written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin
(find your bioregion/watershed)
(find your bioregion/watershed)
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written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin
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[I sent most of the following text to Representative Mark Miller, as well as to a listserve dealing with formal structural change. Their responses come first. This fleshes out some of the checks and balances between the informal parties that would be established with proportional representation in the Electoral College.]
title, Re: my letter to a rep.:PR in EC, response to Wnott@AOL;
the issue is how to get to the level where the districting becomes
more competitive and geographically inclusive
[First, addressing 'Wynott':]
I feel you have raised some good points that I would like to address.
Wynott@AOL.COM writes:
>Keep in mind that, as long as the number of votes cast by each state is equal
>to the state's Reps and Senators, rural, low-population states will continue
>to have a disproportionate amount of power in the Electoral College. One
>could in fact argue that diminishing the huge amount of power of
>large-population swing states will work to the benefit of rural,
>low-population states.
For me, the issues are twofold, and on the ground (literally): the districting, and the unrepresentative 'majority' (sic) parties that make, adjust,
and maintain the districts as single party only 'majoritarian' districts, to the extent that they dominate a majority of unrepresentative districts, instead of reflect the popular vote.
With the districts in the state they are in, the Democratic and the Republican parties have nothing to do with the popular vote, as the voting population shows. Even in this so called 'contested' election, only 50% of the potential voters--that's only about 25% of the population fell for them for them each, apiece.
The question is how do we get more representative and competitive districts, instead of clientelistic districts where the majoritarian parties choose/design their own input through the districting process. The Democratic and the Republican parties have entirely turned the process of competitive voting into 'single party vote harvesting'--skimming what each of them want out of a particular self-designed (and malleable) districts--enough to keep squeezing by--and damning the other issues that the other endemic 49% of the population has an interest in seeing in policy. The Democratic and the Republican parties keep shuffling the context of their own representation, biasing the voting process, and splitting geographic feedback across their separated districts to minimize any localist feedback.
The endless decennial 'adjusting' of the districts (i.e., the parties having a conflict of interest in adjusting of how the vote gets transferred in the favor of preferential treatment of district-based monopolies over a sense of district competition), is the underlying corruption, because this allows certain parties to 'inherit and keep power' clientelistically and uncompetitively, without actually having to be integrative of anything on the ground.
Yes, presently these states do 'vote' that way.
I would like to disaggregate the sense of 'vote' from 'districting' here in a way to show that voting is far from what is going on. It is districting.
They only 'vote' (sic) this way because of particular frameworks of unrepresentative districting.
Plus, I suppose I see this arrangement of proportional representation in the Electoral College as more of a arrangement for balance between ruralized and urbanized areas and and check and balance against the representation of urban areas exclusively in uneven development. You see this as an endemically rural biased one. I offer that proportional representation in the Electoral College is the establishing of a balance between population/urban and geography/rural, and a feedback against state politics and policies that are endemically biased toward urbanized areas. If population is the only consideration, then state developmentalism is biased toward urban areas. That is why it is fine to have rural areas politics checking and balancing against urbanized states votes.
However, to say as you claim that there is a 'natural vote,' something separated from the art and artifice of districting away 'votes' into inconsequentiality, is erroneous. I hope you see what I mean. There's nothing called a 'natural vote.' The closest we can get to it is to have competitive districts. Presently, the 'way' the "vote" goes, is little clue to what the issues are, because of the unrepresentative and clientelistic vote harvesting districts are setting up biased election samplings; they are intentionally keeping people with only one choice, wherever they live.
It's less of a vote, its a cordoned off districting reflection of a particular party in the way that the biased districts sample of votes are unrepresentative from the beginning for particular areas. The collected 'votes' tallied as 'the vote' (which unsurprisingly, and intentionally so), returns a large degree of incumbents unchallenged and has abysmally low voter turnouts.
If a party can design its own district, why bother calling it an election? If a party can design its own district, and minimize its own opposition through ungeographic means and boundary bifurcations of 'the vote,' it wants to minimize the very act of voting instead of facilitate it. It wants to engender quiescence. The more institutionalized quiescence, the more particular issues are divided across districts, for limited though secure vote harvesting as 'the vote.' This is all the better for an unrepresentative party. Districts organized for voter quiescence and uncompetitiving voting are much more secure in 'returning' its unchallenged candidate for its self-designed district.
So, I'm rather skeptical that 'the vote' actually represents the 'natural vote' out there, because of the districting issue. You mention another point I would like to address:
>
>Another alternative is to support legislation requiring WI to adopt
>proportional allocation of electoral votes ONLY if a certain number of states
>also adopt it -- e.g. 25 states, including, at least, the 11 largest states
>(currently CA, FL, GA, MI, NJ, NC, NY, OH, PA, VA, TX)?
