The Case for Appointments Over Special Elections

posted by Josh Goodman

I, among many others, wondered in light of the Blagojevich scandal why we don't simply use special elections to fill all U.S. Senate vacancies -- as we do for all U.S. House vacancies. Joshua Spivak lays out the case for gubernatorial appointments in the Washington Post:

But there are hidden, and more fundamental, problems, too. Turnout for special elections is dramatically lower than it is for general elections. This shouldn't be a surprise -- voters have to care enough to come out for just one race, while on Election Day the presidency or a governorship may also be on the line. A perfect example was the recent Georgia runoff. This was a high-profile race, yet turnout was only a little more than half what it had been just 30 days before. Similarly, recall votes for state legislators, to cite one of the more regularly occurring special elections in the 18 states where they're allowed, typically attract a quarter to half as many voters as regular elections. Therefore winners are chosen by a seriously skewed electorate -- generally the most committed or more extreme members of each party.

A second problem involves primaries. Even in places that require special elections, there may be no requirement that parties hold primaries, giving party leaders a disproportionate role in making the selection. In states where one party dominates, that party's choice can be tantamount to an appointment. In New York, this method has been used and abused both for congressional representatives and state and local politicians. Sometimes, officials appear to time resignations in order to force a special election -- and ensure that a chosen successor has an easy path to victory.

Minnesota Recount Fun

posted by Josh Goodman

Let me be just the latest to say the live video of the Minnesota Canvassing Board judging challenges in the Coleman-Franken Senate race is amazingly addictive. A few minutes ago, there was a fascinating discussion of what constitutes an identifying mark.

Blagojevich's Primary Problem

posted by Alan Ehrenhalt

Here's a little political footnote to the disgrace of Rod Blagojevich in Illinois. Looking back in recent history for even a rough parallel, the only one I find is the case of Governor Ray Blanton of Tennessee, who at the end of his term in the 1970s was accused of selling pardons to prison inmates, and had to be hustled out of office early to prevent him from selling more.

Blagojevich and Blanton have very little in common as politicians, but they made it to office under similar rules. They were running for governor as candidates in the majority party in a situation where no one needed 50 percent of the vote. Blagojevich was nominated with 36 percent in 2002; Blanton got only 23 percent in 1974, the lowest winning percentage I can find in any gubernatorial election ever.

There was no way either of them could have won a majority in a runoff against any credible opponent, but in a multi-candidate, no runoff situation, they sneaked through to nomination. Then, as the nominee of the majority party, they made it to an office that most people in the state, even at the time, didn't believe they were qualified for.

My only point is this: Cumbersome and expensive as runoffs may be, there's a benefit to coming out with a nominee who possesses wide-ranging support. If you let somebody slip into office on a primary showing of 23 percent (or even 36 percent) you increase dramatically the prospects for incompetence, corruption, or both. 

Blagojevich Won't Get to Name a Senator After All?

posted by Josh Goodman

Dick Durbin, for now Illinois' only U.S. senator, is floating the idea of holding a special election to fill Illinois' vacant Senate seat. The proposal appears to be quickly gaining traction.

Rich Miller reports that outgoing Illinois Senate President Emil Jones is calling the Senate into special session to pass a law that would allow for the special election. That Jones, one of Blagojevich's most loyal defenders, would support stripping the governor of his power to name a replacement seems to suggest that the idea has widespread support.

This is a good time to ponder why governors ever get to name U.S. senators. Besides Blagojevich allegedly selling the appointment in Illinois, just look at everything else that has been going on in the last month.

There's some anger in Delaware that Gov. Ruth Ann Minner selected a placeholder to replace Joe Biden, seemingly setting the stage for Attorney General Beau Biden to run in 2010 when he gets back from Iraq. New York Gov. David Paterson has the unenviable task of naming a replacement to Hillary Clinton -- he'll probably make some new enemies, or at least bruise some egos, no matter who he picks. And, some Democrats are salivating at the possibility of one of Maine's Republican senators being named to Obama's cabinet, so that Democratic Gov. John Baldacci can name a replacement.

All of these headaches and machinations could be avoided if vacant U.S. Senate seats were always filled through special elections. If they do it for the House, why can't they do it for the Senate?

The Joys of a Recount

posted by Josh Goodman

Minnesota Public Radio has posted some of the disputed ballots from the recount of the spandex-tight U.S. Senate Race in Minnesota. These are great fun to look at if you're only reviewing ten or fifteen ballots in one sitting and if you don't actually have to decide who gets the vote.

Somehow, though, I doubt the elections officials involved see the humor in voters who filled in two bubbles or who made stray marks on their ballot or who came up with any number of other creative ways to obscure their actual voting intentions.

Yes, someone voted for Al Franken and "Lizard People."

(Hat tip: Political Wire)

Nebraska's Electoral Vote Split: One and Done?

posted by Josh Goodman

By splitting its electoral votes for the first time this year, Nebraska made history. By 2012, the system that made the split possible could be history.

