Electronic Commitment Cards!

Oh God bless the OFA New Media team! They've done it again!

Back in the day (the same day in which I had to canvass uphill in the snow both ways) we used to collect commitment cards and then enter them into our database (known to campaign folk as "votebuilder" or "the VAN.") These commitments counted toward goals set for us by our Field Director (and probably a number of consultants) and were calculated based on the estimated turnout we would need in our respective regions.

But NOW you can skip the middleman and the data entry and put your commitment straight into the database! (To be fair, I don't know for a fact that that's how this works. I am just assuming.) If you live in a swing state and are supporting the President this is a great help to the campaign because it means the staff can focus their efforts on undecided voters who need an extra touch. As a bonus to you, the campaign is less likely to call you during dinner if you've already told them who you're voting for...unless they call to ask you to volunteer, but that's another story. You can also publish your commitment on facebook to let your friends and family know that you can't stop Barack.

DO IT HERE!!!

Today In Voter Suppression (and Gerrymandering and Racism)

Benjamin Jealous speaking at SIPA

I am going to quote heavily from this Salon.com article, in part because it is thorough and well written but moreover because I am so angry after reading it that I am having trouble forming coherent sentences. The deliberate and systematic racial discrimination described in the article is exactly what NAACP President, Benjamin Jealous, was talking about when I heard him speak about voting rights and discrimination last spring. This is from his speech:

“Historically, efforts at voter suppression have always been about suppressing issues of equality and social justice...Protecting the vote and ending racial profiling are actually the same thing. The disproportionate incarceration of the black community and voter suppression are exactly the same thing.”

I've already posted a little about his speech (which moved me to tears, not an easy feat), but just now found the video, which should be required watching for anyone interested in voting rights. Jealous mostly focuses on incarceration as it pertains to voting rights, but the points he makes about the link between racism and voter suppression are extremely relevant to the Salon article, which chronicles five ways that the Texas Legislature is targeting Latino and African American voters. Excerpts from the article:

1. Lawmakers drew some districts that looked like Latino majority districts on paper — but removed Latinos who voted regularly and replaced them with Latinos who were unlikely to vote.

In the redistricting case, a panel of three federal judges found that Texas lawmakers had intentionally created districts that would weaken the influence of Latino voters, while appearing to satisfy the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. [Nancy note: Consider the level of cunning that had to be involved here. It actually offends my sensibilities.]

2. Lawmakers widened the gap between the proportion of the population that is Latino and African-Americans and the proportion of districts that are minority-controlled.

In the years leading up to the 2010 census, Texas’ population increased by 4.3 million people, 65 percent of them Latino. As a result, Texas gained four seats in Congress.

In their decision, the federal judges in the redistricting case noted that minority voters have no constitutional right to proportional representation. But the Voting Rights Act says states can’t weaken the electoral power of minorities. So, the judges reasoned, if there is already a gap between the minority population of a state and its political representation, states can’t let that gap grow wider.

3. Texas removed economic centers and district offices from African-American and Latino districts, while giving white Republicans perks.

In defending its new maps, Texas argued that the districts had been shaped to help Republicans and hurt Democrats — a perfectly legal tactic — and that race had been irrelevant to its choices. [Nancy note: WHAT? As if that's fine but keep going]

[Three protesting members of Congress] and African-American Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, all Democrats, also testified that their district offices were drawn out of their districts — a detriment because constituents want easily accessible district offices.

“No such surgery was performed on the districts of Anglo incumbents,” the judges found. “In fact, every Anglo member of Congress retained his or her district office.”

4. Divide and conquer: Texas “cracked” minority voters out of one district into three.

Lawmakers reshaped the district in a way that “cracked the politically cohesive and geographically concentrated Latino and African American communities,” and placed those voters “in districts in which they have no opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.”

5. Texas passed a voter-ID law with requirements that would make it disproportionately difficult for African-Americans and Latinos to vote.

It's important to note that the Texas voter ID law will not be in effect for the November election.

I know about and understand greed and the desire to keep your party in power. I'm not saying that's good, but it is what it is. This seems to be to surpass partisan politics and fall into the categories of racist and unAmerican.

