Category Archives: elections

A solution in search of a problem

Posted on by
Reply

Or: Whatever happened to early voting?

The legislature has decided to ask voters if they want to make it harder for them to vote.  If voters decide, probably in November, that they want to go through some additional procedures before they’re allowed to cast their ballots, the change will be felt in the 2018 election cycle.

Today, voters show up at the polling places and present their locally-issued voter registration card, sign a document, and get a ballot.  If the change is approved later this year by voters who think they also should prove they are the person listed on their registration card, they’ll have to show some additional identification that satisfies the judges at the polling places they are who they say they are.  Opponents finally got the previously stiff-backed sponsors to build a little flexibility into the proposal. But the basic issue is whether Missourians will support a solution without a problem.

The Secretary of State, the top elections official in Missouri, had estimated the original plan kicked around the General Assembly for the last few years, would disenfranchise as many as 220,000 Missourians.  He, being a Democrat, carried no weight with the legislative majority, being Republican.  Opponents claim the plan will hurt voters who traditionally lean toward Democrats.  Republicans claim the idea is a matter of making our ballots less susceptible to voter fraud.  And they pooh-pooh the Secretary of State’s estimate.

Just how big is the problem this proposal seeks to solve?

How much fraud has there been at polling places in Missouri?

Get out your microscope, folks. It is smaller than the naked eye can perceive.

We’ve consulted the Secretary of State’s election results web page for all state primary and general elections from the 2008 August primary through the November 2014 general election.   We looked at the races in which the greatest number of votes were cast (Total votes decline as one goes down the ballot).  Those races include State Auditor, President, U. S. Senator, and Governor, depending on the year.

Total number of precincts used 2008-2014:  27,931

Total votes cast in highest-drawing races: 11,898,467

Total number of precincts where voter fraud has occurred: 1

Number of Missourians prosecuted for voter fraud: 2

Number of votes in the election in which fraud was prosecuted: 1,342

In a 2010 primary election for a seat in the House of Representatives from Kansas City, two relatives of John Rizzo used fake addresses so they could vote for him.  He won by a single vote. A third candidate got fifteen votes.  His relatives were fined $250 each and were banned from voting in Missouri for the rest of their lives. Rizzo was elected to two more terms in the House and announced last year he would forego his fourth and final House term to run for the Senate.

Two votes out of almost twelve-million have been prosecuted as fraudulent. It takes a lot of zeroes after the decimal point.

But the legislature has taken hours and hours and hours for several sessions trying to get this proposal passed.

And that surely raises questions about motivation.  Doesn’t it?

Those pushing this idea also point to a Heritage Foundation report of seventeen Missouri voter fraud convictions in the last decade (2005-15).  But all seventeen of those convictions stemmed from fraudulent REGISTRATION, not from fraudulent actions at polling places. But true believers in photo-ID don’t want to hear that argument.  Don’t confuse them with facts.

So here’s a new fact that gets to the amount of voter REGISTRATION fraud:

We’ve checked the Secretary of State’s voter registration numbers for 2004-2012 and census numbers for 2014.  The total is 23,929,575 registrations.  Someone who faked a registration in ’04 might logically be prosecuted in 2005 and someone who faked it in 2014 likely would be prosecuted in ’15, so the numbers pretty well parallel the Heritage Foundation study.

Seventeen convictions out of 24-million registrations.

Add up the number of opportunities for voter fraud either at registration or at the polling place and we get eighteen prosecutions about of almost 36,000,000 opportunities.

Our online calculator says that is .000049999999999999996%

We’ll save you the counting time.  Four zeros, a four, fifteen nines and a six.   In those ten years there has been an average of one fraudulent registration or vote out of every 2,000,000 registrations or votes cast.  NOAA, the national weather service, says an average person who lives to be eighty years old has one chance in 12-THOUSAND of getting hit by lightning.

Although the final versions that passed this year began as House bills sponsored by Representatives Justin Alferman and Tony Dugger, the leading voice on this issue in past sessions has been Senator Will Kraus of Lee’s Summit.  And guess what Senator Kraus is running for this year?

Missouri’s top elections position, Secretary of State.

His primary election opponent, Jay Ashcroft, also is a true believer in voter photo ID.

One does not need a very long memory to recall when Secretary of State Matt Blunt, a Republican, and Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat, were urging the legislature to pass laws making it easier to vote.  Their early voting proposals did not require people to give a reason for wanting to vote early as is the case now when the voter has to claim he or she will be outside their voting area on election day to cast an absentee ballot.  Early voting eliminated lying and allowed people who might not want to leave their workplace on election day to cast their ballots on some other day.

But easier voting, even with bipartisan support from the state’s highest election officers, was ignored.  The effort, instead, has been on making it harder to vote.

Supporters justify making it harder to vote by saying it takes identification to write checks, get on airplanes, and other things.   They conveniently ignore one important difference.   Voting is a constitutional right.  Writing checks and flying are not.   Many of those who are quick to say that a reading of the U. S. Constitution is all that is needed to set American on the right path again are quite ready in this case to compare a constitutional right to getting an airline ticket.  Do we really think that our Founding Fathers—these advocates also like to cite them—thought voting and (in their times) getting a ticket for a seat in a coach had the same level of importance in the American system of government they were creating?

This issue is going to be on the ballot later this year.  Has anybody else noticed that the last time we might get to vote for President, Governor, U. S. Senator and many other offices without providing more documentation about who we are is the election in which we might vote to forfeit that part of our voting privilege?

And the best the backers of this proposition can do is point to two votes cast out of almost 12-MILLION votes in the last eight state primary and general elections and seventeen cases of REGISTRATION fraud (which is not mentioned in these pieces of legislation) out of about 24-MILLION registrations.

