Caucuses To Be Held in Michigan
Looks like.
I was originally against this, as it seemed unfair to Clinton. But now I think I was wrong. As TNR explains, that was the original plan before MI "got cute" with their primary date. Also, just because one candidate does better than the other in one of the two types of contests, that doesn't mean that that type of contest is unfair. If a caucus was picked in order to aid Obama, that's unacceptable--but apparently that isn't the case. My guess is that caucuses are also cheaper.
Looks like.
I was originally against this, as it seemed unfair to Clinton. But now I think I was wrong. As TNR explains, that was the original plan before MI "got cute" with their primary date. Also, just because one candidate does better than the other in one of the two types of contests, that doesn't mean that that type of contest is unfair. If a caucus was picked in order to aid Obama, that's unacceptable--but apparently that isn't the case. My guess is that caucuses are also cheaper.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:51 AM
31 Comments:
"Also, just because one candidate does better than the other in one of the two types of contests, that doesn't mean that that type of contest is unfair."
I’m not so sure of this. If a primary yields results more accurately in line with the intentions of the voters, then such a contest is fairer than a caucus, which (it seems) is likely to give the edge to Obama. It is true that caucuses are considerably cheaper, so the real issue is figuring out how to fund the difference in cost. If I am right about caucuses giving an unfair edge to Obama (even if they weren’t intentionally selected to do so), then it is a mistake for Michigan to try its hardest to seat its delegates when such an effort yields results that aren’t as accurate as they could be. It is unfortunate that, in this scenario, all of those voters remain disenfranchised, but at least it’s in line with the DNC’s prior ruling.
My understanding is that if it's paid for by the party, it has to be called a "caucus", no matter the format. Thus you could have a "primary style caucus". Oi!
Despite my support of Obama and his facility with caucus organizing, primaries (conventionally understood as regular voting instead of sitting in a room for hours) are a better way to get a democratic result, so I'm for primaries. It's so old-fashioned, but I'd still rather lose a fair election than win a rigged one - or one that even hints of rigging.
The DNC is already in a massive financial hole. I would think caucusing is the only viable way.
I notice that although the GOP uses a secret ballot in Iowa, the Dems do not.
If these caucauses don't use a secret ballot, I'll make great hay of it. Might as well have mob rule.
I disagree, A. That is, I think the following inference is invalid:
(1) Method M1 is less accurate than method M2 (for discerning the intent of the voters)
so
(2) It would be wrong to use method M1
That would mean that the voting system in the U.S. is already operating in an impermissible way, since we use lots of different voting machines, only one type of which is best.
This is basically the same invalid type of argument that the majority used in Bush v. Gore (though they realized it was invalid, and that's why they said that it couldn't be applied in any other case). That is, they argued that, since different methods of counting votes would yield different results, the process couldn't be fair. This is false. Two different methods that yield different results can both be fair. For example, counting hanging chads and not counting hanging chads are both perfectly fair methods.
You're right WS, but in this case we have reason to believe that holding a caucus in Michigan will benefit Obama. Using a variety of voting machines of varying accuracy in no way favors a particular candidate, nor does counting or not counting hanging chads. Before November 5, it was permissible for Michigan to choose either a primary or a caucus even though one may have been less accurate than the other. But, given the information we have now (e.g. that it is likely that Obama fairs better than Clinton in caucuses), it is wrong to choose to have a caucus when there is a more accurate method of counting votes available.
Interesting discussion.
I agree with WS' logic in principle, that there can more than one fair way to go about things, neither invalidating the other.
Anon makes a good point, too, however, that the more practical but less accurate process will still obviously favor one contestant. Neither is it clear that caucuses are inherently fair at all. If the only available solution is to employ an unfair process, "it's better than nothing" is a weak rationale.
"Nothing," or at least some Door #3, might be better. Just because caucuses are used in some states doesn't mean they're not inherently bogus and undemocratic.
[And absent a secret ballot, the last person in the world I'd want to be is an HRC supporter in a hallful of Obamaniacs.]
As to Bush v. Gore---this might not affect WS' expert legal pronouncement---but the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that different methods of counting did indeed violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Souter and Breyer joining the Unholy Five.
This is frequently overlooked. The [putatively partisan] 5-4 vote that closed the door on Gore was about stopping all recounts. Souter and Breyer dissented, favoring kicking it back to the Florida Supreme Court to devise a fairer way to conduct a recount.
Not to say that Bush v. Gore wasn't a bad decision, either the 5-4 or even the 7-2 part, but it didn't exactly go down the way the popular myth tells it.
Though I'm not wasting my time responding to Tom anymore, I'll note that the point is that you can't rule out different methods of counting votes without ruling out different voting machines. That's one of the big problems with Bush v. Gore. The arguments, if the work in the one case, work in the other as well.
But as for the caucus:
Seems like as long as the decision is made on e.g. the basis of cost, or because that was what Michigan was going to do anyway, that it doesn't matter whether it favors one over the other. If the decision is made impartially and on good grounds, it's a sound decision, even if it benefits one candidate.
