This Is Not News

Not News launched right before the 2000 election, and so it should not be too much of a surprise that we spent a lot of time in our forums in November and December talking about what do about the voting system. And at the time, I was a proponent of using electronic voting machines, ideally ones with photographs of candidates.

Well, the execution of that idea hasn’t exactly proven me prescient. There have been reports of buggy code, impossible-to-verify record trails, buggy code, and all sorts of other problems. So Rush Holt has reintroduced H.R. 811, an amendment to the Help America Vote Act that would mandate that every voting system produce a paper record.

I will say this: I still think electronic voting systems have potential. Every paper system of balloting has problems with spoiled ballots, and I’d like to see those reduced. Truth be told, I’m not sure I was ever really able to verify that the big machine with the levers was actually recording my vote, either. But in 2000, I imagined that a country that’s managed to make ATMs ubiquitous would be able to come up with better interfaces than we’ve gotten. I was wrong. So adding one more layer of verifiability through paper receipts is probably a good idea. But if we do put a whole new system into place, again, can we please put the time and money into making sure it works thsi time?

The Senate held a rare Saturday session today to attempt to vote on the same to-the-point non-binding resolution opposing the escalation in Iraq that the House passed yesterday. They were four votes shy of the 60 they needed to invoke cloture and move to a final vote. Now, since we’re talking about something non-binding anyway, I don’t have a problem with saying that the 56 senators who voted for cloture supported the resolution, although there might be one or two that would try to wiggle and say they were just in favor of moving to a final vote.

The problem is, if you need 60 votes to pass anything, and you can’t get that many on a non-binding resolution, it doesn’t seem feasible to think that you can get 60 on any binding legislation that would change policy in Iraq. The closest thing I can think of right now is Jack Murtha’s plan to attach riders to appropriations bills setting certain requirements for troop readiness, equipment, training, and recovery time that would reduce the number of troops Bush can send into Iraq. Now, I think that’s a constitutionally valid option – Congress has the power to govern the construction of the armed forces, and basic standards of readiness fall into that area, in my opinion. And the beauty of attaching these restrictions to an appropriations bill is that if Republicans try to block, they’ll be the ones preventing the military from getting funding.

But I have to admit I’m not terribly confident that such a tactic will work. I think the media coverage, much of the public, and even some Democratics members of Congress will see putting those restrictions on funding to be an act of blocking the funding, especially since I’ll bet the ranch that Bush would veto such a bill and you’ll never find enough votes to override it. I sure hope I’m wrong about that, though.

I’ve been watching numerous people on liberal/progressive blogs get worked up over the Senate Democrats’ proposal for a nonbinding resolution against Bush’s escalation plan, arguing that it was a purely cosmetic bill that accomplished nothing.

The weird thing is, today, Senate Republicans filibustered the nonbinding resolutions. The Republicans who sponsored the bills even joined the filibuster. Now, if this nonbinding resolution is no big deal, why would the Republican leadership go to such great lengths to stop it? Yeah, it’s mainly a PR stunt. But perception becomes reality so often in politics, maybe PR matters.

That said, the big confrontation is going to come up when Congress has to take action on Bush’s request for more funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. If Congress is going to substantially affect Iraq policy before 2008, funding measures are probably the only they’re possibly going to be able to get past filibusters and presidential vetoes. We’ll see who gets tagged as an obstructionist then.

OK, so Philadelphia has a big mayoral election coming up. Technically the election is in November, but right now no one has even announced they’re running on the Republican side. So the Democratic primary in May is probably for all the marbles.

Now, due in part to our last mayoral election involving an eavesdropping device discovered in the mayor’s office, the city instituted campaign finance reform that limited the contributions candidates could receive. This was a big deal in Philly, where officials routinely hit up unions, companies, and wealthy supporters for tens of thousands of dollars, if not more.

Then a millionaire named Tom Knox announced he was running for the nomination, and that he’d spend his own money as need be. He put $2 million into a getting-to-know-me campaign. And a recent Daily News poll shows that he’s rocketed up to second in the polls. Within days, a Philadelphia councilman was working on a bill to suspend the contribution limits if anyone put $2 million into his or her own campsign. (Wonder where he came up with that number.)

The councilman that introduced this bill already has close to enough cosponsors to get it passed. The councilman is also apparently a supporter of Bob Brady, the congressman and city party chair who recently entered the race. Brady apparently supports the measure, while several other mayoral candidates do not.

I would hesitate to point this out, but in Philadelphia politics it really tends to matter, since voting often breaks down along racial lines: Brady and Knox are the two white candidates in the mayoral primary.

