Tag Archives: elections

VIDEO: Doug Jones (D-AL) and Tina Smith (D-MN) Sworn Into Office as U.S. Senators

Talking Points Memo reports:

Former Vice President Joe Biden will escort Sen.-elect Doug Jones (D-AL) to his swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday morning, according to CNN and local reports from Alabama. While the state colleague typically accompanies a new senator to the swearing-in ceremony, Jones did not ask Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) to attend, AL.com and WAAY TV reported Tuesday evening. Jones’ ceremony is scheduled for noon on Wednesday and he plans to do his swearing-in on a personal family Bible, according to AL.com.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:

Tina Smith, who served three years as Minnesota’s lieutenant governor and worked behind the scenes as an influential DFLer for years before that, will join the U.S. Senate on Wednesday. Smith’s rapid elevation to the Senate follows the resignation of former Sen. Al Franken, who stepped down a day earlier following sexual harassment allegations. Smith, 59, will become Minnesota’s junior senator alongside Sen. Amy Klobuchar, also a DFLer. That will make Minnesota just the fourth state to currently have two women as U.S. senators.

Smith is now the 22nd currently-sitting female senator, a record. Jones’ election nubs the Republican majority even more to 1 seat, so expect more tie-breaker votes from Pence. Smith intends to run for her new seat in November 2018, and Jones will be up for re-election to a full term in 2020.

Minority-access seats

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What is more important to keep in legislatures: minority-access seats or party-competitive seats?

Example: creating one seat populated mostly by African-American Democrats in order to ensure a safe seat for a Democratic member of Congress. But in turn, creating 4 or 5 districts next door to be populated mostly by White American Republicans to make safe seats for Republicans. This is done mostly in the South and Midwest.

I’m asking this question because many Black Democratic legislators would rather have a seat at the negotiating table for Black legislators rather than have a seat at the table for Democrats.

Case in point: how former Rep. Corrine Brown sued to keep her own 5th district in north Florida as racially-gerrymandered as possible in order to secure a safe seat for Black congressmembers like herself while surrounded by White Republican safe seats. Today, while she has been replaced by another Black Democrat, her district still looks like a snake.

Maybe minority-access seats are terrible. Maybe, in the post-Obama era, we’ll have to discard these seats to help Democrats become more competitive.

Idea: National Voter ID Card

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Hazardous Thought:

I’m seeing on Twitter that ardent Trumpists are very receptive to a “national ID card” as an anti-immigrant measure. They look a great deal at Mexico’s National Voter ID card as an inspiration.

A national ID card would go quite a ways to combat the “voter fraud” boogeyman.

I know that the ACLU is most consistent in opposing both national ID and voter ID.

But I’m wondering if we should support a National ID card while opposing the state-level Voter IDs.

Idea for Georgia Dems: Have our county Central Committees elected by voters in the General Primary, like California’s Dems.

Because having central committee members nominate and select other members is not working out.

In fact, if you are on a central committee or have been recently elected to a central committee through Party District Caucus, 2017 is your chance to change your committee election method to the 2018 General Primary. This is provided for in Article 7, Section 4 of the DPG Bylaws.

Reading Vann Newkirk’s Atlantic piece on how North Carolina’s Moral Monday “identity politics” coalition helped defeat McCrory, and then reading an alt-weekly editor’s comment underneath the article saying that McCrory was more defeated by those outside of the Moral Monday coalition who were disgusted by McCrory’s bullshit but not disgusted enough by Trump, I don’t know who to believe.

I dunno, maybe it’s a combination of BOTH? #IdentityPolitics #p2

The Need for Liquid Democracy

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So let’s talk about democracy as a tool of “small-r” republican governance, and what it is in 2016.

Right now, democracy is a zero-sum game. The two models of democratic exercise we use – representative and direct – are limited in their scalability.

Representative democracy is cheap but hierarchical, in which we select a very small class of people – legislators – to vote on the bills that regular folk don’t have the time to properly process.

Direct democracy is broad but expensive, in which every eligible voter is encouraged to vote, whether or not one is fully informed about a bill or has had a chance to properly process the legislation.

So I think that we need to talk about a third type of democracy, a democracy which takes from the strengths of both representative and direct democracy. One that I have read about is known as “delegative democracy”, also known as “liquid democracy”.

A liquid democracy would look like this: a referendum in which you – Voter 1 – can designate someone else – Voter 2 – to cast a vote for the referendum on your behalf, and Voter 2 can also designate someone else – Voter 3 – to cast the votes which have been assigned to Voter 2 to be cast. A person can accumulate multiple votes from many people to be cast on their behalf, but every individual can take their vote back to vote by oneself for the referendum.

It’s proxy voting on steroids, and it’s being used and advocated by several branches of the Pirate Party movement in Europe for their in-party decision making process. I think it is a third way of decision making that we should hear about more in the years to come.

I think it would also be adaptable to multiple levels of democratic governance, from the national to the municipal. And, even better, I think it would allow for public referendums to be held every day, almost as frequently as in a representative legislature.

If you’re studying political science, this is something to look into.

Changing How Superdelegates Work

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For those who are interested: Under the 2016 DNC Rules Committee’s reform package, a 21-member unity commission, chaired by Clinton supporter Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and vice-chaired by Sanders supporter Larry Cohen, is to be appointed “no later than 60 days” after the 2016 general election. The commission would report by January 1, 2018, and its recommendations will be voted on at the next Democratic National Committee meeting, well before the beginning of the 2020 Democratic primaries.

The commission is to consider a mix of Clinton and Sanders ideas, including:

  1. expanding ‘eligible voters’ ability to participate in the caucuses in caucus states, a Clinton campaign concern
  2. encouraging ‘the involvement in all elections of unaffiliated or new voters who seek to join the Democratic Party through same-day registration and re-registration'”, which is one of Sanders’ demands
  3. In future Democratic Conventions, about two-thirds of superdelegates would be bound to the results of state primaries and caucuses. The remaining one-third – Members of Congress, Governors, and distinguished party leaders – would remain unpledged and free to support the candidate of their choice.

Local Politics of Scale

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We want to talk about how there are not enough young people participating in politics.

But the problem is that the pathway to participation is incredibly narrow for a growing population, even at the local level. Our political system is not keeping up with the growth or complexity of our public, even at the local level.

Think of Columbus-Muscogee. 10 people sitting on a city council representing a population of 200,000+ people. That is 1 person per 20,000 people.

8 of the members represent districts, and 2 are elected at-large. That’s too few for too many. That’s a disparity of representation.

Where are the elected neighborhood councils for the districts? Where are the opportunities for the less-monied but just-as-able-minded residents of our city to advise and decide policy at a smaller level than the entire city itself?