This can lead to a passing of the buck, waiting/blaming other states for a state's own lack of initiative. I see a situation where a representative gets to say, and use a, "hey, it's their fault" rationale. This changes the subject from what they are refusing to do into what some other state is refusing to do. Plus, this would postpone the actual decision, the actual vote on it, which may come up differently the next time the 'same' issue is on the table. Keep that in mind. This sounds like institutionalized postponement on action, instead of action. A third point I would like to address:
>
>It is fair to say, however, that such a system will encourage more third
>party candidates to run and make it more difficult for one of the major party
>candidates to get the majority of electoral votes.
Well, it will only make it "difficult" for the Democratic and Republican parties if they continue the strategies of being unrepresentative parties dependent alone on their monopoly uncompetitive district frameworks. If they are willing to actually become competitive representatives, it would be fine for all parties--them included. ;-)
We forget that in a changed context (of districting, and of a context where third parties can check them in the proportional representation of the electoral congress), even the majority parties, to keep in power, have to be worthy of that name 'majority.' All this does is keep them from minimizing their own electoral input and getting away with it, by creating a context where third parties are politically 'there' to be able to provide a check and balance on them.
I have always thought that the entire edifice/discourse about 'formal checks and balances' was completely worthless, unless there was actually a way to put checks and balances on unrepresentative informal parties as well. Presently, there is nothing like this informal check and balance framework between majoritarian parties and third parties--of course because the Founders failed to consider how factions are created by who does get to use the state and who is kept out of power. Thus, the original issue that surprised them all--the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Please someone strike me down for this simplistic analysis, I would likely agree.
However, there are these positional informal elements to a polity that the Founders failed to recognize. Majoritarian party is only another word for 'state party.' Third party is only another word for 'out of power' party. The present majoritarian parties literally 'rule,' instead of are representative--because the informal frameworks of challenge to them as gatekeepers on the state they have entirely minimized.Third parties would play a positionally valuable role as foils to unrepresentative 'majoritarian' parties, as they would be unable to get away with minimizing their own electoral input, if there were actual formal frameworks that would empower third parties which would keep majoritarian parties more representative if they strayed from representation.
Of course the uncompetitive districting issue is crucial here as the Maine and Nebraska examples show, it is easy to draw districts to divide the opposition's ungeographic tally of the votes to make it look like they have less or none in particular districts, when it is rather sizable issue across the state that can be smothered if the districts are drawn to a particular parties advantage or if they divide any blocks of opposition intentionally into different ungeographic districts. The uncompetitive state level and federal level districting is important as well, instead of only proportional representation in the electoral college, though the later will help mobilize to change the former.
This proportional representation in the electoral college situation lets all parties compete for majoritarian status: it forces all parties to be more integrative and responsive to the electorate, and it is that much easier to call unrepresentative parties to task when they fail to be representative, if there are third parties endemically waiting in the wings for the presumed 'majoritarian' party to mess up, since each party is with the capacity to become the majoritarian party themselves.
Proportional representation in the electoral congress helps to set up this check and balances context on the unrepresentative power and low voter appeals of any 'majoritarian' party, or any party, that would claim that name without actually being 'marjoritarian' and only because they are formally demoted any competion on the ground in the districts. Parties waiting in the wings (third parties) are the check and balances to a very unrepresentative framework of politics in the United States. They are required to be institutionalized actors, otherwise 'who guards the guards?' 'the "people?"' No one does at all, if the 'people' are actually guarded by the majoritarian parties from making any moves 'of their own' without their clientelistic approval. (This is the ungeographic districting issue once more).
The third party/majoritarian party context will 'guard the guards.'
>
>Another alternative is to support legislation requiring WI to adopt
>proportional allocation of electoral votes ONLY if a certain number of states
>also adopt it -- e.g. 25 states, including, at least, the 11 largest states
>(currently CA, FL, GA, MI, NJ, NC, NY, OH, PA, VA, TX)?
Anyone seen any research comparing and contrasting the states that do have 'party vote required' and 'open' electoral votes? It may be useful to review or generate such research, as it would point to some general contextual factors that would facilitate any structural changes in this regard or the politics that led to these changes and divergences in the states' different histories. Where could I find a list that would show exactly what each state presently has and/or requires, as the framework for choosing its electoral congressional votes--all the nuances and differences noted?
Regards,
Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison
link to a map of the present congressional districts of the United States
link to a map of the majoritarian districts of Wisconsin, compared to the bioregions of Wisconsin
link to www.fairvote.org, where you can see the irregular majoritarian districts.
Choose 'redistricting.' This site discusses the degree to which they are uncompetitive as well, with 60+ Congressional representatives and senators 'returning' to Congress without having been challenged when they 'ran' for election. There were over 90 of them in 1996. For a sense of scale, there are only 535 members of Congress total (435 House; 100 Senate). The size of the Congress is adjusted occassionally. The House of Representatives has been at 435 since 1910. Additionally, incumbency as a phenomenon is over 90% in the United States as well. There is very little 'running' for office in the United States. Why is this so? Some of this was explained above. See the other pages for more.
other pages on the bioregional state, keep reading them in order (recommended)
or
Work toward sustainability:
bioregional voting districts
that reflect your experience of
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