I don't like to use the word "evil" when it comes to political issues. It implies a link between government and religion that I am not quite comfortable with. Besides, I want to believe that our leaders are motivated by good intentions no matter how misguided their choices are. But, it's really hard for me to come up with another word that fits this situation.

Of course I knew about all these phenomenon. I'd just never looked at them collectively while listening to Benjamin Jealous speak.

Reeling from this,

-Nancy

Ask an Election Nerd: Electoral College FAQs

You know what people are asking me about a lot lately? The Electoral College. Here we go!

What is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College is comprised of 538 people who vote on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December to choose the President. This method is known as "indirect election" because although individual citizens cast votes for the Executive branch, votes are aggregated by state (in most cases) and the popular will of each state is expressed by these representatives. The Electoral College never meets as one body but instead meet on that date to cast votes in their respective state capitals.

How are electoral votes allocated?
435 votes, one per each congressional seat, which are allocated to states by population. 100 votes, one per each Senator, so 2 for each state. Plus 3 votes for the District of Columbia. These 3 votes make DC's vote equivalent to that of Wyoming, which is the least populous state. In most states electoral votes are supposed to be cast on a winner take all basis, meaning that if the popular vote in New York State is for Barack Obama, then all of its electoral votes will go to Obama. Nebraska and Maine are exceptions where electoral votes are cast by popular vote per congressional district, so it is possible for the Nebraska and Maine delegations to split their votes. In these states the remaining two electors cast their votes based on statewide popular vote.

How are Electors chosen?
The way electors are chosen depends on the state. In most cases, each party with a candidate on the ballot chooses a slate of electors, often at their state convention, and that slate casts votes in the Electoral College if their candidate wins that state's popular vote.

What if the Electors don't vote the way they're supposed to? Because Electors are individuals with free will, it is possible for them not to cast their votes in line with the vox populi of their particular state or district. These people are called "faithless electors" and you can find a list of them here. In many states, electors are required to sign a pledge that they will accurately express the will of the voters and some states have small fines or even misdemeanor charges for faithless electors. There is no federal law governing Electors in this way. The most recent case of a faithless elector was in 2000 when Barbara Lett-Simmons of Washington DC abstained in order to protest the district's lack of congressional representation. Faithless electors have never altered the overall outcome of the Presidential election.

What if there's a tie? A candidate needs 270 votes to win in the Electoral College. If a candidate fails to win a majority of the votes, the winner is chosen by the House of Representatives. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams were chosen in this manner.

How often has someone lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College? Thrice! Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George Bush in 2000.

The Electoral College system seems unfair and most Americans agree with me. So why do we have it? Our founding fathers were not big fans of direct election and did not have faith in the general population to always make appropriate judgements. They were afraid that the voters could get hoodwinked by conniving politicians who would not act in their best interest. As one delegate to the Constitutional Convention put it, "the people are uninformed, and would be misled by a few designing men." Back in the day, it was much more difficult to disseminate information. As another delegate argued, "the extent of the country renders it impossible, that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of the candidates." The founders also feared the "tyranny of the majority." They saw the Electoral College as a way of preventing certain regions or interest groups from ganging up on rest of the country. Advocates of the Electoral College system today point out that direct election of the Chief Executive could lead to policies that unfairly favor population centers because theoretically a candidate could win by campaigning in major cities and ignoring rural voters. Finally, to preserve the federal character of the nation, the founders wanted to ensure that Presidential candidates would not be able to ignore the needs of smaller states. These arguments are similar to those that led to the formation of our federal branch, when Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures.

I'm not really interested in making an argument for or against the Electoral College here, just in providing information. Did I leave anything out?

Nancy

Back to School and Arrow's Impossibility Theorem

School starts tomorrow, and (hold your applause) I have already done my reading for the week! Basically all the courses I am taking are voting and elections related (hooray!) which makes me more excited to start the semester than I otherwise would be. In doing my reading I was reminded of one of my favorite lessons from last year, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, and I thought I would share it with you!

Arrow's Theorem basically points out that aggregate voter preferences should be transitive, but they are not. Consider this scenario. We have three voters and three candidates, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and a chair. The voters prefer the candidates in the following order:

Voter 1: Obama>Romney>Chair
Voter 2: Chair>Obama>Romney
Voter 3: Romney>Chair>Obama

Individual voter preferences are transitive, meaning that if I would rather vote for Obama than Romney and would rather vote for Romney than a chair, then I would rather vote for Obama than a chair as well.

