1: What should I have been worried about?
That the jungle primary and multiple Democratic candidates could have resulted in House races that were winnable by the Democrats but with no Democratic candidate making it into the general election.
Because the law of the jungle is non-procedurally liberal?
Pleasant surprise in our US House race. Six candidates on the ballot, although one had dropped out a couple of months ago. Four guys and a gal. One of the guys (a consumer lawyer who sues banks) was very explicitly running as the Bernie guy. The gal was very anti-NRA. Also a non-profit sector private property trusts enviro, looked like a congressman from central casting. Couple of enviro lawyers who never got any traction at all,and finished in low single digits. Bernie Guy and Central Casting Guy each acted like he was the front-runner, and both raised a lot more money than anyone else.
So, keep an eye on Kathleen Williams as she takes on Greg "The Bodyslammer" Gianforte.
For I second there I thought that said Kathleen Kennedy and man was that confusing.
The SF mayoral race may have shown the limitations of naive identity politics on Twitter. Many tweets tried to take shortcut rules of thumb in choosing who to root for, but there's no substitute for doing the work of looking into who the candidates are.
Because the law of the jungle is non-procedurally liberal?
In fact, it's verging on socialist:
Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
...The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies.
The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will;
But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill.
Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same.
Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same....
Other good news! The Alabama sheriff that" personally pocketed more than $750,000 worth of funds allocated to feed inmates in the county jail" was defeated in the Republican primary. Who says there is no accountability!
The SF mayoral race may have shown the limitations of naive identity politics on Twitter.
That's a relief.
The jungle primary sounds so awful and gameable. It has the same problem as regular first-past-the-post of forcing you to decide who is most electable from the set of acceptable alternatives, except now you can choose from among the top two. But you better be damned sure you're on the same page as everyone else as to who the top two are.
Observationally, white men tend to turn into cranks about something as they age, and it seems my thing to be a crank about is ranked choice voting.
From Central California, our local results were okay but not great. Nunes beat 50% in the primary, so while he'll have a rematch in the fall, Janz has a big uphill climb against him.
Being a national lightning rod seemed to help Nunes; my neighborhood is just across the congressional district boundary, but the yard signs were Janz & Nunes, even though we were voting between Costa and Heng. Nunes had the money and support for giant signs along our neighborhood streets.
Unfortunately, our sheriff (she of the Trump immigration suck-up saga of a few months ago) ran unopposed.
Our sales tax surcharge for childcare and early education seems to have fallen about 2 points short of the 2/3 passage threshold; I'm not sure if late returns could change this. And the challenging DA candidate who acknowledged mass incarceration is a thing is losing by 19 points. Those are the main disappointments for me.
Governor race will be D+R, Senator will be D+D with a very wide margin, likely uncompetitive. Hopefully nobody's sitting on a Newsom scandal to release now it makes the most chaos.
In SF, ranked choice voting could have put a progressive coalition over the top.
Has there been a good profile of Nunes? I keep wondering about his motivations since he seems to be going so far beyond the usual Republican obstruction/obfuscation/opprtunism.
A Dem state senator in OC, narrowly elected in 2016, was recalled over being a deciding vote for the gas tax hike last year. That's got Dems worried about the coming repeal referendum in November, especially since the Republican gubernatorial candidate Cox is hanging his hat on that repeal.
Has there been a good profile of Nunes?
Don't make fun of people just because they are goofy looking. Focus on his horrible ideas.
Newsom was a frustratingly underwhelming mayor & I suspect for reasons that won't have changed in the intervening years. I anticipate missing Brown sharply & often, even tho far from always agreeing with him.
Locally, am bummed the challenging sheriff and DA didn't win.
Statewide, I am happy Villaraigosa went down and happy that charter school proponents spent a ton of money in the process. I think Newsom will be fine, but for the life of me, cannot understand his appeal. Far as I can tell, he called dibs on governor a few years ago, but hasn't done anything worthy of it. Do we just give the governership to tall men with slicked back hair because they say they want it?
