Elections

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Winning Elections by Cheating: The Gerrymandering way!

Ohio is a lot like Pennsylvania in that the Republicans have gerrymandered the state so much that even though more Democrats vote in the state than Republicans, the GOP wins the vast majority of seats.

This isn’t democracy. This isn’t “one man, one vote.” They’re not winning by having a majority agree with them or want them in there. This is winning by rewriting the rules in your favor.

Fortunately, Ohio has a ballot measure that would require a bipartisan council to fix the districts (like California has done). Let’s hope it passes.

The_Ohio_Gerrymander

It’s time the Supreme Court held that gerrymandering violates the Constitution by preventing proper representation. We need impartial committees using computer-generated models. Seriously, we have the programs to do it now. A computer just looks at population and natural barriers and makes districts compact and reasonable. (Here, look at these examples).

But this is the Republican way of winning elections these days. You create districts that disenfranchise Democrats; you pass “voter protection” laws that keep them from voting; and you get the courts to declare that secret unlimited money is “free speech”.

“Republicans will do everything they can to win elections except get the most votes.” – Bill Maher

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Libertarian believes in freedom of religion to drink goat’s blood

A libertarian candidate for congress admitted that yes, he performed a religious ritual involving drinking goat’s blood, but he doesn’t see why that should disqualify him from office.ASI

Do I need to mention which state he’s from?  Hint:  It’s Florida.

Sadly, he’s also a lawyer, once more proving that just because you could work your way through law school doesn’t automatically make you smart. (Ted Cruz, for instance, went to Harvard. So much for that stereotype.)

People are upset about dismembering a goat for sacrifices. Had the goat been dismembered for eating, well, that’s perfectly fine. But to appease your god? Nope. Instead he should have participated in a religious ritual involving drinking your savior’s blood and eating his flesh — you know, normal religious stuff.

But hey, he has the right to practice his religion. It’s not like he’s crazy or anything. Oh, wait, he is? He believes that he is destined to lead a new civil war with his white supremist friends? He calls himself August Sol Invictus (“majestic unconquered sun” in latin)?

I wonder if he ever advised any of his clients to plead insanity. He seems to be an expert at it.

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Automatic Voter Registration makes conservative heads explode

Look, the government knows who you are, through your social security number, driver’s license, post office mailing address, and probably a hundred other ways of confirming your identity.

Why then do we need an extra requirement for voting registration?  Why should the most basic right of anyone in a democracy have such difficult stringent conditions?

Isn’t voting the basis of our system of government, the one we proudly hold up as an example to the rest of the world? Who wouldn’t want everyone to vote?

Well, the answer is simple: The rich and powerful. Since the founding of our country, the idea has been that the common rabble shouldn’t be deciding important matters that democracy’s elite nobility rightly should deal with.

We commoners have fought against this notion since then (when you had to be a white, male, property owner to vote). Little by little, with hard-fought battles, the barriers have fallen.

And the rich and powerful fought back, with poll taxes and literacy tests, and eventually those were eliminated as well.

Today, the rich and powerful are represented by the Republican party that knows perfectly well that the more people who vote, the worse the Republicans do — so they have tried over and over again to restrict voting and place as many barriers in the way of voters as they can. They scream about non-existent voter fraud but admit in private (when they don’t realize they are being recorded) that the whole point of it all is to keep us commoners from voting.

That’s why heads are exploding over Hillary Clinton’s proposal to make voting registration automatic. You turn 18, boom, you’re registered. Horrors!6-5-2015-1-10-50-PM

As you can expect, the smarter people on the right are discussing this as if it will lead to massive fraud and elections being stolen* while the rubes who follow them are more blatant, posting comments that reveal that the racist idea behind poll taxes and literacy tests hasn’t ever died.  (Note: Fox News has yet to remove all these racist comments from their web page. They know who their audience is.)

There’s more that can be done to encourage voting of course besides simply making registration easier — mail-in voting has been tremendously successful in the states that have tried it, increasing participation without a single incident of fraud. And “early voting,” which allows people a week or so to vote, also has proven to work.

But automatic registration? A good first step.

* yeah, I know — ironic, right?

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People vote least when it matters the most

Today is primary election day here in Pennsylvania, wherein we pick our candidates for things like sheriff, judge, commissioner, district attorney, school boards and so on.

This means that hardly anyone will vote.vote-button

Ironically, these elections are ones where voters have the most power. Your one vote for President is tremendously unlikely to make the difference in the long run, but more often than you may think, these lesser races have been decided with one vote.

Even more importantly, in these local races, these people will talk to you. You can literally pick up your phone and call your local commissioner and they will answer. A $20 donation to their campaign means a lot. Try that with the President or your Senator.