Is our system of a democratic-republic form of government more at risk because of those two votes and seventeen registrations or because of those who claim they want to protect us?

 

The shoe is on the other foot

Posted on by
Reply

The chairman of the Special Senate Committee to Generate Headlines for a Senator Running for Attorney General is feeling some of the discomfort that comes from putting the right shoe on the left foot and the left shoe on the right foot, a circumstance that was made possible early in the nineteenth century when Philadelphia cobbler William Young perfected a way to make different shoes for the right and the left feet.

The advance in shoe-making became an American idiom a half-century later when shoe and boot-making progressed enough that different shoes for different feet were more common and an expression was born based on the what happens when situations are reversed.

So it is that Chairman Kurt Schaefer, a State Senator from Columbia with ambitions for greater glory, finds himself in the position of those he has spent months targeting—facing someone who considers him guilty unless he proves himself innocent.

Schaefer, whose SSGHSRAG has battered Planned Parenthood for months with allegations of selling aborted baby parts for research even to the point of threatening to jail the organization’s leader if she didn’t produce extensive records the organization considers protected by law, is now being accused of using his chairmanship to accede to corruption.  Now it is Schaefer, the hunter, who has become the hunted.  Now it is Schaefer who is calling allegations “ridiculous.”

The man Schaefer wants to succeed, Attorney General and governorship-hopeful Chris Koster, investigated the Planned Parenthood allegations months ago and found no evidence any Missouri affiliate of the organization had done any such parts-peddling, a finding Schaefer dismissed by accusing Koster of not looking hard enough.  He has maintained that position despite other investigations in more than a dozen states that also have found no wrongdoing and further, that undermine the credibility of the source of the reports.  Two people involved in producing the original accusatory video on which Schaefer and his committee began their lengthy proceedings have been indicted by a Texas grand jury.

Now Schaefer is feeling the same kind of accusatory pressure from the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust that has asked a county prosecutor to consider a criminal charge against Schaefer.  FACT claims Schaefer used his position as Senate Appropriations Chairman to pressure the University of Missouri into keeping law professor Josh Hawley from running against him for Attorney General.

Schaefer claims the accusation has no basis in fact although former MU System President Tim Wolfe has written that Schaefer pressured him to cancel Hawley’s right to take a leave of absence from the faculty to challenge Schaefer’s candidacy.  The Kansas City Star has reported Schaefer says he talked to Wolfe because he wants to save taxpayers’ money, apparently a reference to Hawley’s salary. Some folks think Schaefer put out a lot of effort for something that is such a minuscule part of the University of Missouri budget.

The head of the organization filing the complaint is a former U. S. Attorney for the southern district of Iowa.  The organization also has other materials beyond Wolfe’s letter to support its accusation.  The Missouri Ethics Commission says the claim is beyond its authority to consider, putting the issue in the hands of local prosecutors.

The complaint also refers to the SSGHSRAG’s investigation of the University’s relationship in Columbia to Planned Parenthood.

Schaefer also is getting heat from a second not-for-profit group that has spent more than $100,000 in ads targeting Schaefer in Columbia and in Springfield, raising questions about Schaefer’s involvement in the Hawley leave issue.  The Public Integrity Alliance and FACT are organizations that do not have to reveal the source of their funding. Both deny any connection with Hawley and his campaign.  The PIA says its ads focus on Schaefer’s ethics.  Hawley disavows any connection to either organization.

The accusations from FACT have provoked great glee among people who have found Schaefer’s committee (actually it’s called the Sanctity of Life Committee) pummeling of Planned Parenthood excessive, to say the least.  Their social media sites exploded late last week when Schaefer moved a meet-and-greet session with supporters at a Columbia watering-hole to another place because the gathering also had become a gathering of anti-Schaeferites who followed him to the quickly-arranged second location.

But now he’s feeling some of the same heat he’s been dispensing.  And he proclaims it is unfair, as Planned Parenthood has complained his committee’s activities have been unfair.  Shoe.  Other foot.  Etc.  He can give it out but can he take it?

The FACT allegations also come at a bad time in his campaign and it would not be surprising if some of those involved weren’t hearing some echoes from 1992 when Attorney General bill Webster, running for Governor, found himself facing charges that he had abused his office by using state staff and equipment for campaign purposes.  He constantly denied any wrongdoing.

Webster won his primary election anyway, defeating outgoing Secretary of State Roy Blunt by 20,000 votes and outgoing State Treasurer Wendell Baily by 120,000.  But he lost in November to Mel Carnahan and later, after months of proclaiming his innocence, pleaded guilty to federal felony charges.

It is not proper to try to draw too many parallels between then and now, at least not at this point.  But suddenly finding the shoe is on the other foot surely is not something Schaefer anticipated and is likely to add an uncomfortable factor to his campaign against Hawley.

The dangers of definition-III

Posted on by
Reply

The final chapter.

Defining “sincere religious belief” is a potato too hot to touch.  That’s a fact of political life. The lack of definition is the phrase’s ultimate flaw at the same time it is its greatest strength.

By not defining the phrase, citizens are free to apply it however they wish.  But courts have held the arbitrary use of a law violates equal protection standards that are intended to apply to everybody.  That’s the dual nature of “sincere religious belief.”

There are those who think the Hobby Lobby ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court resolves the issue.  Actually it resolves only the specific issue raised by Hobby Lobby. There has been no broad blanket ruling covering all of the issues raised by religious freedom protection laws, which vary from state to state.

