Other people’s elections have two important elements that make them better than my own, first my emotional detachment and my intellectual detachment match. In NZ elections I know Labour sucks, and I know it’s not going to matter that much, but I still end up caring, and I find that frustrating. The other thing is that other people have first past the post voting systems, which while fundamentally undemocratic, are really fun to watch.
I think it’s basically the geek in me that likes elections. I suspect the part of me that decided that all X-files episodes that began with the letter ‘P’ were of superior quality (this was back in Season three, I make no claism f), is exactly the same part of me that loves knowing that the thing to do is watch New Hampshire 2.
Of course an election is no fun if you can’t support a team. I find if you look there’s always something to care about: in Britain it was the fate of Plaid Cymru,1 in America it was the ballot measures, and knowing if the Democrats took back the house no-one will be able to do anything for two years.
According to CNN all states that had minimum wage increases on the ballots succeeded (often with large margins), that’s far more than any New Zealand election has done. Plus the news on the abortion rights front is all good – two parental notification clauses knocked out, and the South Dakota abortion ban overturned. If they can’t ban abortion in South Dakota, then that has to be a good sign.
The rest is less fun (although go Arizona for being the first state not legislate Homophobia), also I’m not sure that I believe CNN, when it says that it’s covering the key ballot initiatives. I read somewhere that some state voted to investigate bringing in the death penalty. I think that’s key and I don’t even know what state it is.
As for the actual results, I’m generally fond of the US government not being able to do anything, really I am. I might even have the desire to kind of hope that the Democrats take the remaining two Senate seats, if I thought they might use them not to confirm people, but I don’t.2
It’s not that I wouldn’t vote. The thing I like best about my own elections is voting. I’m reasonably pragmatic about voting, and I love making really complicated theories about the best way to use my vote (or really complicated theories about how to answer polling questions – once I was supposed to say that I was going to vote for NZ First, I can’t remember why).3 It’s just that they’re the Democrats; they suck beyond the telling of it. There are probably even occasions where I’d vote for a Democrat in a national race (although I think in the unlikely event that I moved to America I’d make sure I lived somewhere like Mississippi or Massachusetts, so I’d never be tempted to vote for president). I can also think of circumstances that I’d be glad they won. But none of this makes them an fraction more left-wing, or an ounce less of a corporate party. I don’t think it’s elections that bring about meaningful change, but organising.
This election has reminded me everything I find weird about American elections. Top of the list is the fact that you use a different voting system in each part of the country, and it’s elected officials who decide on the voting system.
But second is the fact that Americans vote for everything. In New Zealand all the power is totally centralised and the only thing we vote for is central government (we do occasionally vote for local government but they don’t control any of the most important services such as education).
So I have a question for everyone there whose just voted for the Secretary of State in California, or their local DA or the Insurance Comptroller (what on earth is that?), what difference do you think it makes that these positions are . I imagine that mostly it wouldn’t make a difference, but when would it would mean that . NZ has pretty much the same level of violent, racist, rapist cops across the country. Somewhere you have to elect the sheriff, there would be places where that would encourage violent, racist, rapist cops, and other places where it might not stop it, but it might curb it. Is that people’s experience?
- Chalk that up to things you didn’t know about me – I’m enough Welsh to support the Plaid (if not Welsh to reliably pronounce it). [↩]
- It sounds like the Virginia Senate race actually resembles the Tauranga Electorate race – which my friend Larry described as sexism beating racism on the day (although it sounds like racism is going to beat sexism in Virginia – isn’t that special). [↩]
- My favourite was that friends who were too principled to vote for Labour or the Greens, but wanted Winston Peters out of a job should vote for the Maori party, on the grounds that the Maori party would have an overhang so voting for then would mean that they wouldn’t get any extra seats, but would make it less likely that NZ first would reach the 5% threshold. Then it was pointed out to me that voting for the Libertarianz would achieve the same result, and I was sad, because that was a really complicated bit of logic out the window. [↩]
Well, the death penalty measure was in Wisconsin, my state, and it passed, depressingly. I am really pissed.
The other thing is that other people have first past the post voting systems,
What are “first past the post” voting systems?
I’m generally fond of the US government not being able to do anything, really I am.
