Offering Solutions
I’ve spent the last few posts complaining about campaign ads. It occurred to me that simply complaining is a more or less empty gesture. Besides, at least some of my readers are not Texas residents, so complaining about Texas campaign ads likely falls on deaf ears. So, I thought I would offer three suggestions to improve the public discourse.
All 50 states, D.C, and Puerto Rico have the same election rules
This would require a law from Congress. There are three parts to this law, but the first one involves voting rules. This one is pretty simple. If you want voters to have ID, then it should be the same throughout the country. If you want the polls open 24 hours then it should be that way everywhere. If you want drop boxes then it should be the same and mandated with a certain number per one million voters.
If you want early voting then it should have the same rules and times everywhere. Congress has the right to regulate elections where a national office is involved. That involves the presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives. If you are electing city officials, school board races, or dog catchers in odd numbered years then follow whatever rules you like. If my family were to move across the country I should know what the rules are because they would be the same everywhere.
Congressional Districts are Drawn by Computer
This sounds simple, but it would be revolutionary. If you go back to my complaint in the last piece it would be how easy it is to tie candidates to the most extreme members of their party. One of the reasons why these extremists are there is because the Congressional districts are drawn by the state party in power. Louie Gohmert was never going to lose in East Texas despite how stupid he was.
Sheila Jackson Lee is never going to lose in urban Houston either. When a member doesn’t have to worry about reelection then they will never appeal to their voters. They can continue throwing bombs and acting like a fool. Studies have found that less than ten percent of districts are truly competitive. When you go to the fringes of each party you get more performance artists and fewer serious adults. Different research models have predicted that a neutral drawing of districts would result in more than 50 percent being competitive. When you are forced to campaign to the middle you will find different candidates rising to the top.
All General Elections are Publicly Funded
We aren’t eliminating dark money, the Koch brothers, or George Soros. We are simply saying they can only influence the primaries. If you want to use foreign money, drug money, or money from terrorist groups like the NRA to get out of your primary then go right ahead. The rules then change for the general election.
This allows for two things. First, it puts everyone on an even playing field which makes for fairer elections. Second, it means that a public commission gets to approve all ads. So, hit pieces on your opponent will be a thing of the past. You can run ads about your record, your plans, or your life story. If you want to throw mud around then your ad doesn’t get approved. Period. We are the federal election commission and we approve this ad.
That sounds simple and good, but would require bipartisan cooperation in congress. Of course we know that ain’t going to happen. However, the opposite could happen if congress turns red after 2022 elections and in 2025. We could see the worst of voting regulations from congress. Many are now being implemented in red states and could be what a red congress models regulations after. As some repugnantican politicians have already expressed in their states (like AZ), their rules could insure repugnanticans win. That’s a one party rule, not democracy. That’s also the vision of trumpf and his cult, and our supremes would fall into place behind them if challenged.
1OT PSA: The sky might actually be falling early tomorrow morning, a part of it, for some of us.
No, really.
A recently launched Chinese rocket body [CZ-5B R/B (ID 54217)] is going to come down tomorrow morning [+-4 hours of 0724CDT/1224UTC] in an indeterminate location, including parts of the USA.
The potential location for this reentry can only be shown as a ‘probable’ time and location because the damned Chinese haven’t provided any detailed orbital information to the rest of the world.
The Aerospace Corporation* REENTRY PREDICTION website for this rocket debris is:
https://aerospace.org/reentries/cz-5b-rb-id-54217
You may interpret the tracking information at the link as you may.
But I’ll summarize the situation more particularly for residents of S and E Texas, since the track passes over us at a ‘prime time’ for reentry:
The reentry tracking map shown at the link marks the ‘time 0’ point, “Predicted Reentry Time 04 Nov 2022 12:24 UTC ± 4 hours”, as occurring in the southern Indian Ocean between South Africa and Australia.
However, the actual potential reentry envelope covers much more time and space.
Roughly 45 to 35 minutes prior to ‘time zero’, 12:24 UTC, 0624CDT/0724EDT, the rocket track passes over Texas, and the US mid-south to NY/NE [the last ‘blue track’ leading to ‘time zero’].
Since this time/track segment has perhaps a slightly higher probability of a reentry occurring, I suggest that y’all either spend some time in the basement, if you have one. Or be outside watching, as I will be doing [usually outside from ~0300h anyway].
If it doesn’t land on you, it might be a pretty spectacular sight to see.
.
2[* “ABOUT US
In an era of dynamic change in space, Aerospace is addressing a generation of complex challenges. We operate the only federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) committed exclusively to the space enterprise. Our technical experts span every discipline of space-related science and engineering.”]
RE comment #2 about reentering rocket, statistically, the most vulnerable track in the continental USA is roughly a hundred miles or so either side of a line from roughly Montana to New Jersey.