However, if we think we can't be objective given the knowledge that M1 favors candidate A but M2 favors neither, then that would be a reason to choose M2.
What I'm denying, A, is that it's wrong to choose method 1 just because we know it will favor A. If, for example, the reasons for favoring M1 are clear and overwhelming, they aren't invalidated just because we know A is likely to do better.
But this may be overly theoretical and insufficiently practical...or I may just be too agitated by all this to see this clearly.
I should make that first part clearer. The majority in Bush v. Gore argued that it was impermissible to use different methods of counting ballots (the argument, as I recall, turned on the equal protection clause?). The decision was incorrect. For one thing, there can be more than one fair method of doing something, and so long as both methods are fair, it is not necessarily a problem that different methods are used. This is why it’s permissible to use different types of voting machines even though different machines drop different kinds of votes. In fact, the main problem with the majority’s decision lies in their attempt to respond to this very point. Their decision, if valid, would entail that the entire election was invalid—and, in fact, that all contemporary elections are invalid. The fact that they asserted that the decision couldn’t be applied in other cases shows that they recognized it was bogus. The problem, to make it clear, is this: their arguments were either unsound, or showed that the entire election was bogus. Assuming, as we basically must, that the entire election was not bogus, we have to conclude that their decision about counting ballots was incorrect. If you doubt these points, all I can do is urge you to read the decision itself.
Well of course you responded to me, despite your protestations. Really, WS.
Have you read the decision yourself? I've only read summaries.
I simply wanted to point out that on the core issue, the majority was 7-2, not 5-4. The "majority" sounds so sinister and manifestly partisan unless that's clear.
Souter and Breyer objected to
531 U.S. at 126 (footnote omitted):
Admittedly, the use of differing substandards for determining voter intent in different counties employing similar voting systems may raise serious concerns...
531 U.S. at 111 (per curiam) (“Seven Justices of the Court agree that there are
constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court that demand a
remedy.”); id. at 134 (Souter J., joined by Breyer, J., dissenting)
(reviewing several examples of
disparate treatment of ballots in the Florida recount,and concluding): “I can conceive of no legitimate
state interest served by these differing treatments of the expressions of voters’ fundamental rights.
The differences appear wholly arbitrary.”); id. at 145 (Breyer, J, joined by Souter, J., dissenting)
“absence of a uniform, specific standard to guide the recounts. . . . does implicate principles does implicate principles of
fundamental fairness”.
So, you may disagree with the 7-2 decision, that's fine. But the Supreme Court is entitled to disagree with you.
As to the topic at hand, the absurdity is illustrated by HRC winning the Texas primary but losing the Texas caucus.
Now, professional soccer, as a practical matter, decides a winner by having of shootout of penalty kicks. This of course, is fair in its way, but it's not soccer; however, they adjudge that's the best they can do.
But if they ever settle baseball games with a home run derby, we purists will squawk.
It's utterly absurd that in Bush v. Gore, the looseness of the "intent of the voter" standard, as variously applied in Florida counties should effectively be judged worse than not counting any of the votes by a more identical standard.
Further, when compared to the vast variances across the country, Florida's vague standard was and still is completely ordinary electoral procedure. Talk about changing the rules in the middle of the game!
Now we've had seven years to reform this, and we've only managed a few halting steps. No one should be under the impression that the airy standard the Bushist Five promulgated just for Bush v. Gore has even been approached. This may be convenient the next time someone needs a bullshit excuse to overturn the clear intent of the voters.
Bushist Seven.
The Bushist Five made their decision on pragmatic grounds, which haven't been addressed here.
You obviously haven't read the decision either, sir, and you simply refuse to look at the source documents and propagate the myth instead. Even while I print the relevant parts so you don't have to look them up.
Until you account for Souter's dissent and Breyer's concurrence, you are spreading ignorance, not fact.
The seven justices who found the Florida Supreme Court bogus were the Bushist Five [O'Connor, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist] joined by Souter and Breyer.
7-2.
What, are you simply trying to shout me down? Bury my point? Shout and bury all you want. It was 7-2 that something stank in Florida, and it wasn't Bush.
As an expert witness, you are excused. You don't merely know nothing; you know less than nothing even when it's put right in front of your face---not my opinion, but the opinion of Justices Souter and Breyer.
I realize it's frustrating that you can't shout or lie over the facts, but there it is.
Bushist Five. Seven thought there was an equal protection defect, but only five thought it was better to leave votes uncounted than to count them with a standard fixed on remand.
I used to think you weren't stupid, TVD. My bad. You couldn't listen if your life depended on it.
This comment has been removed by the author.
What's all this nonsense? I wrote nothing incorrect here.
TVD wrote:
"Have you read the decision yourself?"
and later:
"You obviously haven't read the decision."
Ah. I see the problem. I was talking to LL.
Actually, I read the decision, too, seven years ago. Just for yuks, I read it again tonight. It's not very long - only 13 pages.
Good that I refreshed my memory, as the decision itself mentions the accuracy problems of voting machines, particularly with respect to overvotes and undervotes. See IIA.