The charter school bankrollee edged out the progressive for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. The latter, Thurmond, can probably pull it out in the general, but it will be a slog with way too much money used up.
I agree on Newsom. He's got this machine of inevitability that would have lots more chinscratchingly concerned column inches if he were a woman.
A Dem state senator in OC, narrowly elected in 2016, was recalled over being a deciding vote for the gas tax hike last year. That's got Dems worried about the coming repeal referendum in November, especially since the Republican gubernatorial candidate Cox is hanging his hat on that repeal.
This is terrible and despite the fact that it's getting almost no coverage, even in the state, a big deal for a bunch of reasons, including that the Senate lost its 2/3 Democratic supermajority (and in CA a lot of things need to be done by supermajority, because stupid constitution). Tempered by the fact that the Legislature probably wouldn't have done much before the election, but it's difficult to see them getting their 2/3 back. And it's REALLY bad because of the implications for the gas tax repeal thing -- that's the kind of initiative that could both pass and bring Republicans out in force in Congressional races.
Also I hate our stupid state populist bullshit so much. We didn't have any very insane initiatives so this time -- hey, it was the turn of the "jungle primary" to cause needless anxiety because of a dumb purportedly populist constitutional rule!
It looks like we'll be OK, just barely, and there won't be a race where two Republicans blocked out a Democrat for an otherwise competitive seat, but Jesus Christ is looking at races where the only thought is "please stupid Democrats don't be so fucking stupid and just vote for one person and why the fuck did all of these political newbie assholes run" over and over again is really an incredibly unfun way to spend an election night where you should be hopeful about Democratic challengers. I guess since the jungle primary in the constitution now we really really need to give the state democratic party the ability to kneecap people and they need to do so. Maybe we'll be OK but God was the last convention where state dems largely they wouldn't just endorse people because ESTABLISHMENT almost a fucking complete disaster.
I would LOVE to talk about Devin Nunes. I've watched him for a decade, because of the water stuff. I am so surprised that he is in the role he's in. I would have sworn, until two years ago, that he would retire from his seat, fat and happy, to a very well paying job with Westlands Water District (where his former chief of staff is now GM). I never saw any reason his life would change.
He wanted the House Intelligence Committee because his other goal in life is to enrich his relatives in the Azores. His mission is to move an intelligence base to Lajes.
So that's where he was, well positioned on his two things: helping Westlands Water District and moving an intelligence base to the Azores. But he is a born suck-up, kickdown authoritarian, and I think he got dazzled by Trump. I cannot believe that he was ever involved in collusion or with Russians, just 'cause it never seemed like he moved in those spheres. But Trump sucked him in, and now he's in whatever danger you believe the whole Trump administration is. I won't know until retrospect, of course, but it might be another case of Trump destroying everything he touches.
I keep thinking that the water big boys must be furious at Nunes for putting their system in jeopardy. If Nunes had just laid low, he could have kept working on their behalf forever. Now they may have to buy and train a new guy, and that's more work than they would have had to do in the non-Trump scenario.
In our too-many-cooks state assembly race (AD15), it's not clear who the Dem-establishment-y parachutist will be facing, but both of those in the running for #2 are local officeholders with some association with Bernie Sanders, if anyone was worried we wouldn't be rehashing the 2016 primary for ever and ever.
I am not defending the jungle primary; I thought it was a bad idea in 2010. But if you remember, it was one of our desperate attempts to do ANYTHING about the 1/3 of Republicans in the state houses that were blocking budgets. Remember when CA was a failed state and we joked here about going into receivership under Obama and everything was hopeless because no Rep senator ever did cave ever because they rightfully knew they'd be primaried? That was the context for the jungle primary, that we might get a moderate Republican out of it, one that we could deal with in the Senate to pass any legislation at all.
Years later, it was a potential problem, so jungle primaries turn out not to be a good solution after all. Remember, folks, the only thing that worked here was massive domination, so fuck elaborate processes to develop moderation.
So what's the ideal next step if we had the means to push for a constitutional change? Back to traditional primaries plus runoffs to keep a bit of a lid on the GOP? Primaries plus IRV to allow multiparty? Mixed-member?
