Blog - Articles Tagged 'Elections'

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>As the Congress was ratifying the results of the Electoral College today, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., was filing legislation to abolish it.
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>Scratching a long-time itch, Nelson filed a bill seeking a constitutional amendment to do away with the college, which chooses the U.S. president based on vote tallies within individual states. (For the record, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama prevailed over Arizona Sen. John McCain, 365 to 173. But you knew that.)
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>Nelson, a vocal if somewhat quixiotic advocate for election reform, said the Electoral College is archaic and the president should be chosen via popular vote.
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>"It’s only been a few times in our history, most recently in the 2000 election, that the candidate who lost the popular vote won the Electoral College and became president, but that shouldn’t be allowed to happen again,” Nelson said. “We need to honor the concept of one person, one vote.”
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>Prospects for the measure, which would need ratification of two-thirds of the U.S. states, are dim.

Following the botched gubernatorial Senate appointments in Illinois and New York recently, Wisconsin Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold is introducing a constitutional amendment into Congress that might actually stand a chance of passing:

>"The controversies surrounding some of the recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats make it painfully clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must end. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution gave the citizens of this country the power to finally elect their senators. They should have the same power in the case of unexpected mid term vacancies, so that the Senate is as responsive as possible to the will of the people. I plan to introduce a constitutional amendment this week to require special elections when a Senate seat is vacant, as the Constitution mandates for the House, and as my own state of Wisconsin already requires by statute. As the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, I will hold a hearing on this important topic soon."

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight makes the crucial point that now is the best time to enact this amendment because, at the moment, neither party stands to gain from it politically:

>Now, then – excepting the minority of states that either require special elections or fix the party of the appointed senator – does either party stand to gain ground if the provision for gubernatorial appointment is removed?
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>Based on the present configuration of senators and governors, not really. There are now 14 Republican senators that could and presumably would be replaced by Democratic governors if they deceased or decided to resign from the Senate. The Republicans will be in a better position to hold these seats if the Feingold amendment is passed. These senators are: Grassley (IA), Brownback (KS), Roberts (KS), Bunning (KY), McConnell (KY), Collins (ME), Snowe (ME), Bond (MO), Burr (NC), Gregg (NH), Voinovich (OH), Specter (PA), Alexander (TN), and Corker (TN).
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>Likewise, there are 14 Democratic senators who would presumably be replaced by Republicans. The Democrats will be in a better position to hold these seats if the Feingold amendment is passed. These are Senators Boxer (CA), Feinstein (CA), Dodd (CT), Nelson (FL), Bayh (IN), Franken (MN), Klobuchar (MN), Conrad (ND), Dorgan (ND), Nelson (NE), Reid (NV), Reed (RI), Whitehouse (RI), Johnson (SD). (Joe Liberman (CT) would make 15, if you consider him to be a Democrat.)

Constitutional amendments require passage by a two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House, plus ratification from three-fourths of the states. The Constitution was last amended in 1992 (27th amendment), though dozens are proposed in Congress each session. Here are a few that have already been introduced this session:

H.J.Res.5 – Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

H.J.Res.13 – Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to limitations on the amounts of contributions and expenditures that may be made in connection with campaigns for election to public office.

H.J.Res.15 – Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to authorize the line item veto.

S.J.Res.4 – A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to abolish the electoral college and to provide for the direct popular election of the President and Vice President of the United States.

H.J.Res.6 – Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to voluntary school prayer.

Sen. Russell Feingold’s [D, WI] constitutional amendment to require that Senate vacancies are filled by public election will receive its first major action by Congress tomorrow. The House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties and the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution will hold a joint hearing at 10 am EST on S.J. Res. 7 – A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to the election of Senators.

The main portion of the bill reads:

No person shall be a Senator from a State unless such person has been elected by the people thereof. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.

The recent botched senatorial appointments in Illinois and New York have put some serious drive behind this proposal. The United States Constitution has not been amended since 1992.

The RaceTracker project on OpenCongress — a non-partisan, fully-referenced, open-source and crowd-sourced wiki project — now lists every candidate running in every U.S. Senate, House and governor’s race!