It’s worth checking out Young Philly Politics, where the debate and discussion have flown fast and furious. Members of Council comment on the site.

I’m going to punt a little bit with tonight’s entry, and provide a couple of links that I think make for an interesting contrast.

Here’s the Library of Congress page on the Bill of Rights. You can even check out the two proposed amendments that were rejected (at least initially).

And here’s the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948.

I think if you read these two documents back to back, you get a pretty clear idea of how some people’s conception of what constitutes a right has changed. In no way am I diminishing the ideas in the Bill of Rights, but I kind of conceptualize them as a way of saying “Leave me alone” to the government. The UN Declaration goes beyond that – by the time you get to the part about rest and paid holidays, you can see that the view here depends on the idea that human beings have certain minimum requirements for a life of dignity and liberty.

And right there I think you have one of the most significant political and moral debates of the 20th and 21st centuries.

It looks almost certain that California is going to move its presidential primary to early February. And if California does it, other states are going to do it. We could be heading pretty close to a national primary this time around.

The one thing that I think is unequivocally bad about this is that it’s going to make candidates even more reliant on fundraising, and that always makes me nervous.

But I do like the idea of a large number of voters having a chance to evaluate the wide field of candidates. As long as I can remember, by the time Pennsylvania’s primary has rolled around, I might as well have voted for myself for the nomination for all the good it would do. Candidates will probably still pick the areas that they think they have the best shot in, but at least those areas will have a chance to make themselves heard.

I’m not sure I’ve really bought the idea that the retail campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire really makes a huge difference. Seems to me like a lot of those voters wait until the end of the campaign to start paying attention anyway – witness the big shifts that occurred in 2004 on the Democratic side and 2000 on the Republican side.

And there’s something to be said for the idea that, look, each party is picking a candidate who is going to have to run a national campaign. Why not have the nomination process actually test that capacity?

Chris Bowers at myDD has been beating the change-the-party-from-the-inside drum for years, and he’s backed up the talk, running for and winning seats on the city and state Demcoratic committees.

His report from the latest state meeting primarily concerns the loyalty-over-everything attitude of the Philadelphia party leadership. This is a really important story, especially since party leader Bob Brady is seriously considering a run for Mayor. He’s definitely moved far down my own priority list, that’s for sure.

Way back when Not News became a blog, I posted a brief blurb about Ethan Lieb’s proposal for a fourth branch of government, the popular branch, in which citizen juries would have an opportunity to pass legislation or help establish community standards. As I did more digging into ideas related to deliberative democracy, I decided to buy Lieb’s book, so I figured I’d follow up on that blurb with a more complete description of Lieb’s idea, along with a few of my concerns based on my usual Deweyan perspective.

I would sum up the proposal as follows. Different groups within society would have the ability to submit measures to the popular branch for consideration. Citizens may gather petitions for a bill on a single topic that does not exceed eight pages in length. The existing legislative branch can submit an issue for consideration by a meeting of the popular branch. Also, the judiciary branch can request that a jury offer an opinion on contemporary community standards or beliefs when those standards are implicated in a particular case. Proposals that garner enough support will be presented to a citizen’s jury of 525 members drawn randomly from the population and who will be required to serve or else face potential fines or community service requirements. This process will be overseen by a government agency selected by party officials and direct election by the voters. The agency will be responsible for making sure that proposals are properly drafted and that the popular assemblies are properly selected.

Members of the popular branch will receive briefing materials and will also have the chance to receive testimony from experts. Stakeholders in the issue in question will have means of submitting information to be included in the briefing materials. This process will also be overseen by the agency responsible for the operations of the popular branch. The members will meet in small groups moderated by federal judges who have received special psychological training to prepare them for the role. All deliberations will be made public, but the identities of the members will be kept secret. (This will require the disguising of voices and faces if the proceedings are to be televised, as are current meetings of the legislative branch.) If a supermajority of members vote to approve the proposal, it will become law (in the case of a citizen’s initiative or a legislatively-sponsored referendum). The law will still be subject to judicial review to ensure compliance with the constitution, and the executive and legislative branches will have means at their disposal to veto these laws if they deem it necessary. Leib imagines that there would be a considerable price to pay for such a veto in the absence of especially strong justification.