Me too. In fact, it already does way too much already, and I’d love to see it cut back.
Top of the list is the fact that you use a different voting system in each part of the country, and it’s elected officials who decide on the voting system. But second is the fact that Americans vote for everything.
I combined these into one paragraph because they are not unrelated. One major idea in American government is that of Federalism. While expressed at the time in the idea that States should have a fair measure of soverignty (sp?), the general idea is that what powers the government has should be pushed down to local governments as much as possible. Therefore, the governance of, say, a town’s sanitary system (water and sewer) should be controlled by a group of people elected by the town’s citizens; it should not be controlled by a group of people in the State or Federal government. This makes sure that the people running the system are directly accountable to the people using the system and not to officials/party bosses hundreds of miles away.
So when you vote for your local District Attorney, you are voting for someone who will determine what priorities to place on the use of the State’s power of prosecution. After all, it’s not unlimited; they only have so many attorneys and so much time and money. Will it be used against companies that violate environmental regulations, or will it be used against people violating labor laws concerning the employment of illegal aliens? Will it concentrate on small-time drug users, or will the drug kingpins be chased down? Do you start investigation consumer fraud? Do they concentrate any effort on dealing with corrupt cops or public officials? Think about what would happen if you got to elect your D.A. directly, and he or she had to explain to the voters what their priorities were in investigating and prosecuting crimes.
Here’s the local race that concerned me the most:
In the U.S., States are broken up into Counties. I live in Cook County, Illinois. It includes the entire City of Chicago plus many towns and villages that are within about 16 Km of the city’s borders, and about 5.3 million people. It is run by a County Board that has about 16 board members and a president (who can also be a board member). These are all elected, the board members from defined districts/sub-divisions of the county, and the president county-wide. One of the responsibilities of the county is health care for the indigent. Another is the building and maintenance of many roads in the county (although they also get some State and Federal money for this, depending on the road).
Cook County is sometimes called “Crook County”. This refers to the fact that who gets county jobs has little to do with professional qualifications or work history and a whole lot to do with how much political influence your references have and how much time you’re willing to put into performing political work for the County’s elected officials (often during time when you’re supposed to be working). It also refers to the fact that for some strange reason, contracts for road building and maintenance, etc., tend to go to people who contribute money to the various politicians’ re-election campaigns.
The County Board president has the power to do something about this. My choices in this election were Todd Stroger and Tony Peraica. Tony has been on the board for a few years. He has often spoken out against the waste and corruption in County government and has made some very specific proposals on how to cut out the bloat, waste and favoritism in County government. Todd has never been on the County board. He has been a go-along do-nothing alderman in the City of Chicago, which body is widely recognized as a rubber stamp for whatever the Mayor of Chicago wants to do. He has made no real proposals about making any changes to the County’s operations. He was slated because his father, who has been County board president for years, had a stroke before the party primary, refused to let out any word on his condition, was re-elected anyway, and then resigned. As per the law, the party’s Cook County committee, a body of some 80 people I believe, then got to replace him with whoever they chose, and they chose the man’s son.
Tony’s a white Republican. Todd is a black Democrat. The votes are not all yet counted, but the odds right now are that Todd will win by a slim margin. If Tony could win, the people of the County, including the indigent, would be likely to get a lot more services for their money. Instead, we’ll get a compliant young man with no real power of his own and no real reason, short of the threat of indictment, to make any changes whatsoever.
One of the hot buttons in the election was health care and abortion. The County provides abortions for the indigent. They hadn’t when abortion became legal; the idea was that many people are violently opposed to abortion, seeing it as murder, and taxpayer’s money shouldn’t be spent on abortions on that basis. Then Stroger pere decided one fine day that should change, and it happened. Tony personally opposes abortion. However, he said that he would not change County policy in that regard. His opposition said that he would. Tony said that he would cut down the number of departments administering health care to make administration more efficient and save money. His opponents said that he’d cut back health care. I think part of the problem was that Tony’s approach to County government would mean a loss of County jobs, and there’s a lot of people who either have County jobs or have a family member who does. The fact that the County is grossly inefficient and wastes money is actually a plus for them; otherwise, they’d have to go out and find jobs in the public sector where they’d actually have to work for a living.