You and I might be able to write a definition of our personal sincere religious beliefs but trying to write them into law is pretty nearly impossible because it quickly becomes an issue of constitutional violation.  If the state adopts a definition of “sincere religious belief,” it is likely to face a lawsuit based on the Establishment and Exercise Clauses of the U. S. Constitution—a sentence that is often split for partisan purposes.

Congressman Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, a Federalist who defeated Sam Adams for a seat in the First United States Congress, wrote the Establishment Clause. He also wrote the Free Exercise Clause.

The Establishment Clause says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,”   The Free Exercise Clause comes after the comma, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  Government will not show favoritism for one religion over another.  In addition, government will not prohibit people from exercising their religion.

SJR39 exposes a tension between these two clauses.  On one hand, it can be interpreted as the state expressing a preference for one religious creed, principle or dogma over another.  Backers of the resolution will argue from the second point—government will not limit an individual’s exercise of their religion.

The arguments for this resolution have been presented as if there are no limits on either point when, in truth, courts repeatedly have found limits to all constitutional rights are necessary to maintain order in society.

That’s why the legislature is not defining “sincere religious belief.”  Doing so would clearly violate the establishment clause.  Instead, the majority is relying on the Exercise Clause while diminishing the importance of the first half of that sentence, the Establishment Clause.

What you wrote earlier defining your “sincere religious beliefs” undoubtedly differs from what other readers of this post wrote in at least some degree.  Are your “sincere religious beliefs” more valid than theirs, so much more valid that they should be in the Missouri Constitution?  Are they so valid that you should be able to exclude others from your social or business circle becaue of them?  Is your definition so valid that the second half of the sentence in the Bill of Rights should prevail over the first?  And what legal argument can you make that it should be?

Perhaps this exercise suggests religious beliefs should remain the province of the person, not the policies of government.  In the more perfect union dreamed of in the Preamble to the Constitution, perhaps that would be enough.  But in the imperfect union that is the real world, where religion has become a political issue—perhaps to the detriment of religion as the increasing “nones” might indicate—it is not.

And that is where other parts of the constitution enter the discussion and could tip that balance.  That is assuming, of course, that majority interests care to listen to that discussion.  So far, it appears they do not because doing so would not curry favor with an important political base of support that has decided the exercise clause is the only thing that counts in that sentence.

But would the different people and different organizations within that political base all have the same definitions of “sincere religious belief?”  Would the legislators supporting this proposal be alike in their heart of hearts? Does freedom of religion within religion argue against one faction of religion imposing its position through the law?

Sponsors who have referred to opponents as “radical activists who perceive their agenda of greater value than protecting the religious freedom of Missourians” might have a point. But it’s the wrong point because many opponents of this idea ARE protecting the religious freedom of Missourians.  ALL Missourians. 

We have found from years of experience covering politics that if you cannot intellectually defend your position from those who see flaws in it, you can always call your critics names—such as “radical activists.” We cannot count the number of times that “radical activists” have been blamed for all kinds of things—many of which ultimately expanded, not limited, the rights of the general population.

The issue deserves something more to justify it than a vague phrase and a bumper-sticker slogan from those pushing it and from those behind them. And the general public deserves something more from their lawmakers than a piece of campaign-year legislation that the courts will have to deal with later but which pleases for now an ideological base that the lawmakers want to please.

We began this series with a scripture from Fisher Ames.  We conclude it with a verse from U. S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun:

“When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs.  A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”

The dangers of definition–II

Posted on by
Reply

Within the lifetimes of many who read these entries, government-sanctioned entities existed in this nation that judged the sincerity and validity of individual religious beliefs.  Thousands of people were summoned to appear before them.  These agencies consisting of fellow citizens in communities bored into the basis of the claimed beliefs and ultimately determined if the sincerely held beliefs were legitimate. They were called draft boards.

They might ask, “Do you pray every day,” or “Do you read the Bible every day?”  Or the Talmud or the Book of Mormon, the Quran, the Vedas, the Pali Canon, or other sacred books of the religion you claim?  “Do you read those words as inerrant sacred texts do you believe you are free to interpret them as you please?”

Is your “religion” built on ideas from non-Biblical writings such as those from Soren Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger, Mortimer Adler, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Umberto Eco, Mahmoud Khatani, Reinhold Niebuhr, Black Elk, Paul Tillich, Mahatma Ghandi, Billy Graham, Joel Osteen or The Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch?

Would YOU be comfortable having a government board decide if your religion justifies your actions or the sincerity of your claimed sincere religious beliefs? Thousands of people, comfortable or not, put themselves in that position years ago.

Actually, we do have something of that system still before us although we don’t think of it in the manners we are discussing here.  Our criminal justice system often has to deal with those who claim they were driven to their actions by the Devil or by the Voice of God.  But that is sufficiently different from our issue today that we will put it aside.

Let’s take this one more step.   Having now written your personal definition of “sincere religious belief,” (you HAVE written it, haven’t you?) would you be willing to stand in front of the leaders of your religion and read it, knowing that they would decide if your definition is good enough for you to remain a member of that religion?  This would not be a panel of your peers drawn from the diversity of a broader community.  This would be a panel of those whose religion you profess to share. Why not—if you think your definition should be behind a part of the state constitution?

There are some religious organizations that do have such test.  There are probably a lot more that members are very glad do not.  Freedom of religion within religion, however, is not at all uniform.

Freedom of religion within religion has been an issue in this country from our earliest days.  Your correspondent has been reading Eve LaPlante’s American Jezebel, the story of Anne Hutchinson, whom you might remember from school as one of founders, with Roger Williams, of the colony of Rhode Island. Beyond that, most of us don’t remember much about her.  It might be instructive to recall this story that should be uncomfortable to those who assert this country was founded as a “Christian nation” as well as those who are asserting that sincere religious belief is justification for considering some people less that complete citizens.