Do you even need primaries if you have IRV?
I want some sort of ranked-choice voting to allow for more extremism, not more moderation. The one thing that'd be better than IRV in my mind is single transferrable vote, if we can get multiple-member districts.
But if you can push for constitutional change, maybe getting rid of your referendum process should take precedence.
And back to my favorite topic: Nunes.
I wish I could find the source, but I am sure I read last week that the predictor thought Nunes would get 60% of the vote and Janz 30ish%. (Nunes got 68% of the vote in 2016.) He said that if Janz can keep Nunes under 60%, it will be a very good night for Janz. Nunes got 57.5%, which I count as well under 60%.
I am hopeful for Janz. He's photogenic as anything, and actually aggressive. He is certainly shaking a ton of hands.
I've been going down to Fresno for some stuff, and this article is what I keep seeing. They may need a few more years to work, but the organizers have moved home. (It occurred to me that the high cost of housing in nonValley CA may have driven those young lawyers home.)
Aaaaannnd, there's whatever odds you assign to massive collapse of the Trump administration and associates. It isn't impossible that Nunes could be indicted or perpwalked before November.
28.1: Yes, I realized right after posting that was a bit silly since part of the goal of IRV (which is the same as RCV, but with the word Instant for marketing purposes) is to do everything in one round. But practically all systems (except PR) get weird when you have too many candidates crowding in. And it would be nice to keep giving parties some role besides via money and influence.
Maybe RCV plus a beefed-up signature requirement to thin the herd. I bet you could have cut the Senate and Governor candidacies in half by requiring signatures of everyone, instead of allowing them to pay a filing fee in lieu.
28.3: That would not pass on its own, unfortunately. Californians hate the initiative/referendum system but they hate the idea of deferring everything to the legislature even more.
I have some hope that maybe someday you could change the CA constitution to at least say (a) initiatives can be overturned by the Legislature (b) initiatives can't change the Constitution. That would solve the worst problems (we're still dealing with a crop of terrible initiatives from the 80s and 90s that no one can change. Some are possible to ignore, some aren't). You'd need to connect it to the right galvanizing issue though.
I have nothing to say about RCV, IRV, PR, etc., because I always forget exactly what those are.
I like to think about voting systems!
IRV--instant runoff voting--is a voting system where you rank the candidates. If someone has at least 50% of the first-ranked votes, they win. If not, you eliminate all the candidates who couldn't win, then rerun the election (if a voter's first choice was eliminated, use their second choice, and so on). Repeat this until someone has a majority of highest-ranked votes. The benefit of this is it doesn't force voters to pick the least intolerable candidate.
RCV can either mean IRV, or more generally any voting system where the ballot is a ranking of the candidates. The former usage seems to be an Americanism, while the latter is used more generally.
STV--single transferrable vote--is IRV with multi-member districts. This is the system that Ireland uses.
PR stands for proportional representation, which can refer to any system where the legislature is set up so that the proportion of each party in the legislature mirrors the number of votes that party received in total. STV achieves this (I think), but there are other ways to do it. Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) lets people elect their preferred local candidate via first-past-the-post or whatever, but parties also supply a "party list" of additional, non-geographic candidates that can become MPs to guarantee that the MPs' parties are in proportion to the total votes (the exact way you do this seems to vary a lot). This is what Germany and New Zealand do.
I learned yesterday that New Mexico elected both of its US Representatives at-large until the 1960s, when they switched to geographic districts. I'm not sure why.
Doesn't at large voting harm minority voters? Or wasn't that the thinking in the 60s and 70s?
At large voting harms minority voters if it's not proportional representation. For example my city council has 5 aldermen that are all elected at-large. Why would you do that?
But if it's proportional, shouldn't it only harm minority voters if their party is so small that it should get a fraction of 1 representative and instead it gets 0.
