduced the standoff in Texas 279 00:42:29.680 --> 00:42:34.000 with the Republican Senate and the Democratic House unable to reach an agreement. 280 00:42:34.000 --> 00:42:45.000 As a result, a panel of federal judges formulated a compromise plan, which more or less replicated the current partisan balance of the states. 281 00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:54.000 But then when the Republicans took control in 2002, they decided that they would do this all over again, and they did. 282 00:42:54.000 --> 00:43:00.000 And a law professor from Texas said this was a fundamental change in the rules of the game. 283 00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:09.000 The Rules of the Game, the rules were fight it out once a decade and let it lie for 10 years and now the rules have apparently changed. 284 00:43:09.000 --> 00:43:15.000 Every time you get the power, you are obliged to use it. 285 00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:22.000 One other example, this is from Pennsylvania, I grew up in West Virginia, but this was Western Pennsylvania nearby. 286 00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:32.000 After the 2000 census, Pennsylvania lost two seats in Congress and its legislature had to establish new district lines. 287 00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:42.000 The Republican leaders engaged in no subterfuge. They candidly admitted that they intended to draw the lines to favor the party as much as possible. 288 00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:49.000 In midst of the battle over Pennsylvania Plan delay, and Dennis Hastert sent a letter to the Pennsylvania legislators saying, 289 00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:56.500 We wish to encourage you in these efforts as they play a crucial role in maintaining a Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives. 290 00:43:56.500 --> 00:44:01.000 And of course, when the House is very evenly divided, the stakes are really high. 291 00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:09.600 And so you can, by redistricting appropriately, you can decide who controls the House of Representatives. 292 00:44:09.600 --> 00:44:11.600 Oh, here's what I was looking for. 293 00:44:11.600 --> 00:44:18.200 The Republicans in Harrisburg use venerable techniques in redistricting like packing, cracking and kidnapping. 294 00:44:18.200 --> 00:44:24.200 That has a good ring to it. That's why I was looking at packing, cracking and kidnapping. 295 00:44:24.200 --> 00:44:29.440 Packing concentrates one group of voters into as few as possible districts. That's what 296 00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:35.320 I talked about down here. Cracking divides a group's voters into other districts where 297 00:44:35.320 --> 00:44:40.440 they will be ineffective. Kidnapping places two incumbents from the same party in the 298 00:44:40.440 --> 00:45:03.440 Frank Mascara was kidnapped. Goes on to talk about his very unusual character. He's lived in the same house that his family has had for a hundred years. He has a value of about $35,000. He is really a very modest background. He seems to represent the poor people from his district fairly well. 299 00:45:33.440 --> 00:45:41.840 by way, and then a long country road, both sides of a street, and then it went around 300 00:45:41.840 --> 00:45:51.480 his house, but not his garage, and ended there, okay? And so he was essentially a hundred 301 00:45:51.480 --> 00:46:01.280 miles away from the nearest voter, running against an incumbent. 302 00:46:01.280 --> 00:46:08.480 Well, I should end the suspense, but I'll let you read your history and figure out what 303 00:46:08.480 --> 00:46:14.480 happened to Frank Mascara. 304 00:46:14.480 --> 00:46:26.120 Okay, so in summary, I think that we have a strange occurrence where at the same time 305 00:46:26.120 --> 00:46:35.080 that the technology was available, past patterns of civility have disappeared and what we're 306 00:46:35.080 --> 00:46:43.600 going to do from this point on is the politicos are going to decide, they're going to choose 307 00:46:43.600 --> 00:46:53.080 of Candidates Voters, and how much power will those voters have? None whatsoever, particularly 308 00:46:53.080 --> 00:46:58.840 if they are as polarized as they are. And, you know, if I can explain it, there's also 309 00:46:58.840 --> 00:47:04.120 a lot of tit for tat. I mean, you know, 20 years from now, we'll go back and the Republicans 310 00:47:04.120 --> 00:47:07.760 said it, well, we did it last year because you did it the year before, and they'll say, 311 00:47:07.760 --> 00:47:13.320 but you did it two years earlier, and there'll be a huge argument about who caused this mess. 312 00:47:13.320 --> 00:47:23.320 But it is a mess and the only good I can see coming out of it is it will bring government into further disrepute, okay. That's all I have to say. 313 00:47:26.320 --> 00:47:30.320 We have a new occurrence here at the Brown Bag seminar. We actually have a write-in question. 