Anne Hutchinson was a midwife living in the Massachusetts Colony, expecting her sixteenth child when she was forty-six years old in 1637.  The colony was controlled by the Puritan clergy and was a society that severely limited women’s role in society.  Anne began to attract a following among women and eventually several men as she began discussing her own version of the Puritan religion and critiquing sermons she had heard.  Among those attracted to her discussions was the colony’s governor, Henry Vane.  She believed salvation was a matter of God’s grace and accused the colony’s ministers of preaching the misleading idea that salvation could be gained through works.

In a short time, the Puritan ministers grew alarmed that her growing following was weakening their control of the colony and hauled her before a court of forty male judges dominated by Puritan “works’ preachers.  LaPlante’s book delves heavily into the trial transcript to illustrate the charges and Anne’s defense that often confounded the judges.  In the end, though, the forty judges convicted her and banished her from the colony.  A few months later she was excommunicated from the church.

The reach of the Puritan religion was so extensive and oppressive in those times that the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was safe for her and her followers for only a few years. When Massachusetts threatened to take over Rhode Island, she moved to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, settling in an area that is now The Bronx borough of New York City, where she and five of the children who had moved there with her were killed in an Indian attack in 1643.

As Anne Hutchinson’s husband and about a dozen other men prepared to leave Boston for Providence Plantation, they signed a compact that they would honor as the proprietors of Rhode Island.  The compact, in the wording of the day, pledged the new colony would follow Jesus Christ’s “most perfect and most absolute laws of His given in his Holy Word of Truth.” While that proclamation might be seen as a Seventeenth Century antecedent for supporters of today’s Senate resolution, it would be good for those quick to use it to remember one of the first written rules composed under that compact after the group arrived in Rhode Island: “No person within said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called into question on matter of religion—so long as he keeps the peace.”   Some see that rule as the beginning of the religious freedom statement in the First Amendment and the first statement in our country’s history that church and state are separate. No questions will be raised about a citizen’s religion UNLESS it disturbs the peace of the community. Believe what you wish but respect the secular interaction necessary for an orderly society.

Today, in the Capitol of the state from which she was banished for behavior “not comely for (her) sex,” Anne Hutchinson is memorialized as a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration.” In a time when we speak often of the values of our Founding Fathers, it is time to remember that there was a Founding Mother, the co-founder of Rhode Island, and the persecution she suffered at the hands of the righteous who countenanced no difference from their religion.

Who decides if your “sincere religious belief” is sincere enough to justify something a proposed state amendment would let you do?  And what right does the target of your actions have to force you to defend that belief before some kind of panel of peers?  Or even a panel of ministers of your own denomination? How is anyone to know that your actions are just not arbitrary unless there is a mechanism to test their foundation?

These are hard questions in a time when surveys are showing that more and more people are finding religious creeds, dogmas, or standards unwelcome.  The percentage of Americans who respond “none” to census questions about their religion is growing.  Some analysts are theorizing that religious demands for public laws and policies that fit a narrow concept are actually harming organized religion, especially among millennials.   Whether one agrees with that analysis is a personal, often political, choice.

And in Missouri today, the phrase “sincere religious belief” presents public and personal policy challenges that raise the personal comfort levels of many to levels of discomfort and could further justify the feelings of “nones.” Banishment and excommunication from the social fabric of America, in whatever form, is still alive, though, as we are seeing proposed in Missouri.

Some critics say there is less sincerity than there is politics in this effort, that it is really less a protection of religion than it is an effort to get more conservative voters to the polls in November, which means discussing the issue at a spiritual level is useless.

Nonetheless, we’ll discuss what might be done and why it can’t be done, next.

 

Reaping the whirlwind

Posted on by
Reply

A couple of syndicated columns published in the last several weeks seem from this lofty office (my office is in a loft that overlooks the living room) on this quiet street to be a good assessment of today’s politics and how we got here.

Cal Thomas wrote of the Republican presidential campaign in “Sewer Politics” in a March 1 column that he was going to talk about gutter politics “but given Donald Trump’s horrid statements, the gutter would be a step up because things have descended into the sewer.  Never in modern times has there been a presidential candidate who has hurled more personal insults and hurtful accusations at his fellow candidates and others who disagree with him.  It should embarrass a normal person, but Trump appears beyond embarrassment.”

Thomas admits he is amazed by the continued strong support evangelicals are showing Trump and the general silence about that support by evangelical leaders. “This is what can happen when some pastors who are called to a different kingdom and a different King settle for an earthly kingdom and a lesser king,” he wrote.  However he praises Max Lucado, a best-selling writer who told Christianity Today he felt he had to speak out because of “Trump’s derision of people.”  He says he would not be speaking up except that, “he repeatedly brandishes the Bible and calls himself a Christian.”   Lucado thinks it is “beyond reason” for Trump “to call himself a Christian one day and call someone a bimbo the next or make fun of somebody’s menstrual cycle.”

Thomas suggests at the end that this election could become not a choice for the lesser of two evils but a choice “between the least evil of two lesser.”

New York Times columnist David Brooks, in his February 26 column, noted a rise in the last thirty years of people who are against politics, which Brooks says is recognition “of the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions.”  He says it’s the effort to balance or reconcile or compromise those interest, or at least a majority of them” by following rules established “in a constitution or in custom to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.”  He concedes it’s a messy, muddled process in which “disappointment is normal” because people have to settle for less than they want.”

He thinks the Tea Party is the best example of the anti-politics movement that wants to elect people with no political experience. “They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.”  But, he writes, “They don’t recognize other people. They suffer from a form of political narcissism, in which they don’t accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victory for themselves and their doctrine,” a process that has had “a wretched effect on our democracy.”   And, he argues, the anti-politics movement is sending this nation into “a series of overlapping downward spirals.”