I learned recently that from something like 1870-1980, Illinois had a system for its lower house where all districts had 3 members and each voter had 3 votes, but could divide them among candidates in any quantity desired (3-0, 2-1, 1.5-1.5, 1-1-1, etc.; the technical term is "cumulative voting"). In practice this allowed the vast majority of districts to elect two members from one party and one from the other, because the minority could strategically concentrate its votes onto one candidate.
I think CA should make it harder to get things on the ballot (higher signature requirements, basically) but easier to vote.
Or maybe we can petition to keep things off the ballot. More "no" signatures beats "yes" signatures.
I want a system that empowers the 8% of voters who are Natives and blocks from all power the 18% of voters who are stone cold racists. Which scheme does that?
NZ also has Maori-specific seats, although I dunno how well they've worked in practice. As for the racists, uh, schedule online gaming events on election day to keep them home.
Columbus just changed our system of electing city council members. Except -- not really? Now there are 7 City Council members and they are elected at large. In the new system there will be 9 members and they are supposed to represent districts, except that they will still be elected at large (?!) I guess what happened is that the democrats in power felt they needed to do something to calm down the reformers, but they didn't want to do anything that might threaten their complete control.
41: So candidates run for specific districts but are elected citywide? That is indeed very weird.
42: But they do have to live in that district! Yes, it is weird!
I always think I must be somehow misunderstanding it, but it seems I'm not.
Santa Clara (city, not county, so it wasn't on my ballot) voted on a proposal to go from at-large to district, and one of the arguments I saw in favor was that it would make the city council more representative, given how much more diverse the city has become. I don't know enough about the city to know if it would work out that way, but it looks like it lost.
This seems like the most straightforward explanation of it. It would be at-large voting, but candidates have to reside in the district they're running to represent.
Yeah, bizarre. I read a few articles about this, and people were complaining that although the council was majority African-American, the candidates were selected by people in power. This doesn't seem like it'd fix that issue at all, as you'd still have (e.g.) people in rich neighborhoods deciding who will represent poor neighborhoods.
45: Thanks for the more helpful link. Yes, it's definitely designed specifically not to fix that.
That system sounds horrible. Imagine deciding the state legislature that way. Congratulations to the random Republican who lives in a 90% Democratic inner-city district, I'm sure you will do a great job of "representing" your "constituents" in the new 100% Republican statehouse.
43 Our county commission is like that: live in a district, get elected at large. It's really just a silly residency requirement that keeps the commissioners from all living in the same neighborhood,
I was briefly at the post-election party of our 3 term incumbent last night who lost to a younger challenger. Kind of a sad scene. I voted for her, but most people I know went for the challenger, a dynamic and well-liked man.
His big deal is affordable housing. Hers is funding county health, especially mental health, programs in the face of severe budget cuts from the state. I kind of thought solutions to the latter are much more within a county commissioners' power to deal with than solutions to the former.
It's really just a silly residency requirement that keeps the commissioners from all living in the same neighborhood
Yes, I'm wondering how that will play out in Columbus. Will the districts be cleverly drawn so there will be a nice area within each district for the council member to reside? Or will the council members have a fake address in the poor neighborhood that they are supposed to represent while actually living somewhere else?
Dublin is for burger-makers and proles.
Hilliard is basically Dayton without the aliens.
Santa Clara city is also currently being sued for discriminatory effect of the at-large system. (California has a special law to make these lawsuits easier than they would be under federal constitutional principles, so most big cities now have district council elections, but not all.)
31: I hate California's initiativesystem so much, but i find myself getting involved in ballot campaigns in MA. It doesn't seem quite as bad here. The legislature does have the power to overturn things. Unfortunately, you can change the Constitution. Prisoners used to have the right to vote, but now they don't because of a referendum. But we also have paid sick time and might get paid family and medical leave because of ballot initiatives. The Speaker of our House prioritized gambling over leave.
In California, they write ballots which say things like "If Question 4 passes but question does not then 20% of the money raised by the bond issue in question 4 will fund what question 5 was supporting." That just seems so sketchy.