So are many Americans. In fact, libertarian/small government types love it when the government is divided.
In most state, the Secretary of State is a very, very important office. In California:
Do you remember the Bush/Gore election? Remember Katherine Harris certifying the vote tallies. She was the Secretary of State in Florida.
Mind you, you can’t assume the Secretary of State oversees elections in all states. Each state can and does divy up responsibilities in different ways.
I don’t think you’d care for Mississippi. Move to Massachusetts or New York and vote for a third party candidate for president if you care to.
RonF, the US has a first past the post voting system. You can read a brief definition fo what that means here.
You’re right about electing all the way down to individual judges– it seems pointless, since you don’t hear anything about them most of the time. (Plus running to be a judge just sounds like there’s a conflict of interest looming.) It came about because, at one point, the judges got out of alignment with the people. The same thing is true of our initiatives and recall– they came about because corruption was widespread (in the 1910s), so the people wrested the power away to prevent that from happening again.
We have a lot of “dangly bits” of government, left from the last time we decided to stop something outrageous. Of course, sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot (like Prop 13, our limit on property tax appreciation…)
Why was Prop 13 shooting yourselves in the foot?
RonF,
Prop. 13 did a whole bunch of things, some of which I think are fine.
However, freezing tax hikes on property while property is held has done a lot of weird things including causing weird market distortions. For example, there is less affordable housing for elderly who want to cash out of their old homes and move into smaller ones. There are also legal mechanisms that permit corporations to transfer property without triggering the tax increases that happens when property is sold. The result is on average, private property taxes rise, but corporate property taxes can stay low.
I guess this might be ok if it’s really what the California voters intended, but I really doubt it.
Of course, it’s also made raising taxes for schools difficult.
For example, there is less affordable housing for elderly who want to cash out of their old homes and move into smaller ones.
How so?
Of course, it’s also made raising taxes for schools difficult.
Because the voters have to approve the tax hikes directly, instead of taxes going up as property values rise?
RonF,
Because the voters have to approve the tax hikes directly, instead of taxes going up as property values rise?
Strictly speaking, in Illinois property taxes don’t go up as property values rise. They go up because the tax levy rises. The tax levy rises because, in some cases, our elected officials increase the various levies. Much, much more often, we vote for various referenda permitting these levies. Example: We just voted on one increase funds for the Dupage county forest preserve so they could increase the amount of forest preserve. Illinois voters vote on these things constantly.
The taxes only seem to go up with property values because everyone knows higher valued properties pay more than lower valued properties and the levys are also constantly increasing (because taken one at a time, almost every referendum sounds like a good idea that will only raise your taxes $200 a year!)
When people get their bill, they see the taxes went up, the value went up, and think the two are connected, but it isn’t strictly true.
You don’t need the property tax “freezing” aspect of Prop 13 to control property taxes– voters can do that in other ways. All the “freezing” aspect does is favor some property owners over other property owners at tax time.
(For the record, other aspect of Prop. 13 mean voters do have to vote to raise other taxes– including income taxes etc. That’s the bit that doesn’t necessarily bug me.)
======= On the old folks hurt when they want to sell….
There a bunch of reasons the frozen tax can make things strange for the elderly who want to move. (It’s a great deal for the ones who don’t want to move.) Say you are my mother. She is 75 and has owned a humomgonormous 5 bedroom house for over 20 years. Say she finally comes to her senses and relizes she should move to a 2 bedroom condo. In California, her taxes would go up so much, she’d find out it would cost her more to live in the 2 bedroom condo. (Then she might threaten to move in with me. Yikes!)
Of course the same tax issue that affects the elderly affects others. So many people figure out they can’t sell. So, they don’t put their places on the market. Eventually, the property market gets distorted.
So, severe “tax freeze” aspects of Prop. 13 introduces some strange market distortions– similar to rent control in New York City. They sound great at first, but eventually, the effects affect individuals buy/sell decisions, builders decisions to build etc. (Oh, and did I mention, my 75 year old uncle has lived in a rent control apartment since the 60s?)
Lucia’s mostly hit the notes I was aiming for.