How is it doing that?  First, by electing people with no political skills or experience, he says. “That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government, which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for even more outsiders.”

Brooks thinks these politically-inexperienced people “don’t accept that politics is a limited activity. They make soaring promises and raise ridiculous expectations.  When those expectations are not met, voters grow cynical and disgusted, turn even further in the direction of antipolitcs” leading to the election of people who “refuse compromise and so block the legislative process” which, in turn, “destroys public trust (which) makes deal-making harder.”

And along comes Donald Trump, a man Brooks thinks is the culmination of all of these trends: “the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means.”  He compares Trump to the “insecure school yard bully.”

Brooks says he printed out a New York Times list of Trump’s Twitter insults.  Thirty-three pages is what it took.  And he cites a study by political scientist Matthew MacWilliams that Trump supporters are likely to score high on tests that measure authoritarianism.

He concludes, “This isn’t just an American phenomenon. Politics is in retreat and authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide.  The answer to Trump in politics. It’s acknowledging other people exist. It’s taking pleasure in that difference and hammering out workable arrangements…”

Those of us who have or have had front row seats to the deterioration of politics in Missouri know precisely what Cal Thomas and David Brooks are writing about.

What it all boils down to is that the sewer politics we—and many of you—complain about is our own fault.  We have done this to ourselves and, quite frankly, we have been urged on in our destructive efforts by people in this columnist’s own medium, radio, who have found rudeness and disrespect profitable.  Analysts in years to come will undoubtedly find today’s era of antipolitics had many causes, but the root cause is that a large part of the general public bought into the idea that the way to solve government problems was to elect people who don’t respect government and the political system that has made it work.

Thomas and Brooks have identified the problem and how we got here.   So what is to be done about it?

Of all the public figures this reporter has watched in his forty-plus years of covering Missouri politics, John Danforth is the one he most respects.   A few months ago Danforth put out a new book.   It is worth reading.   In a future post, we will offer some of his reflections.

But in the meantime it might be good to think about the necessity of repealing term limits.  Missourians approved them but by their own actions on that very day and in every election since Missourians have shown they don’t really believe in them.  And it seems from this lofty view that the Brooks’ overlapping downward spirals accelerated in Missouri from that day.

The ABT factor

Posted on by
Reply

Not that the presidential candidates have noticed very much  , but Missouri’s presidential primary is Tuesday.  Missouri tried to move its primary to an earlier date four years ago so it would be more relevant but the Republican party threatened to take away half of our delegates to the nominating convention if we did so the legislature decided it is best to be irrelevant in the Spring instead of being less relevant in the summer. 

This observer is not the only observer to observe that Republicans are becoming increasingly concerned that Donald Trump will have the nomination locked up before the summer presidential nominating convention.  And Trump loyalists are saying that if he goes to the convention with 1100 or so delegates (he needs 1237) and the “Republican establishment” denies him the nomination, there will be hell to pay, or something like that. 

More sophisticated analysts than those living outside the political cauldron are pointing out who supports him and who doesn’t and what he wins within the voting bloc and what he loses.  But what we have noticed is something more basic. 

Voters seem to favor ANYBODY BUT Donald Trump even in primaries (through last Tuesday) that he has won.  Here’s the “Anybody But” results through Super Tuesday:

Iowa   76% Anybody But Trump

New Hampshire  65

South Carolina  67

Nevada  54

Alabama  57

Alaska  66

Arkansas  67

Georgia  61

Massachusetts  50 (although in the total vote, he lost by about 20,000 out of 631,413 cast)

Minnesota  79

Oklahoma  72

Tennessee  61

Texas  73

Vermont  67

Virginia  65

Kansas  77

Kentucky  64

Louisiana  59

Maine  67

Hawaii  58

Idaho  72

Michigan  64

Mississippi  53

At that point, Trump had 458 delegates.  But “Anybody But” had 564. 

But he hasn’t cracked 40% support in 17 of the 23 states even as the number of competitors has narrowed. The candidate who has yet to get half of the votes cast in any primary has to get about 54% of all of the remaining delegates to be chosen to have enough delegates for a first-ballot nomination. 

Despite what seems to many observers as a steep uphill climb, his supporters believe Trump could go to the convention with a delegate count that deserves nomination.  But if he’s short, merriment will ensue after the first ballot and the convention will have to decide if he can win the presidency with base support of only about one-third of the party faithful.  Some Trumpians, ignoring the two-thirds for “Anybody But,” already are talking tough about what will happen if the mainline party leaders “take away” the nomination from their guy.

Delegate selection for conventions differs from place to place.  Some primaries/caucuses are winner-take-all.  Most are proportional.  As long as there are three other people running, voters will be able to vote for “Anybody But.”  Trump would prefer voters not have three other people giving voters an ABT alternative, of course. But all three of the ABT contenders have given voters in different primaries different people to use to express their ABT sentiments. They’re useful to the process.

Unfortunately, “Anybody But” is unlikely to work on the November ballot.  Watching the rest of the primaries is going to be more fun than usual. Watching the Republican National Convention holds even greater promise for entertainment this year than in many years past.  It also will be interesting to see if disappointed Trumpians will stay at home and sulk on election day (assuming he doesn’t launch a third-party effort) or if the party will be able to convince them that “Anybody But” Hillary Clinton is enough to rally them from their funk .    

One thing we’ve never understood is how opponents in primary campaigns can say the vilest things about one another and then get real palsy-walsy afterwards.  We’ve never understood why the public should consider such behavior the least bit credible. We’ll be among the many who will be watching for the obligatory unity moment after somebody, Trump or ABT, gets the nomination and wondering why yesterday’s leper can become tomorrow’s savior.    