3This line is where many of the possible reentry tracks occur and intersect.
Sandridge: so you’re recommending wearing a helmet?
4slipstream @4, I guess it might work, if it’s about twelve feet thick and you’re underground. Any chunk of rocket big enough to hit the ground while initially traveling about 17,000mph is going to leave a mark.
Then again, around 45% of ‘Murikans, your typical Rethug, needs no cranial protection at all, since that space is empty on them.
5Of the things that can be done to help our elections, I’m a big fan of ranked choice voting. There are different ways to implement it, but I think Alaska has come up with a good balance between voter choice and keeping things simple. For those not familiar, Alaska now has an open primary with the top four candidates advancing to the general election. The general election is ranked choice.
6“Congressional Districts are Drawn by Computer”
As a computer programmer (over 40 years on the job!), this idea scares me! Algorithms contain the implicit biases of the people who write them. Moreover, the heavily gerrymandered districts we have now are made heavier and heavier by who gets to input the data into the algorithm.
As long as people are involved in the process of drawing districts, there will be bias. It doesn’t matter whether computers are involved. In fact, I’d argue for disallowing computers to be involved and leave it to people who can’t profile as well as computers can.
It surely is a mess, but computers are not the answer. After 40 years in the biz, I don’t think they ever have been.
7I don’t necessarily agree with these suggestions, but I definitely see some value. I also see the mud-slinging continuing through PACs and like as a get around the limitation.
I would love to add a 5 or 10% of campaign funds raised must be alloted to the budget for that administration level of office. So presidential and us congress critters campaigns would go to federal budget. Mayor campaigns would go to city budgets.
It gets my goat that people/entities are pouring money into campaigns, but not willing to pay into the government function for that position. When we watch so many government administrations basically running broke, it is a shame we don’t see investment where those funds can add real value for the people opportunities. It might even cut down on some of the grift.
8Abolish the Electoral College. It’s antiquated. No other democracy on the planet uses an electoral college. We’ve already seen how it can be manipulated and corrupted.
9Malarkey: as a computer programmer, mathematician, and an occasional chemist, physicist, geoscientist, and climate modeler (*), I agree about the possibility of, well, malarkey going on if redistricting is done by computer. However, there are mathematically proven fair algorithms that can do the job, allowing racial balance and all. It’s a classical constrained optimization problem, for which rock solid codes and checks are available. The implementation of those methods in code would have to be completely open source and not hidden as some company’s “intellectual property”.
But that has been the case for over 20 years now, and it’s just not gonna happen. Robert’s Supreme Court has ruled that gerrymandering for political gain is hunky-dory as long as it is not racially discriminatory, so you can bet that whoever is in power will get to state the underlying optimization problem to favor themselves.
(*) Yes, I have research publications in all of those fields. But my larval academic form was in optimization theory and software. Sometimes I’m also both a dessert topping and a floor wax!
10I see your concerns Malarkey. I think it would have to involve an independent commission of some sort. I think rank order voting has a lot of merit. Chris Bell would have been our governor for at least one term.
I think what is most frightening to me is how stratified Congress is becoming. Traditional conservatives are being purged in favor of performance artists. There is some of that on the left as well, but not nearly in the same proportion. That’s a whole other story on a whole other day.
11National voting rules sounds good to me depending on who gets to make those rules and how their implementation is agreed upon. I’ve always been leery of the idea of States’ Rights where individual rights are concerned. Your human and legal rights should not depend on your zip code.
Personally, I think Oregon’s vote-by-mail solution is the best I’ve seen. It’s not totally foolproof (fools can be so ingenious in their idiocy), but it’s well-tested and debugged.
12Bill F, I like this ranked voting here in Alaska. Nothing to add to that, except it’s not that complicated. Most of us can walk and chew gum at the same time. (I can’t speak for MAGAts.)
13Colorado experienced a new approach to reapportionment: Colorado Independent Redistricting Commissions. see the selection process and districting approaches at https://redistricting.colorado.gov/content/commissioner-selection-process
Allowing people with computers to draw multiple maps to consider, but insisting on open hearings, a multi-partisan supermajority to approve, and oversight by courts managed to emerge with geographically cohesive and coherent districts, and the state emerged with 3 D, 3 R, and 2 “competitive” House districts according to 8 prior statewide election contests. In a week, we’ll have a sense if the districts worked as advertised.
14Nick,
15offering solutions.
I’ve ranted lots about fox news tactics.
Let’s pass a law that establishes a GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED database that records every syllable, digit, and bit uttered by any entity using the word news in their description.
They’ll scream about censorship.
But it’s the opposite.
If you don’t want it recorded for posterity,
IT AIN’T NEWS.
There for eternity.
That’d equal the playing field some.