And quite often, these are the people whose job affects your life the most — dealing with schools, traffic, crime, zoning, and local taxes. Don’t you want to have a say in these things? A major say?

So go out and vote. Take a few minutes to do some research or at least stop and talk to the campaign workers standing outside the polls.

We have the most power in local elections and those votes matter.  A year or so ago, I ran a write-in campaign for Judge of Elections and won with 17 votes.

So get out and vote. Or stop complaining.

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Conservatives’ heads explode at the thought of making voting mandatory

If there’s one thing the GOP does not want, it’s everybody voting, because that way they’re sure to lose.  That’s why they spend so much time and money trying to keep people from voting and making up fake “voter fraud” arguments.obama vote

Obama’s recent comment that maybe mandated voting (like they have in other countries such as Australia) might be a good idea has produced the desired response from the right. It’s kind of fun to watch, really, as the outrage boils over. Andrea Tantaros on Fox argued against it, saying, “Do we really want everybody voting?”

Well, yes.  Isn’t that what democracy is about?

Let’s make it clear that there is no proposal or bill being discussed at the moment. Such a thing could take wildly different approaches, such as tax breaks for voters to small fines for those who do not. In places that have this, there is usually an option to vote for “none of the above” or otherwise case a blank ballot as a protest.

Conservatives scream that this violates liberty, because the government should only be forcing people to do things like having invasive unnecessary medical procedures before getting an abortion.

But there is a price to pay in a democracy. You are required to do jury duty, for instance. If there is a war, you can be required to serve in the military and die for your country. Why is requiring you to vote harsher than requiring you to die?

And think about the advantages. Politicans who win elections where 90% of the people actually do vote can clearly claim a mandate. Mandatory voting insures that the winner really does represent all the people and not just the few who find time and make the effort to get out and vote (usually the older and richer segments of our population).

Sometimes I just admire those Republicans who, when they’re not aware they are being recorded, admit that all this anti-voter movement has nothing to do with voter fraud and everything to do with keeping Democrats away from the polls. Because if there is one thing we have learned from past elections, it’s that Republicans will do everything in their power to win elections — except get the most votes.

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Wolf won the Governor’s Race by Being a Democrat

A murder of Tea Party governors was elected four years ago and they immediately went about destroying their states’ economies.  (I wasn’t sure what word to use to describe a group of Tea Party governors, and a “murder of crows” came to mind for some reason.)  In Maine, Michigan, Kansas and Pennsylvania, these governors went on to become the most unpopular governors in the country.

Governor Wolf (artist's approximation)

Governor Wolf (artist’s approximation)

“We will put our economic policies in place and the economy will boom!” they promised.  Of course, when they did, their states all suffered.  Pennsylvania dropped to 49th in job creation, for instance.

in the 2014 election, they were all vulnerable, with negative rankings higher than their positive ones.  Yet they were all re-elected, save for Governor Corbett here in Pennsylvania.  What made the difference?

Tom Wolf ran as a Democrat.  A real Democrat.

In every other state, political advisers told their candidates to tone down the talk about taxes, to distance themselves from Obama, and to appeal to a more conservative base.  They said to attack the other side relentlessly, and use negative campaign ads.

Not Wolf.  He emphasized his liberalism.  He stood for reasonable gun control, reproductive rights, marijuana decriminalization, Obamacare, and environmental protection. He invited Obama to travel the state and campaign with him.  And he immediately responded to every negative ad that came at him, without becoming negative himself.

Now there are other reasons those other Democrats lost as well — Voter turnout was the lowest it had been in 75 years, so that always hurts Democrats. But turnout was low in Pennsylvania, too.

I think there is a lesson here that Democrats should heed:  You need to give voters a reason to come out and vote for you. You have to stand for something.

As a wise man once said, if you give the people a choice between a Republican and a republican, they will chose the Republican every time.

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Four Reasons why the GOP will lose in 2016

Democrats may lose Congress thanks to apathetic voters, gerrymandering, and acting too much like Republicans, but we’ve pretty much got the White House secure for the foreseeable future.  Here’s why:

1.  The Electoral College.  As much as I want to get rid of it, it certainly works to the Democrats’ favor.  You need 270 electoral votes to win, and Democrats start with 252 that are pretty much guaranteed, in states that haven’t voted Republican since Bill Clinton was elected.

If you add to that group Virginia and New Mexico (states that have been reliably blue the past few elections) then bang, you’re at 270, and that doesn’t even count the possibilities of winning Nevada, Ohio, Florida, and Colorado, all of which have gone Democratic in the past two elections (even North Carolina and Indiana went Democratic in 2008, so don’t necessarily count them out either).