One of the most fun moments in our career as a political reporter was the day we went after some losers in a post-election unity news conference.   We might tell that story some other day.

To a candidate

Posted on by
Reply

Congratulations.  You have put your name on the line and paid your fee and you are now a political candidate.

For some of you and the others who will add their names to ballots in the next few days, this is your first venture into a world that will test your integrity in ways you cannot now imagine (although some of you might already have flunked, based on whose money you already have taken or will get).  This might be your first step but you are bringing your family with you and while you envision the ads that show you and your family smiling confidently about your future and the future of your state, it is important that your family recognize they will share the lows as well as the highs in the months ahead.  And in fact, they might feel these things even more than you do.

How you run your campaign and how you respond to the campaigns others will run against you will test their character as well as yours.  And maybe it will be a sterner test for them than for you, believe it or not.

If you descend to the lower levels of campaigning, as is all too easy, you might find your family as well as some long-time friends questioning whether you are the person they have known and loved.  If you become the target of opponents or of the sewer rats who supposedly are completely independent of them, your friends and family might feel the attacks even more than you do.

We speak from experience of watching the process and of knowing winners and losers by the hundreds.  We know the state capitol or the national capitol can be places where ideals are sent to die.  We recall one office-holder from years ago who reflected on his re-election loss.  This person had been seen as a person with potential for greater things.  But the loss stopped that potential cold.   The candidate spoke of the double impact felt by a spouse.  Spouses, you see, not only share a candidate’s dreams of success and perhaps of higher office, but they have their own dreams that accompany that possibility.  When the candidate lost, the spouse saw the devastating effects on the candidate and also felt the death of their own vision.

If you win, do not think yourself more important than the family you take with you.  If you lose, be aware that you are not the only one dealing with the loss.

You might find the first of a series of new people who want to be your friends.  Do not kid yourself.  They are your friends only because they think you will do something for them, even if it is damaging to the general welfare.   They will want you be narrow, selfish, petty, and forgetful because it benefits them even to the disadvantage of many who will vote for you.   They will expect you to turn your back on your constituents, sometimes offering help in future elections so you can keep serving their interests.

You will be tempted to become something you are not today.  Of course, some of you have signed that candidacy statement because some of those interests already have invested in you and you already are theirs.  They prefer that you not develop a conscience during your candidacy or even your term of office.  And if you do, well, there’s no shortage of people who can be bought to replace you.

And finally, by signing the declaration of candidacy you have become something you might claim during your campaign that you are not.   You have become a politician.  If you win a few months from now, you will move from being a trusted friend at home to becoming a member of one of the most untrustworthy organizations there is—the government.

Congratulations on becoming a candidate for public office.  Surveys indicate the public has a low opinion of what you are becoming and the current crop seems to show little concern about their status or the damage they do to public confidence in the American system of government.  It takes courage to want to step into that arena.  If you have done so to satisfy a personal agenda or to carry the agenda of someone who has, in effect, bought you with a big donation, you will in the end deserve the scorn that the public feels for what you are becoming.

A question you should be prepared to answer—if only to yourself—is “What am I doing that will increase public regard for government and the people in it?”  We hope you hear that question often, even after you win.

ESPECIALLY if you win. We have seen, however, that you will be able to easily ignore it.  The concept of integrity, you will find, is fragile and is easily altered inside the walls of a capitol.

We’ll probably reflect on that after the election.

Putting up appearances

Posted on by
Reply

A former White House correspondent once recalled that one of the Presidents he had covered was adept at “looking like” he was doing something.  

The legislature has been telling us this is the year it’s doing something about ethics and the House has quickly sent a package of bills to the Senate where the majority floor leader is expecting action within a couple of weeks. It probably is unfair to suggest at this point that the legislature is “looking like” it’s doing something significant but it might not be unfair to wonder if it is doing as much as it should.  

It might be fair to say lawmakers are putting themselves in a good position to have something to brag about in their re-election campaigns. But a fair question to ask is, “What difference will these things really make?”  Will the hallways during legislative sessions look any different?  Will the influence of special interest groups be lessened?  How will these changes make the lives of the people on this quiet street better?  

Maybe the answer to that last question can honestly be, “They won’t,” but they might provoke a slight climate change at the Capitol.  The climate change, however, is unlikely to melt any political icebergs. 

One change approved by the House bars members of the legislature from becoming lobbyists for a year.  One entire year.  Not one term.  Or four years.  One year after a legislator leaves, that person can be back renewing old buddy relationships with about eighty percent of the people who were colleagues 365 days earlier.  But it does end suspicions at least somewhat that someone will vote for a bill one day and then go to work for the organization behind it a few weeks later. 

Another bill forbids elected officials from being paid political consultants.  In other words, the Speaker of the House or former Speaker cannot run a political consulting office on the side and collect fees from fellow House members wanting more terms, especially if he makes donations to the House members from his leftover campaign funds, then collects those donations back as consulting fees.  In other places, this is known as money laundering . 

Another proposal bans lobbyists from giving gifts to legislators.  Lobbyists can still sponsor junkets but the lawmakers have to pay their own way.  No more tickets to baseball, football, basketball, hockey games would be allowed, though, unless everybody is invited. 

One lawmaker refers to the ethics bills on the move early in this session as “baby steps.”  But they ARE steps and we haven’t seen steps of any size taken for a long time. 

However, we already have seen that the legislature is adept at ignoring the T-Rex in the room.   The House has not touched proposals on campaign donations and the senate leader says the issue will not be considered in his chamber.  