All 50 states, D.C, and Puerto Rico have the same election rules
Sounds like Australia or Canada.
Congressional Districts are Drawn by Computer
Probably not possible in a totality. The algorithm is likely to be too complex but it should be possible to do the first cut that way and then set up a non-partisan committee or a non-partisan committee for each state to hammer out the details.
16Hello, Surly Professor!
Thanks for chiming in!
I’ve always been in the corporate world, so the models I’m aware of have to do with money – who gets it and who doesn’t. These applications have all kinds of bias built in that has been there for years. Review and regulation are in their infancy but I have hope.
It sounds as though academia might have built a better – open source – mousetrap. Good to know!
But, yeah, SCOTUS. 🙁
17“Congressional Districts are Drawn by Computer”
This just shifts the focus to who controls the folks who write the algorithms.
18“General elections should be publicly funded.”
Even better, change the system so it is based on the Fairness Doctrine, which gives underdogs as much advantage as the overdogs enjoy: Make it incumbent upon all those who provide goods and services to a candidate to provide those same goods and services to all qualified candidates.
This will make it pointless for candidates to scrounge for yet more money; all they have to do is go to the lawn sign maker and say, “You owe me the same number of lawn signs of the same quality as you are going to provide my opponent.” The maker simply adjusts his price to make his nut.
This means candidates will not be owned by megacontributors any more. It also means that the general public will stand to profit by suing donors of goods and services when they find out their candidate did not get the same (“Who provided that company plane to Bob Dole? I’m going to call my hungry lawyer.”)
It means the FEC will no longer be needed.
19As the airwaves are a public trust, we are well within our rights to require broadcasters to offer free airtime for candidate statements and debates. This could be a means to remove the money from politics and elections. No gravy; no gravy train.
20AK Lynne,
21Yes, Alaska has a good system. I’d prefer the top 5 in the primary going to the general, but close enough. The more complicated system would have had you ranking all 49 candidates in the primary for the House seat. While you or I would have done it, too many voters would throw up their hands and not vote. That’s the advantage of Alaska’s two-step process over a single, ranked choice election with voters asked to rank 6-10 candidates (or 49) in every contest.
I’m not sure I have a solution but I have to believe that any campaign/voting/fundraising changes are going to have to be endorsed by the media and I don’t want to be the one to ask them to forego all or part of the (projected) $10 BILLION in political ad buys. I aint real smart but I kinda think that’s A LOT OF MONEY!!!!!
22That is an excellent point about advertising dollars and campaign ads. I would have to think that eventually the dollars would even out. Each candidate would be guaranteed a certain amount and I would think that some candidate would get more public money than they could raise on their own. Conversely, the richie riches will spend less. I would think it would be a similar concept as the salary cap in professional sports.
As others have mentioned the Fairness Doctrine, I would think that it would take time for campaigns to readjust to the new paradigm. It also doesn’t solve the problem of issue ads that are funded by PACs and other interest groups. The problem with those is that the names of the organizations don’t match who they actually are. It’s not like the soft drink companies come out and say, “A message from the sugar pushers trying to get you dependent on junk food.”
23No, Nick Carraway, the wealthiest will very easily outspend whatever the government provides the other candidates. Plus, there’s the matter of PACs promoting issues clearly identified with a candidate– and that spending isn’t considered as a contribution.
Make the vendors provide equally to ALL, and watch the successful campaigns win by turning to their volunteers! There will then come the day in DC where incumbents 75% of the time will cancel a meeting with a contributor to meet instead with a constituent– the exact opposite of the situation today…
24Read it and fucking weep, peeps.
I’ve been warning y’all about this for years, decades even; and now it certainly looks like yet another Democratic disaster.
As a formerly absolutely solid Democratic territory, and an entire Texas [and elsewhere?] voting BLOC goes over to the darkside.
Primarily due to long term Democratic INeptitude at all levels, especially the highest ones!!!
I have lived most of my life down here [in these districts as they and I moved around], it’s almost inconceivable that this has been allowed to happen. Sheer incompetence on a galactic scale.
I hope that this article[s], and I, are wrong…
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/04/south-texas-republicans-congressional-districts/
“…But some Republicans are now openly speculating they’ll win all three. Dave Carney, Gov. Greg Abbott’s chief strategist, recently said Abbott’s campaign feels “spectacularly positive” about South Texas and that all three contests are “within victory.” In a signal of his commitment to the region, Abbott is hosting his election night watch party in McAllen.
“I expect to win” all three, Tom Emmer, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a recent interview. “I absolutely do.”…”
25I like the way you think. Fair is good, right?
26I don’t usually comment on US political matters, although you better believe a lot of people in the rest of the World are KEEN observers, but it occurs to me that a lot of Nick’s wishlist describes what the Australian Electoral Commission does over here.
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