I think this is a really interesting idea, and I think it has potential. My chief concern is whether the citizen juries would be able to gather enough information to make a good judgment. The danger here is that popular participation without popular knowledge does not necessarily result in popular control. If we accept Dewey’s notion of intelligent action, then if we do not anticipate the consequences of our actions, we do not really grasp the meaning of what we are doing. We will not be able to shape future conditions to our liking. Such shaping would seem to be the purpose of the members of the popular branch, and without sufficient knowledge they cannot fulfill this function. Bad policy is one potential consequence of this failure (and some may argue that “bad� policy results are in the eyes of the beholder.) More worrisome would be the potential loss of legitimacy for the popular branch, especially since adding legitimacy is one of Leib’s chief goals in making his proposal.

If the popular branch approves a proposal without grasping how it will affect society, what will happen when the unexpected results occur? Will the members of the jury that passed the proposal feel anger at themselves for not having anticipated the future? Will they blame the experts and stakeholders who contributed to their briefing materials and moderated their panels, and therefore lose faith in the actions of the popular branch? Will other members of the public, who would have access to the deliberations and would therefore know what the popular branch intended to happen, have a similar loss of faith when they see the mistakes that were made? These failures might also give the executive and legislative branches more substantial political cover to overturn laws passed by the popular branch, and make them more reluctant to submit questions for the branch’s consideration.

Like I said, there’s an interesting idea here, and at the very least it serves as an idea of what kind of society we could be working toward. At the moment I’m thinking of the other pieces of the puzzle that would need to be in place for this one to work.

I’ve heard it said that insanity is doing something a second time and expecting a different result. So I was struck by this passage from the AP’s coverage of PResident Bush’s speech tonight:

Bush’s blueprint would boost the number of U.S. troops in Iraq – now at 132,000 – to 153,500 at a cost of $5.6 billion. The highest number was 160,000 a year ago in a troop buildup for Iraqi elections.

So we’re going to “surge” to a number of troops less than we have had in the past, with personnel and equipment who are a year more exhausted than they were in the past, and we think this is going to be sufficient to turn the situation around?

And that doesn’t even factor in the possibility of allies reducing their troop levels.

I suppose it’s possible that these surging troops will be following some clever new plan that will make them all the more effective. But I can’t say I have a whole lot of confidence in the people coming up with the grand designs these days. And that means more people are going to be hurt.

I thought it was interesting that when Sen. Richard Durbin gave the Democratic response to Bush’s plan, he didn’t focus on the screwups. His argument instead was that we’ve done plenty of good things for Iraq, now it’s time for us to get out and let Iraq take care of itself. I gotta say, that’s not the route I would have gone. And it’s a shame if fear of looking weak or un-American keeps us from acknowledging the ways in which America’s actions have made the situation in Iraq worse, because we’d really better learn these lessons for the next time.

Anyone who wants some insight into the wackiness of the Pennsylvania Legislature would be well served to go through the Daily Kos entries posted by State Representative Mark Cohen, a Philadelphia Democrat. In a nutshell – Democrats have a one seat majority in the state House, but one Democrat announced he was going to cross party lines and vote for the Republican candidate for Speaker, a Republican from Northeast Philadelphia named John Perzel. This would have given Republicans effective control of the chamber. Democrats were able to outmaneuver Perzel by nominating another Republican from Northeast Philadelphia, Dennis O’Brien. (O’Brien happens to be my state rep, and has been as long as I can remember.) Six Republicans, angry at Perzel for various reasons, crossed party lines and voted for O’Brien along with most of the Democrats. O’Brien agreed to appoint Democrats to head committees and to support the Democratic majority, although at this time it is unclear whether or not he will change parties.

One thing that the back-and-forth over the speakership has brought to the surface is the question of whether an elected public official has an obligation to support his or her party in organizational matters such as this. One side of the argument says that public officials are elected as individuals, and their job is to use their judgment to represent their constituents as well as possible. If an official’s judgment is that his or her party should not control a legislative chamber, then the official should act on that decision.

The other side of the argument is that a candidate’s party affiliation is one of the things that voters take into consideration when casting a vote. Some voters believe that control of a legislative chamber is more important than an individual official’s beliefs in setting policy, because the leaders of a chamber and relevant committees can control what legislation comes up for a vote and what does not. In this case, an official who crosses party lines is breaking an implicit campaign promise, and a very significant one.

Since I’m definitely someone who has started voting along party lines for very much this reason, I am quite sympathetic to this way of thinking. My problem is that not everyone thinks this way, and so that implicit campaign promise has some wiggle room to it. I don’t think it’s automatically wrong for a representative to cross lines or switch parties – but if one does, he or she shouldn’t be surprised by the backlash.

It does kind of make me wish we had more of a parliamentary system, where control of a chamber was clearly a key issue and where numerous smaller parties with clearly defined platforms could go at it. But I’m not holding my breath for it.