John McCain won Nebraska as a whole and carried the 1st and 3rd congressional districts in the state. Obama prevailed in Omaha-based 2nd district. In every state except Maine and Nebraska, Obama's victory in the 2nd would have been irrelevant. However, under Nebraska law, Obama will receive one electoral vote -- the first time a Democrat has won any of Nebraska's districts since the vote-splitting law went into effect for the 1992 election.

Nebraska's governor is a Republican, Dave Heineman. The legislature is nominally non-partisan, but I'm fairly sure that in reality Republicans have a majority. As a result, the question now is whether Republicans want to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state again -- and, most likely, ensure that the state gives all of its electoral votes to Republicans for the foreseeable future.

 They're thinking about it. Here's what CQ reported last week:

How the ACORN Scandal Could Have Been Worse

posted by Josh Goodman

The ACORN controversy has gotten me thinking about ballot measure law in Montana. Before you say, "Josh, your synapses are malfunctioning," allow me to explain.

Without a tenth of the attention, a scandal broke out in 2006 that's quite similar to what's now happening with ACORN. That scandal didn't involve registrations, but rather signature-gathering to place ballot measures before voters. But the underlying concept -- making up names or otherwise forging official documents -- was the same. I covered some of the details in my story on ballot initiatives earlier this month:

The 2006 election cycle, however, represented a turning point. That's when conservative activists, including wealthy New Yorker Howard Rich, aimed to turn Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights into a national phenomenon. At one point, it appeared that eight states would vote on the proposals. In the end, though, only three did.

The reason, generally, was signature fraud. In Michigan, election officials estimated that of the 500,000 signatures that supporters of the tax measure turned in, 200,000 were duplicates or otherwise invalid — one man had signed 19 times. In Montana, a court found pervasive "deceit, fraud and procedural non-compliance." Signature gatherers, or "circulators," had done everything from making up fake addresses to tricking Montanans into signing three petitions for three different initiatives at once.

Not only were the controversies themselves similar, but the diagnosis afterwards was similar too. Both ACORN and the signature-gathering companies rely heavily on low-income workers, some with troubled pasts. Gathering signatures or voter registrations is hard, often unpleasant, work. The temptation to write down Mickey Mouse or Muammar Qaddaffi is quite strong.   

The Importance of Jennifer Brunner

posted by Josh Goodman

Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's Secretary of State, is quickly becoming the nation's most prominent election administrator. Brunner's legal battle with the Ohio Republican Party -- in which the U.S. Supreme Court sided with her today -- is making national news.

Obviously, the main reason that Republicans are criticizing Brunner (a Democrat) and Democrats are defending her is that both sides want to win Ohio's 20 electoral votes. But, there's another subtext here too: control of state legislative redistricting in 2011.

Ohio has a hybrid redistricting process. The legislature gets to draw congressional lines, but state legislators don't get to change state legislative lines. Instead, that task is left to the five-member Ohio Reapportionment Board.

The State Role in an Electoral College Tie

posted by Josh Goodman

The 2000 presidential election hinged on state and local election administration (in Florida). The outcome of the 2008 presidential election may be determined by state election law.

More and more states are allowing early voting, mail-in voting and no-excuse absentee voting -- forcing the campaigns to adjust their turnout tactics. Nebraska and Maine award their electoral votes by congressional district, which could give McCain or Obama an electoral vote they wouldn't otherwise get. And, perhaps most intriguingly (though probably least importantly), state election law could play a key role if the Electoral College ends in a tie.

Greg Giroux of CQ had a great article this week on what happens in the event of a tie. The first thing is that the electors, those 538 obscure people who make up the Electoral College, have to vote.

The Name Game

posted by Josh Goodman

Republicans and Democrats in the state of Washington are battling over just how to describe the party affiliation of the Republican (GOP?) candidate for governor. From the Associated Press:

OLYMPIA -- The state Democratic Party is suing to get a Republican on the ballot.

The party sued Secretary of State Sam Reed on Tuesday, saying Dino Rossi should be listed as a Republican, instead of "prefers GOP party," on the November ballot for governor.

The lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court, argues that "allowing Mr. Rossi to obscure his true party preference and affiliation directly violates the law, would mislead a substantial portion of the voting public and would breed cynicism and mistrust in our public institutions and, indeed, in our electoral process."

Most likely, there are a lot of low-information voters who don't know what G.O.P. means. I remember the Wall Street Journal debating whether it should stop using the nickname for the party because readers didn't know what it meant. If Wall Street Journal readers aren't familiar with it, much of the rest of the country probably isn't either.

Nonetheless, I'm not really sure that this is as consequential a debate as the two parties think. For Rossi to benefit from not being called a Republican on the ballot, voters have to be ignorant of the meaning of G.O.P. But, just as much so, they also have to not already know that Rossi is a Republican before looking at the ballot -- otherwise it doesn't matter how he's described. And how many people in Washington really are going to be unsure of Dino Rossi's party affiliation by the time ballots are cast?