The blatant dishonesty of the opinion is seen in the substanceless remand to the Florida Supreme Court, which the Bushist Five do only after preventing any useful remedy that would have counted all the votes.
In fact, the logic of the decision would have required same-standard manual recount of all ballots in Florida in order to avoid dilution of any voter's rights under Florida law, as limited by the federal Constitutional principle of one-person-one-vote.
OK, fine with me to have more accurate counts. Any democrat would be pleased with that outcome. That's what we should have enacted in the past seven years but haven't.
But there's no disputing that this is new case law. Since I've been paying attention to balloting and recounts (30 years), voting in American has been very sloppily done. We've tolerated 3% error rates, yet we've acted as if razor-thin margins are statistically valid. Recounts have always been done selectively, and that was never before a Constitutional problem.
Again, OK, that's the way the law works. Issues that haven't been adjudicated could have been sitting there waiting for Constitutional review for decades, even centuries. In fact, the extreme stringency of one-person-one-vote is a very recent doctrine.
So, the Bushist Five, convenient to their shared ideology, overruled the well-precedented but loose practice that the Florida Supreme Court had relied on in its decision on speculative (but probable) equal protection grounds when a remedy was easily available even in their logic - recount everything. But they let stand the U.S. Code safe harbor provision that assured without doubt that valid votes would be left uncounted.
This is the fundamental corruption of the Bushist Five.
As to Bush v. Gore---this might not affect WS' expert legal pronouncement---but the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that different methods of counting did indeed violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Souter and Breyer joining the Unholy Five.
This is frequently overlooked. The [putatively partisan] 5-4 vote that closed the door on Gore was about stopping all recounts. Souter and Breyer dissented, favoring kicking it back to the Florida Supreme Court to devise a fairer way to conduct a recount.
Not to say that Bush v. Gore wasn't a bad decision, either the 5-4 or even the 7-2 part, but it didn't exactly go down the way the popular myth tells it.
Sheesh.
Oops. Sorry. My stupid.
I'll just note that, having read the decision carefully several times, the majority's decision was in error, for reasons I've already articulated.
TVD's cutting and pasting himself and adding "Sheesh". Oooh.
Of course, he's cutting and pasting stuff that's mostly not in dispute.
As for the "popular myth", I'd say that "Conservative Supremes voted 5-4 to award the Presidency to Duhbya" is pretty accurate, even if understandably not as fully nuanced as WS and I have been in this discussion, nor as complete in the scorekeeping, as TVD, WS, and I have all been. First order, though, it's right about who, what, and what the practical effect was.
I didn't address the 5-4 part, because it's not related to the topic at hand.
The decision is worth studying carefully, if only to see for yourself that a chill wind does, indeed, blow. It's a terrible decision that makes an important distinction in the face of no significant difference in fact.
Another touchstone here is provided by the recognition by many parties involved--including the state of Florida and George W. Bush (who signed a bill to this effect while gov. of TX)--had already concluded that using different methods of hand-counting is fair and reasonable. That is, in a cool hour, before the presidency was at stake, they had acknowledged what is clearly true: that so long as both methods are fair, it doesn't matter that two different methods are used. In this respect, it's like using different voting machines.
And, again, the court's own recognition that its decision is bad is what makes it say that the decision can't be generalized.
Finally, this is of a piece with the general GOP strategy in FL. Before the election, both parties had accepted what the voting machine makers and the experts had long known and always made clear: that hand-counts are more reliable, and that machine counts are mere approximations. For close calls, EVERYONE agreed that hand counts were necessary. Until the GOP saw that this might lose them the election, when they (in particular the evil Jim Baker) began spouting patent falsehoods about hand-counts being "subjective." They lied outright to the American people, asserting what they (and the experts) had long known to be false; that is, that hand counts were less accurate.
I didn't address the 5-4 part, because it's not related to the topic at hand.
True, the whole Bush v. Gore excursion was a tom sequitur to begin with. Then there was the explicit threat to make hay about caucuses, and by 'hay' I assume TVD meant more straw men of little or no ruminant value. Ah, but the methane! Capture that as a source of energy, and we might have something.
But I didn't bring up Bush v. Gore. WS did, and in a relevant context.
What's your problem?
Sorry, TVD, you're right. You didn't bring up Bush v. Gore.
Sorry for insulting me for the wrong reason, then? Oh well, we take what we can get.
The use of "ruminant value" was very funny, tho. My compliments.
TVD, I admitted error. You should choose at random one of your many opportunities and try it, though I admit that would surprise the hell out of me and, to all appearances, several other commenters here.
My tom sequitur gibe was wrong in this instance, but I'm sure I'll have plenty of justified opportunities to use it again.
What I objected to was your propagation of the 7-2 myth, as if that were the historically important part of the decision in Bush v. Gore.
Of course it is. But the 7-2 part was the only part that was relevant to this topic.
I'm not propagating any myth. Are you incapable of writing a single honest sentence?
I'm happy to let others read our respective output and judge that question.
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