The folks over at the Swing State Project, the coordinators of this wiki community project, have completed a nationwide survey of the candidates in each race and will be using crowd-sourced participation to keep it current as we move towards 2010. You can now check on the status of each of the seven candidates considering a run for the seat of Illinois’ Sen. Roland Burris (D) or the eight who are eyeing Rep. Betsy Markey (D-Colo.). We’ll even tell you who’s a confirmed candidate versus who’s merely considering or rumored to be a candidate, how much money they’ve raised, the district boundaries and the district-specific electoral trends in the last three presidential elections.

(Developers, you can access the all the data via API and other methods for use in your own Web site or app, so come make an awesome mash-up or visualization!)

RaceTracker is the next-generation version of the SwingStateProject’s 2008 RaceTracker and Congresspedia’s WikiTheVote project. We’re taking a cue from Joe Friday and keeping it a “just the facts” operation so its non-partisan nature is clear, regardless of the partisan motivations a participant might have in watching any particular race. Besides, we’re practicing transparency at home by requiring each piece of information to be referenced to an outside source, so there’s no need to take the word of “some guy on the Internet;” anyone can join the wiki community in checking the facts of each submission.

(Host your own project on the OpenCongress Wiki!)

Here at OpenCongress, we are most interested in how a lawmaker’s election status (Are they running? Do they have a challenger?) affects how they vote and how Congress works.

For example, when Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic Party, which he himself admitted was a reelection decision, it threw the Democratic Caucus seniority and committee assignments into disarray.

It also placed the substantially more conservative Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) in the top spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee, opening the door to an unlikely-but-possible method for Republicans to block judicial nominees using the committee’s requirement that each nominee receive at least one vote from the minority party.

Election pressures also clearly affect individual member’s voting behavior. In the 2008 bank bailout bill, Nate Silver used analysis by RaceTracker’s own Swing State Project to show that:

Among 38 incumbent congressmen in races rated as “toss-up” or “lean” by Swing State Project, just 8 voted for the bailout as opposed to 30 against: a batting average of .211. By comparison, the vote among congressmen who don’t have as much to worry about was essentially even: 197 for, 198 against.

Simply knowing whether a member is retiring can also be the critical piece of information in understanding a vote. On that same bailout vote, retiring representatives not facing a reelection voted overwhelmingly and disproportionally for the bailout, according to the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman:

26 of the 31 members of both parties leaving next year supported it. And 21 House Republicans who aren’t returning next term voted for the bill, making up nearly a third of the 65 GOP votes supporting the legislation.

“The telling statistic on the political side is the votes of those who were retiring versus the votes of those who are in tough races,” Wasserman said. “Retiring members feel strongly that this bill is necessary to stabilize markets, and they know they will not be receiving any political repercussion for voting their conscience."

Primary challenges are also critical to understanding votes, as they often drive the incumbent away from the middle ground. According to Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake:

We learned in 2006 how the very idea of a primary challenge could immediately change behavior. When blue dog Ellen Tauscher started complaining about the “liberal” committee chairmen who were going to be problematic, people on the blogs and in her community started talking about a primary challenge. Tauscher moved immediately to the left, joined the Out of Iraq caucus, and stopped having her picture taken with George Bush. Jane Harman had a similar conversion after a tough primary race against Marcy Winograd.

Go over to RaceTracker and check out the candidates for your own senators and representative. Know something we don’t? Add it yourself.

The Las Vegas Sun reports:

Washington — Republican Sen. John Ensign said Monday that not only does he have no intention of resigning in light of his affair and his parents’ payout to the woman’s family, he plans to seek reelection when his term is up in 2012.

Ensign told the Las Vegas Sun he has received calls and e-mails of encouragement from supporters both in Nevada and Washington.

When asked Monday whether he had any thoughts about stepping down, Ensign said his supporters are sending one message: “They say, ‘Don’t.’ ”

“I fully plan on running for reelection,” Ensign said late Monday evening. “I’m going to work to earn their respect back.”

You’ve undoubtedly heard all about Ensign’s extramarital affair with his Chief of Staff’s wife and his parents’ $96,000 “gift” to help smooth over the hard feelings. But you probably don’t know too much about what else he’s been up to as a U.S. Senator. For that, go here.