314 00:47:31.320 --> 00:47:36.320 This came earlier in the talk and you've addressed this to some extent, but it says, 315 00:47:36.320 --> 00:47:41.320 Professor Alt says that the outcome of elections is determined by incumbency. 316 00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:52.320 While incumbency may be an accurate predictor of outcomes, elections are truly determined in a causal sense by voter preferences. 317 00:47:52.320 --> 00:48:02.320 Voter preference can explain the continual election of incumbency because most voters are rather dogmatic about their political views and don't change them between elections. 318 00:48:02.320 --> 00:48:07.320 Though I'm no Democrat, I don't think we are disenfranchised. 319 00:48:07.320 --> 00:48:11.320 As I said, you partially address that. 320 00:48:11.320 --> 00:48:29.320 Okay, well, one could argue that whether it's incumbency or, let's say this, if it's a safe congressional district, 321 00:48:29.320 --> 00:48:38.320 It's impossible to determine whether the candidate won because he was an incumbent or because he was a Democrat. 322 00:48:38.320 --> 00:48:46.320 But the point I was really making there is that incumbents don't lose elections in this country. 323 00:48:46.320 --> 00:48:58.320 And I think the best explanation for the fact that they don't lose elections is that we have drawn up in the districts in such a way 324 00:48:58.320 --> 00:49:28.320 that it's damned hard for a member of that party to lose the election so we could we could argue about what the ultimate cause of this is but yes I think it's we probably would be better I would be better off to say that the party more than the the whether he's an incumbent or not is is the determining factor but obviously from a Democratic district we're not going to have Republican incumbent 325 00:49:28.320 --> 00:49:47.320 Well, one man, one vote is unconstitutional. If you take Article 1, Section 2, and then Article 2, Section 1, and its logical progression for presidential election, you're hitting the nail right on the head, in my opinion, with the redistricting problem. 326 00:49:47.320 --> 00:49:56.320 And I actually went and, you know, browsed down to Lee County Courthouse the last time they did redistricting, and of course they were thrilled immediately. 327 00:49:56.320 --> 00:50:05.320 Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution says that you're supposed to have one representative for each state, and then one for every 30,000 around, right? 328 00:50:05.320 --> 00:50:12.320 So no matter what your population is, you're going to at least have one, and then up to 59,999 you still have one. 329 00:50:12.320 --> 00:50:16.320 60,000 you can get through and just keep that iteration, etc. 330 00:50:16.320 --> 00:50:27.320 In 1929, in the House of Representatives, they got together on their own and limited their own body to 435. 331 00:50:27.320 --> 00:50:37.320 As population increases, your real representation decreases. 332 00:50:37.320 --> 00:50:43.320 To me, that's the most important precursor of your thesis with respect to gerrymandering. 333 00:50:43.320 --> 00:50:47.320 Right now, we have one representative for every 700,000. 334 00:50:47.320 --> 00:50:53.320 So your real representation has dried up, and now gerrymandering becomes a big deal, right? 335 00:50:53.320 --> 00:50:57.320 If you had one for every 30,000, you'd know who your congressman is. 336 00:50:57.320 --> 00:51:00.320 You could go egg his house. When he's walking out and he does something stupid, 337 00:51:00.320 --> 00:51:02.320 you could sit there with a megaphone and yell at him, right? 338 00:51:02.320 --> 00:51:04.320 It'd be his worst nightmare. 