So the message is clear.  A free ticket to a football game is a sin.   A check for $100,000 is sacred. So legislators seeking re-election this year can tell the folks at home they supported steps to “clean up” government.   And because the state is likely to remain the only one with no donation limits, they’ll have plenty of money to advertise their efforts to re-establish virtue at the Capitol. 

One lawmaker has been quoted as saying, “Campaign contributions…are political speech. That is not part of the discussion.” Give that lawmaker some marks for candor. 

Free Speech is important in political campaigns.  But it’s not free, is it?  Some people can afford tens of thousands of dollars of “free” speech.  Some people can afford five dollars of “free” speech.  Both can speak but guess which one is most likely to be heard.  Pretty clearly, the refusal of the legislature to consider balancing the scales of political speech is an indication of who they’d rather listen to and who’s invited to the conversation.  

Let us not confuse free speech guaranteed in the constitution with political speech guaranteed by the checkbook.  Until the imbalance is corrected, those who serve in The People’s House might want to acknowledge they’re serving in The SOME People’s House. 

Baby steps are being taken.  But the footprint of the T-Rex emphasizes how puny they really are in today’s Missouri politics. 

Missouri Monocracy

Posted on by
Reply

Monocratic rule refers to complete political power or control resting with one party.  We have it in Missouri now and with the opening of candidate filing getting closer—February 23—it’s worth examining.  We hope to avoid indications the discussion will take a partisan tone although current conditions make partisan references unavoidable. 

It could be argued that the normal system of checks and balances does not check and does not balance under monocratic rule.  We have been here before although it has been many decades since the partisan breakdown in our legislature has been as lopsided as it is now, or worse. 

We are going to base most of our comments on the state senate, not because that’s where we lived for about 25 of the forty years we spent reporting from the Capitol but because it’s a small enough sample for the time we wanted to spend on this superficial study of a complex issue. 

Let’s start here:  Missouri’s legislature is controlled by one party that holds at least two-thirds of the seats in each chamber.  Missouri is the only state that has no controls on how money flows into the political campaign system.  It is easy to connect those two statements but it might not be entirely fair to do so. Life and politics are too complicated to be summarized that way.

One-half of the senate seats will be up for election this year.  Five seats will be open because three senators have reached the end of their limited terms and two have quit early.  Four of the five open seats are held by Republicans, one by a Democrat.  

All 163 seats in the House will be in play. 

Eight of the seventeen races for the state senate four years ago were not contested.  Two years ago, ten of the seventeen races for a seat in the senate were not contested (one had a write-in candidate who got six percent of the vote so we have considered that race “uncontested.”).  That makes eighteen of the thirty-four senators who are serving right now had no general election challengers or effective challengers in their last election.  

A quick survey of the House showed seventy-four members were elected two years ago without opposition in November.  That means 92 of the 197 seats in the General Assembly are from places where voters did not have a choice whom to elect and where candidates’ positions went unchallenged.  Forty-four percent of the people who are supposed to represent one-hundred percent of people in the state of Missouri in its government were elected without serious question about what they think, who’s behind them, or how they will balance the needs and competing interests of all of the people in their districts. From the perspective on this quiet street, that is an indication that Missouri politics is sick. 

Of the eight senate contested races in 2012, five winners received 51-56% of the votes.  Two were in the mid-60s and the victor in the other one got 82% in a district acknowledged as being overwhelmingly one way.  

Of the seven contested races in 2014 (not counting the write-in race), three had winning percentages of 50.088-56%.  Three percentages were in the seventies and one just barely missed that number. 

In the end, one party gained enough strength in both chambers of the legislature to make the other party mostly inconsequential unless something like last year’s right-to-work debate shutdown starts a minority forest fire the majority can’t put out.  That can and did happen in the Senate.  It’s pretty difficult in the House. 

Vetoes by a minority-party governor can likewise be largely inconsequential because of the two-thirds majority by the other side.  The check and balance system breaks down.  And has broken down.

The argument can be made that the voters decided they want a system where checks and balances are minimized and by looking at the raw membership numbers that seems apparent unless the thought arises that in more than half of those senate elections, voters were not offered a choice and candidates faced no scrutiny from an opponent. But as the folks at the state lottery tell us, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”  The failure of both parties to even try to contest races for a majority of the seats in the Senate and many seats in the House points to flaws in the Missouri political system that those who most benefit from the flaws seem in no hurry to fix. 

Controlling party justification of monocratic rule by noting two-thirds of the legislators are members of that party is, in effect, a dismissal of the needs or wishes of thousands of citizens who voted on the losing side or who had no choice through which to express themselves. The justification seems to follow the sentiments of UCLA football coach Red Sanders who said, “Men, I’ll be honest.  Winning isn’t everything.  It’s the only thing.”  (The quote is often attributed to Vince Lombardi, who did say it, but he was quoting Sanders.)   

Sanders seems to be the inspiration for today’s political climate.  Our experience indicates some people care only about winning.  Others care only about fighting.  Those who care only about serving are easily lost in the dust and smoke of the battle.  

Eight of the fifteen senators who had contests in their last elections won with 56% of the vote or less. When it comes to questions of policy and agenda, should they be softer on strictly hewing to the party line if they are to represent ALL of the people in their district?  In a more altruistic climate, the answer would likely be “probably,” which is about as positive as one can get in real world politics.  But what motivation is there under our present system to even go that far when the only thing that counts is winning and the losers seem to count for nothing?  

Only five winners got more than two-third of the votes in their districts (not counting the write-in district), which raises the question of how big a majority one needs to achieve to be able to dismiss the needs or wishes of the other side and make decisions or arguments on a completely partisan basis, or on the basis of the interest that seeks a benefit that is superior to any benefit losing voters might be entitled to as fellow citizens of the state. 