Flathead County had an interesting ballot initiative: whether to add a specific farm property to a special zoning area, where doing so would might prevent the construction of a large plant that was going to take water out of a deep aquifer and put it in zillions of plastic bottles. This is a very Republican very right wing area, where Propity is nearly as important as Jesus (and Jesus is an even bigger deal up there than when Thompson wrote Fear & Loathing).
Passed by a wide margin.
The owner of the specific property and would be developer of the plant was instrumental in the creation of the special zone in the first place, 15 years ago, to prevent the Salvation Army (?) from developing farm land that had been donated to it.
Seems kind of biblical after all.
I'm confused - the first paragraph makes it sound like the property owner and developer are different people, at odds with each other, but then the last paragraph makes it sound like they're the same person.
Confused? You won't be after this week's episode of Soap
My tiny township (5000 people or so) discovered an unappreciated problem with at large voting combined with no one caring about local issues. Whoever is most popular for president or senator carries the township council, so all five council seats turn over and no one has anyone experience in office or the slightest idea of what they're supposed to be doing.
This is especially a problem if you live next door to the town clerk, because she complained about it incessantly for a while. Did not really affect anything I could discern.
oh sorry.
15 years ago guy gets special zoning district created to thwart development of a neighbor's property he doesn't like.
Now guy wants to do a big development that his neighbors don't like. The went to the county zoning people to get that property added to the special district. County government said no. Lawsuit filed, county government ordered to reconsider. Meantime, neighbors get it on the ballot. Guy squeals like stuck pig. Ballot measure passes.
Oh, we also had a primary to see who gets to go against Tester. Contenders were (a) rich guy from California with a house at Big Sky endorsed by Danny Quayle, Trump Jr, and campaign managed by Sec. Zinke's wife; (b) Maryland transplant currently serving as state auditor (they don't use his voice in the ads because of his accent), a tea party whackjob endorsed by Bannon; and (c) a well respected trial judge who retired to run, whose father was a legislative leader in the 60s/70s, and who was endorsed by all the living Republican ex-governors and 2 recent Republican ex-Congressmen.
Naturally, the Bannon guy won.
Way more Republicans voted than Democrats yesterday, so we have our work cut out for us. There's going to be tons of big money -- to the point people with TVs are already dreading the next several months -- what'll win the race is gotv.
A MeToo story apparently swung the GOP primary electorate in SD. (If Politico is trustworthy on the subject.)
Not a primary but...
Rob Ford's brother Doug was just elected Premier of Ontario with a huge majority. Ugh. I think you had a 1st past the post problem in some places. Where Tim's family is Progressive Conservatives got 37.5% of the vote, NDP got 34%, and Liberals got 24%. There was a Green candidate too.
At the Provincial level. in a legislature of 124 - 76 went PC, 7 liberals, and 40 NDP. Conservatives got 40.64% of the vote. The Ontario Provincial Liberals were pretty shitty, but God Ford is terrible.
I think you had a 1st past the post problem in some places. Where Tim's family is Progressive Conservatives got 37.5% of the vote, NDP got 34%, and Liberals got 24%.
Yes. In a multi-party system, 1st past the post can lead to some very skewed results. But the voters know this, and they know how to vote strategically (that's how they finally got rid of Stephen Harper), and not enough voters chose strategy over party affiliation, I guess. Anyway, it is absolutely appalling. Expect chaos and scandal and a level of sheer stupidity that Ontario has never seen before...
Looks like the Democrats are going to be shut out of House District 8 in CA. The total among the Democratic candidates is still under 50%, so it was probably going to be a loss no matter what.
Looking at its map, the real question is the number of houses in CA-8 that AREN'T meth labs. I say no more than 40% non-ml.
This is America. More people think they're going to be meth lab owners than ever will be, yet they vote with the interests of the pharmaceutical companies.
66: Who are those people who thought th eLiberals were so much better than the NDP? Because the Ontario Liberals are not as good as the Federal ones. I think there's been a lot of stupidity with hydro from the Liberals too. Kingston's Liberal incumbent lost, but thy had the good sense to go NDP.
So again, who are those people who couldn't just vote for the NDP to keep out the PC candidate?