If the chair were not running, Obama would win since 2/3 of the voters prefer Obama to Romney. Similarly if Obama were to get fed up and drop out ,Romney would win since 2/3 of the voters prefer Romney to chair. Since Obama beats Romney and Romney beats chair, it stands to reason that Obama could beat a chair as well, but not so! If Romney were to drop out, the chair would win since 2/3 of the voters prefer the chair to Obama.

Arrow's Theorem is used by proponents of alternative voting systems (for example those where voters weight their preferences) to show that no rank order or majority voting system can accurately reflect the "will of the people."

Ridiculous Bedfellows

Hat Tip to The New Republic for pointing out this amazing wayward tale of FEC glory in which the Republican members of the FEC side with union bosses and Democratic members side against them. Here's what happened:

"In a little-noticed ruling last week... the three Republican commissioners on the FEC found that it was acceptable for a union in Hawaii to force its members to campaign on behalf of Colleen Hanabusa, a Democratic candidate in the special congressional election in Hawaii in May 2010. Two members of United Public Workers had filed a complaint stating they had lost their jobs when they refused to hold signs and canvass on behalf of Hanabusa. This might seem like just the sort of thing that Republicans would seize on as proof of union bosses wielding undue power over their minions—but no. The Democratic appointees on the FEC found the coercion illegal, but the Republican appointees did not—instead, they cited the 2010 Citizens United ruling as permitting the union’s compulsion.

Because if the union in this instance is allowed to compel its members to campaign on behalf of a favored candidate, that means that a corporation is allowed to do so, too. And just as the lifting of spending restrictions ends up meaning much more for corporations than for unions—since corporations have a lot more money to spend—any lifting of restrictions on compelled political activity would mean more for corporations as well, since there are a lot more people working at big companies than in the shrinking ranks of unionized workers."

The commission is deadlocked and the case remains unsettled, but the potential implications are harrowing. No one should be forced to campaign on behalf of a candidate by anyone especially her employer. That seems completely contrary to the whole free and fair elections thing. Could you imagine Walmart deciding to make its employees campaign on behalf of Mitt Romney at peril of losing their jobs? That is some Orwellian noise right there.

Happy Labor Day Everybody! (No but seriously, in general you should thank a union member today if you like weekends and safe working conditions.) But still, wow.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Negrohood!

"Ben Akselrod [who] is hoping to unseat Democratic Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz in the Sheepshead Bay district primary race...apologized after his campaign sent out a mailer [accidentally] using the word 'negrohood.'"

The actual text of the mailer is as follows:

"I am running for Assembly because I believe the number 1 job of that office is to keep the community safe. The current assemblyman has allowed crime to go up over 50% in our negrohood so far this year. I am fighting for video cameras throughout our community to protect our seniors who are the most vulnerable and cut down on anti-semitic attacks in our community. I will also make sure the mayor gives our community more police to patrol our streets."

In case you needed a reason to proofread and re-proofread your campaign mailers, here it is.

Another Year Older and Shockingly, Wiser.

A year ago, I shared with you what amounted to my Dear John letter to campaigns. I reflected on everything that campaigns had given me and the reasons I felt I needed to take a break. So at the precipice of my second and final year of graduate school (and likely my final year away from campaigning) I had to ask myself: Was it worth it? Am I accomplishing my goals? Am I on the road to what I set out to do? My answer is resoundingly "Yes."

When I worked on campaigns full time, I kept telling myself "when I'm in the same place for a while," "when I have free time." Before campaigns, I was in college and coping with health problems that provided me (however legitimately) with similar scapegoats. Moving to New York meant taking on a huge amount of responsibility that I had been delaying for years. Time to take care of myself means that I actually have to take care of myself, even when I would rather eat junk food, avoid going to the doctor or leave clothes on the floor. Time for relationships means putting myself out there without the campaign caveats of being too tired, too busy and too far away. The unfettered opportunity to reach for my goals also means the possibility of failing, on my own with no excuses. Fear is the fact that what you want is a real possibility.

