There are murmurs of a conspiracy to defeat Sanders (there’s also a president outright saying it). There is also push-back against these murmurs because diminishing people’s faith in the Democratic process suppresses voter turnout.
Questioning if this is a conspiracy is almost moot — did a bunch of people get together and plan this or did dozens of individuals achieve this state in an uncoordinated fashion? I don’t care. We’ve had a long run of elections that create legitimate doubt in how well the result reflects the will of Americans. And not just Clinton’s popular vote victory in 2016 — I’d go back to Gore, but I’m not terribly familiar with the American elections in the 80’s, and I wasn’t alive long enough to be aware of elections in the 70’s.
I watched news reports on Tuesday night announcing that Biden had won the popular vote across all of the states that had voted on Super Tuesday and had results to far. Except … California hadn’t started reporting yet. Cali has 30% of the delegates, and I am not interested enough to go check state populations to get a better number. But how meaningful is the popular vote stat with 30% of the vote outstanding? Delegate count too — I’ve been tracking delegate assignment based on NPR’s data, and a sixty point spread with 144 delegates from Cali unassigned (228 total unassigned across all Super Tuesday states) isn’t a huge blowout. I’ve also quite lazily started tracking by adding all of Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Kobluchar’s delegates to Biden’s count — 687 to 531 is a much bigger spread, and the 144 from Cali aren’t going to close that gap (although delegates from Cali plus Warren’s 65 might do it). I don’t know if delegates in each of the states where Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Kobluchar have delegates *can* be reassigned in the first round or if their delegates become like super delegates and only really count in the second round (or if their delegates can be reassigned at all). But this seems like the sort of research some media outlet should pay a reporter to perform. If Bloomberg can only reallocate a dozen of his delegates in the first round, the delegate count looks a lot different than it does when I’ve got all 58 of his delegates assigned to Biden.
Thirty years ago, it would have been difficult to recompute ranked-choice votes as candidates dropped out of the primary. But the one thing I think caucuses get right is that someone who puts their vote behind a non-viable candidate gets to reconsider and have their vote “count”. It would be algorithmically trivial to provide a full list of candidates. Pick your first choice. Now pick your second choice. Pick your Nth choice. You’re a huge Gabbard fan who wouldn’t consider voting for anyone else? Great, you get to abstain after your first selection. Would prefer Warren but consider Sanders a good second option, you can vote accordingly and abstain after your second choice. Don’t mind “voting” for any of the candidates? Then you can work your way through *all* of them. This is ideally suited for electronic ballots where your already-selected candidates can be removed from subsequent selection options. But so what if someone’s 1st through Nth choice is Sanders … he’s either still in the race & their 1st choice counts or he dropped out & they’ve abstained from voting. Maybe you voted for Buttigieg because you think he secretly harbors super progressive views but has the McKinsey experience to speak like a centrist. Your second choice was Warren, followed by Sanders, followed by no one. Buttigieg dropped out on Monday, and your vote is reassigned to Warren. She dropped out today? You voted for Sanders. Instead of allowing the individual candidate to decide where their delegates go, allow individual voters to decide. It would add an interesting nuance to primary coverage because the results of previous elections would effectively change as candidates drop out. But it would allow the results of the primary to better reflect what voters actually want. I’d extend this to the general election as well. Maybe it made you feel good to protest-vote for Stein. You could stop there and abstain on the second choice. Or you could pick a second preference.
And I’d be remiss to avoid pointing out that direct representation isn’t the impossibility it used to be. In 1790, getting the near four million Americans together to read through legislation and vote was an inconceivable undertaking. Getting the near 63 million Americans together in 1890, or even he 250 million in 1990 would have been an insurmountable task. But the technology is available today to do this. What impact would getting rid of the Legislature have on the Democracy in our system? Direct representation is a technical possibility. Yes, there are problems that would need to be addressed. Security. More importantly accessibility. As much as it may seem otherwise, 100% of Americans don’t have a smartphone in their hand. Requiring access to relatively costly technology could be seen as an attack on the rights of poorer individuals. Or individuals who aren’t technically savvy. You can use a computer at your free, public library – maybe the public libraries have extended hours during the voting season. Maybe there are secure Internet kiosks set up in town halls across the country. Maybe broadband access gets better funding. Maybe there’s additional funding for community education to teach people how to engage with the direct representation platform.
Even without changing the entire structure of government, I think the IRS should create a new class of tax-deductable donation restricted to federal government agencies. “Donations” to the agency are a 1:1 reduction in tax owed. The ‘donation’ process is inline with filing taxes — not like I need to cut a 4k check to NWS and then wait for my 4k refund check. I pay 10k in taxes? I could earmark 4k to the EPA, 4k to the Dept of Education, 2k to NOAA (hopefully there would be enough granularity that I wouldn’t need to select Commerce), and be done. I could allocate 10k to the military. I could spend hours agonizing on how I think my tax money would best be apportioned. Or I could just pay my taxes without any of these deductions and *that* is the money Congress would have available to budget. This idea, ironically, implements a populist version of “starve the beast”. And maybe I’m wrong and trillions of dollars would still pour into Defense and EPA would be left unfunded. But it would provide a way for citizens to clearly show their priorities. It could, if constructed properly, provide an end-run around the Hyde Amendment. *Your* federal dollars *didn’t* get used, but someone else could volunteer *their* federal dollars.