339 00:51:04.320 --> 00:51:08.320 So, you know, when Hillary Clinton and George Bush and the rest of them around come out 340 00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:12.320 and say they want democracy and all that other sort of stuff, it's their worst nightmare. 341 00:51:12.320 --> 00:51:19.320 When you have the representative government, then the things that you start talking about fall into place. 342 00:51:19.320 --> 00:51:32.320 Now, the other question that I have deals with, you're talking about that scenario of how you were going to enumerate people who would take those top four, the top six ones. 343 00:51:32.320 --> 00:51:41.320 I don't know the history, perhaps you read it in the Hill Book, but that's how we used to have our senators prior to the 17th Amendment, right? 344 00:51:41.320 --> 00:52:11.260 Well, I understand that and I did make it clear that this would give the parties more power than they had. 345 00:52:11.320 --> 00:52:18.320 and I have very mixed feelings about that. 346 00:52:18.320 --> 00:52:24.320 On the other hand, I don't have mixed feelings about the current situation, 347 00:52:24.320 --> 00:52:34.320 so I think it's so deplorable that we barely have the pretense of democracy right now. 348 00:52:34.320 --> 00:52:49.320 And so I would feel better off allowing someone to pick our candidates for us if the outcome is one where our votes have the potential to matter. 349 00:52:49.320 --> 00:52:51.320 At least the basic information. 350 00:52:51.320 --> 00:53:06.320 And I don't know, John, I hadn't thought too much about this, but would the parties, would the people who win Democratic parties be the ones, the primaries be the ones that the party would tend to select? 351 00:53:06.320 --> 00:53:20.320 I don't know. I mean, I think that it would introduce an element. Well, if parties became too isolated from the voters, I think they would ultimately pay the price. 352 00:53:20.320 --> 00:53:25.320 and so there would be some element of competition. 353 00:53:25.320 --> 00:53:32.320 How frightened does the Democratic Party in Massachusetts feel about the Republicans right now? 354 00:53:32.320 --> 00:53:35.320 And the answer is, not at all. 355 00:53:35.320 --> 00:53:43.320 Which used to be a radical Republican state, but we had to go through that polarized flip-flop to be the radical Democrats. 356 00:53:43.320 --> 00:53:50.320 You mentioned the polarization of the two parties as one of the causes for all this. 357 00:53:50.320 --> 00:54:00.320 Now, would it be the case that state parties that already decide their candidates based on the primary method, 358 00:54:00.320 --> 00:54:06.320 would it be the case that by moving to a convention method that would actually augment the polarization between the two parties 359 00:54:06.320 --> 00:54:11.320 Do you have any party that's making a decision? 360 00:54:11.320 --> 00:54:16.320 Does that have any impact? 361 00:54:16.320 --> 00:54:31.320 Well, let's suppose that we have a party that puts 10 very, very extreme left candidates on their ballot. 362 00:54:31.320 --> 00:54:57.320 And they do that habitually. I mean, one would think that the other party could exploit that by putting some very centrist types of candidates at the top of their list and even elect three or four Republicans in Massachusetts by doing so. 363 00:54:57.320 --> 00:55:11.320 You talked about the media, but do you ascribe to the media a causal role in all of this polarization, or are they just taking advantage? 364 00:55:11.320 --> 00:55:19.320 Are we blaming CNN and Fox here, or do you congratulate them for taking advantage of our woes? 365 00:55:19.320 --> 00:55:43.320 I mean, obviously they saw a market niche and took advantage of it, and I guess I'm probably placed the blame on Americans who don't appear to want to learn very much, they just want to be reassured that what they already know is true and all they need to know. 366 00:55:43.320 --> 00:55:47.320 And Fox makes our life very easy. 367 00:55:47.320 --> 00:55:52.320 We know who the good guys are and we know who the bad guys are. 368 00:55:52.320 --> 00:55:58.320 And we also, if we like that stuff, we know that we are the good guys. 369 00:55:58.320 --> 00:56:03.320 And so they're providing, I guess, a very popular service. 370 00:56:03.320 --> 00:56:11.320 But I keep thinking, why do we have Tom Delay? 371 00:56:11.320 --> 00:56:19.880 Delay. And why do we have a debate whether it's ethical to conduct an ethics investigation of 372 00:56:19.880 --> 00:56:25.160 delay? That's very, very troubling to me.