What I've really longed for the past few years, much more than weight loss or a boyfriend, was stability. I didn't want to be thirty and running around the country not sleeping or knowing when or where my next job would be. What I feared was that nothing but that lifestyle could satisfy me and that I would be forever stuck between those two worlds. One of my best friends describes people with that kind of passion and intensity as fire. When you're in control, you're a campfire. You create glow, warmth and inspiration. People are drawn to you. When you're not in control you're like a four alarm, unpredictable and destructive. I spent the last year learning how to be a campfire, terrified that the only options were to spend the rest of my life burning through things or put the fire out. Here's what I know how to do now that I didn't before:

1) I quit things and I change direction. I spent some time on awful mismanaged campaigns where my work and passion was unappreciated. Same goes for friendships, boyfriends, really anything in which I had invested time and effort. My friends and family didn't understand why I didn't just leave, but quitting seemed anathema. It seemed like admitting failure to leave something or change my mind about what my goals were. It would mean that my investment was wasted. I learned a lot from sticking it out on bad campaigns and less than ideal relationships. There's no doubt that that was what I needed to do at the time. What I know now is that there is a way to take value from something while admitting that it no longer works.

2) I'm getting better with uncertainty. Part of my intensity is that I've always tended to see things in black and white. As Heidi Klum would say "you are either in or you are out." When I was deciding whether to go back to school or go on a campaign, I contacted a friend who has been in and out of campaigns for the past decade. His advice was "whatever you decide, it won't be the last time you have this conversation with yourself." It sounds simple enough, but it never really occurred to me that it was okay to not know when and whether I would go back. One thing I've learned this year is that every choice and every relationship is an ongoing conversation. It's okay not to know where things will end up.

3) I accept people for what they're capable of right now. On campaigns, we're taught to ask the most from people and expect them to rise to the occasion. This is a good and effective management technique, but it's a recipe for failure in your personal life. I've been guilty of holding the people around me to the high standards to which I hold myself and coming to some pretty harsh conclusions. "This friend wasn't there for me when I wanted her to be, therefore she must not care enough about me." As opposed to, "I know this person cares about me, but she wasn't able to be there when I needed her. I wonder what's going on with her." Even when this line of logic causes me to end a relationship, especially a romantic one, I can do so with much more peace and clarity.

4) I identify what I want. I'm not a big fan of the "Law of Attraction" because I think the concept that people bring things like death or disease upon themselves through their thoughts is some new jack bullshit. But I do think that there is something to putting your intentions out into the universe. When you really whittle down what it is that you want, you may not attract new opportunities into your life but you recognize them when they come. It's like when you learn a new word: Once it's in your head you start seeing and hearing it everywhere. When considering why I was so tempted to take time off and go back on a campaign even though I had explicitly decided not to do so, I realized that more than gaining experience or electing good candidates, it was important to me to contribute to the campaign community. Since then, I have been honored to have my blog and tumblr become a mainstay of many campaign offices. Through my blogging, I was invited to lead a volunteer recruitment training for several hundred people, a long time dream of mine. My blog and tumblr already existed, but since I clarified for myself what I wanted I was able to steer them in that direction.

5) I don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. One of the factors that kept me making excuses about things like weight loss and cleaning is that when I set a goal, I tend to pursue it obsessively and relentlessly. As a lifelong mess maker saying "I'm going to keep my apartment clean" felt too daunting. I couldn't imagine never again leaving clothes on the floor or dishes in the sink, but I also couldn't imagine committing to do something and then accepting less than 100% from myself. It doesn't take a masters degree to realize that that approach to self-improvement is unsustainable. Without campaigns to channel my manic and obsessive tendencies, I've had to learn to be okay with deciding to keep my apartment cleaner rather than spotless or eating pizza in the larger context of trying to lose weight.

I guess that's why I'm able to deem this year a success despite so much disappointment. Do I still miss campaigns? Yes. Have I found a way to be happy without them? Not entirely. Will I break these rules and make choices that bring me from campfire to four alarm territory? Absolutely. But for the first time in my life, I'm okay with that. I'm looking forward to a year with just as much learning, but more happiness.


Thanks for sharing this last year with me,

Nancy