Much of this discussion is, of course, an exercise of political idealism likely to carry no weight in the blacksmith shop where the party with the big sledgehammer shapes the shoes everybody’s horse must wear.  But from time to time, someone must be naïve enough to mention it lest we become a state without hope for those out of power. There are a lot of voters who talk about these things although they have no way to rewrite the rules.

How, then, to bring some balance to a system that seems to lean strongly toward saying “winning is the only thing?”   Deeper thinkers than those of us on this quiet street can have more profound answers but one seems pretty obvious.  As long as Missouri has no limits on the flow of money into campaigns, there is only an incentive to funnel funds directly to candidates, making our political system one that is undeniably influenced heavily by those who seek to buy policies and those who find those funds the lifeblood of their careers. Those who benefit will and do deny that they are bought.   And perhaps they feel in their heart that they are correct and many probably are.  But if they are not bought, they surely must realize that in their contests they were able to afford better armor, stronger weapons, and faster horses and gratitude for those gifts takes many forms, not the least of which involves carrying the patron’s colors.  

While the focus on campaign funding has been the candidate and the individual donors who believe big donations mean big access, the political parties struggle.  We wrote about the situation last August 20 (The Party). 

Some suggest the rules should be changed to favor the contest, not the contestants–in modern terms, to seek a system that rejuvenates political parties that can field more candidates and give them stronger support. Will such policy solve the problems of the political system and neutralize the (dis)advantages of monocratic rule?  We have talked to no one who believes it is a complete solution.  But to some people, such a change stands a better chance of equalizing the floor of the arena and it stands a better chance of furthering conflicts based on a battle for ideas rather than on a fight for advantage.

Some of our associates think that “winning is the only thing” is okay in high-stakes sports but it makes for poor political systems. In politics, they think, the “winning” philosophy is a short-term goal that does not serve the long-term strength of a government and the needs of its people. One has cited the poem “Alumnus Football” by the great 1920s sportswriter Grantland Rice, which concludes:

            For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writes – not that you won or lost – but how you played the Game.

And they suggest the people benefit—all of the people benefit—when the fairness of the game is improved so that more can play it and can afford to play it well.  But they are skeptical about the willingness of today’s “winners” to make the game itself more representative of all of the participants.

Missouri faces a decision this year about whether we will continue a monocracy, where one side makes all of the decisions, versus regaining a democracy, where all of the people are involved in making decisions.  The monocracy will decide if there is such a choice. 

An ethics blizzard

Posted on by
Reply

Nothing like a little sex scandal or two to prompt lawmakers to make sincere noises about ethics reform and to file a blizzard of paper proposals to put their own houses in order.   We’ve seen blizzards at the start of other legislative sessions. One even delayed the start of the session one year.   But legislative sessions last until mid-May and by then there’s not a sign of January’s blizzard.  Whether it’s a snow blizzard or an ethics paper blizzard, things melt away by mid-May.

About a dozen ethics bills have been filed for the legislature to consider in its upcoming session.  Filing of ethics bills is easy. We’ve seen it done dozens of times.  Ethics legislation has been a topic for lawmakers to thump their chests about before sessions for many years.   But all of that blather turns to butter and melts away once the legislative session begins and “ethics” is a forgotten word by the time adjournment rolls around.

Government ethics is a never-ending issue.  Buying influence is hardly new although it always is news. There have been times when personal reputation has become less desirable than political power to those in important positions.

Chairman Mao’s observation that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” has been replaced in America by the political power that grows out of the checkbook.  What is the public to think of those it perceives as beneficiaries of the checkbook-as-power philosophy?   A Missouri Governor who served more than a century ago defined that perception.

Joseph Folk was elected governor in 1904 after leading a nationally-recognized fight against corruption in local, state and state capitol politics.  The Lieutenant Governor resigned during that campaign after admitting he was a bag man for people giving legislators bribes and the legislators who took them.  Four Senators were indicted and convicted although an elected state Supreme Court later tossed the convictions.

Folk talked about lawmakers who sell their votes.  And he noted, in terms that seem pretty contemporary more than eleven decades later, there are different ways to be a sell-out:

The legislator who sells his vote traffics in the honor of a sovereign people and prostitutes the trust reposed in him. There can be no offense which, if allowed to go on, is fraught with graver consequences. It is more fatal to civic life than any other crime, for it pollutes the stream of law at its source. It makes the passage of laws mere matters of bargain and sale, thwarts justice, enthrones iniquity, and renders lawful government impossible. If all official acts were for sale, we would have a government not of, for, and by the people, but a government of, for, and by the few with wealth enough to purchase official favor. It is the highest duty of every legislator, of every official, and of every citizen to do all that he can to eradicate this evil, which is the greatest enemy to free government and the greatest danger that confronts this nation today, It is not always by taking money that an official may prostitute his trust. He does it whenever he uses the power given him to be exercised for the public good for any other purpose. An official can embezzle public power as well as public money.

Legislative sessions in election years are great opportunities for both parties to push legislative issues, hold legislative hearings, and pass legislative bills that benefit their base of support. Ethics legislation has a tendency to get in the way of those actions, particularly if the legislation limits the flow through the natural cash pipeline.

The proposals we’ve looked at so far keep the flow going full blast this year. They won’t go into effect until 2017.  And none of them give the state ethics commission some badly-needed big and sharp teeth.

Joe Folk warned more than 110 years ago about the use of power for anything but the broad public good.

Ethics.  Power.  Which will prevail in the 2016 session?

Will we look around in May, recalling the blizzard in January, and see that everything has melted away,

Again?