Republicans, meanwhile, start with maybe 167 guaranteed electoral votes.  That’s a huge burden to overcome. emap

Look at that map again. See how the Democrats only need to get Florida to win? If not Florida, then only two states (for example, Virginia and Nevada).  For the Republicans to win, they will need pretty much every single gray state on this map. And even if they took every single gray state, that would only be 280. If as few as one state goes the other way (Florida or Virginia, for instance), they lose.

2.  Numbers.  There are more of us than there are of them.  If we’d vote in equal percentages, we’d always hold Congress, too, but we don’t — except in Presidential years.  More people voted for Democrats in 5 of the last 6 Presidential elections (and in that last one — GWB’s re-election — there are those who question that).  There’s no reason to assume that will change, especially because of…

3. Demographics.  Republicans are predominately older white men.  It’s true.  Young people, women, minorities — all securely Democrats.  And as the country becomes less and less white, and as women become more and more independent, those numbers keep changing to the Democrat’s favor.  Further, fewer people identify themselves as conservative these days.   It’s a trend that has reasonable Republicans rightly worried.

4.  Candidates.  Let’s face it, the Republicans do not have a shining star on the horizon — there is no one with the personality of Ronald Reagan who can charm America into voting for him.  Instead, we get Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Mitt Romney (again),  and a bunch of others who, in the last poll, could not get past 10%.

The Republicans know this.  And that is why they so desperately are trying to suppress the vote and get rid of campaign finance laws.  “If you can’t win by getting the most votes, then cheat and buy the election” is their motto.

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Why the 2014 Election Wasn’t a Conservative Wave

Pundits who claim that the last election was some sort of conservative wave have to explain why every single ballot initiative went the way liberals wanted.10501656_731086380317752_1773334488094226475_n

It’s true — from getting drug addicts out of jail to raising minimum wage to supporting reproductive rights to marijuana legalization, the liberal view won even in the reddest of states.

Republicans vote in greater number than Democrats even though Democrats outnumber them, and that allows Republicans to win more than they should.  But as I have pointed out before, the liberal view on issues is the majority view, and even Republicans agree with some of them.  These are not radical, outlandish, way-off-to-the-left positions.  They are what most Americans want.

Democrats have done an absolutely terrible job of convincing voters of that.  The last election found Democrats running away from popular positions as well as Democratic successes, and as a result, people voted for the real Republican instead of the fake one.

There are other reasons the Democrats fared poorly in the last election even while their issues won.  (It was the off-year election at the end of a President’s term which is always bad for the incumbent party;  more Democratic seats were up for grabs;  Gerrymandering made it more difficult for Democrats;  Citizens United allowed for huge business donations to Republicans;  Republican voter suppression was successful…)  But things will be different in 2016, where there is a Presidential race and Democrats do vote.

In a future blog, I’ll show you an electoral map and point out how amazingly difficult it will be for the Republicans to win.

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Don’t be proud of being a non-voter

Government sucks but you don’t vote?  You’re part of the problem.

Bill Maher explains it well here, and with jokes.

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In defense of voting

It seems strange to me that I have to defend voting against people who argue with a straight face that you shouldn’t — either because “your vote doesn’t matter” or “no one represents me”.

Trust me — your vote matters.  That’s why they spend so much money trying to get it.  That’s why Republicans try so hard to keep Democrats from voting.vote-button

And there are good candidates out there. Quite often they don’t make it past the primaries because people don’t vote. People don’t pay attention. They don’t get involved; they don’t read about the elections, and then when the election rolls around, they say “Hey, no one represents me” — which might not have happened had they done something about it.

I am involved in my local party. I go to meetings, I encourage candidates to run, and I’ve even run for a minor office myself (and won). I read about politics, I write about politics, and I contribute to politicians I like. And I vote. And because of this, I have a say in who these candidates are. I can affect the results.

Complaining that no one represents you in an election when you are doing absolutely nothing to change that seems like whining to me. And you know you’re going to end up with one of them, so at least vote for the lesser of the two.  Surely one represents your views better than the other one.

Democracy means we are the government. We, the people. We have a say in what our government does. The candidates answer to us, not the other way around.  They represent us.  They are not the government, we are.

If you don’t participate, then they ignore you. And then you get what you deserve.

The people who do vote (which are pretty much always Republicans) win elections, and then the stupid Democrats think “Guess we should be more like Republicans” and move to the right.  Whereas if we voted in the same number as Republicans, we would win many of the elections and no one would be saying that.  But because we stay at home, our candidates lose.  So what do their campaign managers say then?  “We need to appeal to those people who do vote, not those who sit at home and complain without doing anything.”

It’s not going to change from the top. It has to change from us at the bottom. And complaining without action changes nothing.