Basically, two identical houses on the same street can pay wildly different property tax, depending on when it last left the corporation/family. Corporations have been very skilled in avoiding reassessment of their property, pushing more of the tax burden onto individual homeowners.
Prop 13’s stripping of the money from locally raised taxes and the strange formulas put in place on its passage means that most of the money comes down from the state, but distorted by the 1970 revenue sharing formula. So you get strange situations where local foothills schools get twice as much money per student, because they had PG&E in their assessment district when it was passed.
Basically, it distorted outcomes, undermined local control, and is unfair in how it is levied.
But second is the fact that Americans vote for everything.
Of course, New Zealand has only four million people. There’s not the same room for political devolution downwards.
And I tend to vote for Labour, myself – I don’t trust the smaller left wing parties to be able to run a coherent government, useful as they are for modifying Labour’s business tendancies.
Wouldn’t it go the other way, PIATOR? The smaller you are, the less you can afford to send money/power up the hierarchy.
Robert,
Not necessarily, because we have a proportional representation system, it is very difficult for any single party to completely control the government. The larger parties- National and Labour- have to work with the smaller parties to form a government, which *pulls* their politics out of the centre.
Plus, there are limits on campaign funding. TV ads are funded by the state and there are constraints on how many can be run. There really isn’t quite the money issue that occurs in US politics.
Wouldn’t it go the other way, PIATOR? The smaller you are, the less you can afford to send money/power up the hierarchy.
Actually, Thirstygirl, I was thinking more of structural limitations. We can’t run the same federal/state/polity model they have in the ExcitedSnakes because we’ve only got the same number of people as a smallish State (think Mississippi or Kentucky).
The national government has to exercise the functions of a sovereign power and also run at the administrative level of one of the US State governer/legislatures. I know that in the agency I work for, we have some functions which are at a national/international level, but also run operations directly comparable to those run by US state level systems.
Oh, I gotcha now. Thanks for the clarification. Your layers are squashed up relative the USA; the president is the governor is the mayor. (Not quite, of course.)
Part of all this is due to our history as well.
The U.S. originated from 13 different colonies that were completely independent of each other. They originated in different fashions; some were Crown colonies, some were consessions to powerful peers, etc. Some had strong executive/weak legislative governments, some were the opposite, some had independent judiciary, some had the judiciary combined with the legislative function, some had established religions (that were different from each other) and some didn’t, etc. They all regarded each other as foreign entities and were jealous of their legal indepenence from each other.
They managed to unite to fight off a common oppressor. After that, for about 8 years they operated under the Articles of Confederation. Those gave the Federal government extremely limited powers and pretty much required unanimous consent for any significant undertaking. It was only after repeated problems came up that sufficient support formed to revise the Articles. The body that met for that purpose ended up exceeding their charter and proposing the Consitution that the U.S. has today. It was a battle to get the States to cede even as much power as an originalist reading of the Constitution. States with strong executives (such as New York) were reluctant to approve it as they thought that it gave the President too much power. The Federalist Papers were written and published to overcome these objections. It is an 80-part installment series that ran in the New York papers that was written by the authors of the Constitution and explained their viewpoint of what it meant and how it was to be used. Even then, a promise was extracted to update it with a Bill of Rights that set forth in detail what individual rights and privileges the Federal government had no authority to interfere with.
The heritage of the U.S., then, is that governmental power should be concentrated at local and State levels as much as possible, and that the Federal government’s power should be limited. Mistrust of the Federal government is as American as motherhood and apple pie and is hardwired into our legal system. In fact, Amendments IX and X of the Constitution address this directly:
” Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
They managed to unite to fight off a common oppressor.
Which suggests they had no idea what real oppression was…
I read somewhere that some state voted to investigate bringing in the death penalty. I think that’s key and I don’t even know what state it is.
Wisconsin, but it’s a non-binding referendum, and the governor (who was re-elected Tuesday), has said that he’d veto any death penalty bill if the Legislature passes it.
Article here…
Even though the United States still has the death penalty, states in the Upper Midwest are the first Common Law jurisdictions to ban capital punishment – Wisconsin and Minnesota banned it 150 years ago, and Michigan never had it since it joined the United States in 1836.