Tampering, voter suppression threaten elections

This year’s elections will be confusing and possibly corrupt.

Voting used to be a routine process in which people had confidence. But the ways it is being undermined have only recently begun to be understood, raising real questions about just how “free and fair” elections really are.

Begin with the obvious Russian efforts to undermine voting. They are meant to destroy Americans’ confidence in our own political system far more than to dictate election winners.

The Russians admit nothing, but continue trying to tamper with vulnerable election systems in the U.S. and many European countries. They see election tampering as a war they can win.

They can mess with state voter lists. That means that everything in the election process should be backed up on paper and hand checked well before Election Day. Use electronics, but back up in hard copy. Creating smaller precincts, as in Canada, would help ensure local officials knew their voters.

While the Russians try to harm electoral operations, the Republican Party simply wants to keep people from voting – voter suppression. Using false assertions of voter fraud, states under its control impose voting access rules aimed at blocking likely Democratic supporters.

Its tactics range from higher voter ID requirements, which impose complexity and cost on lower income voters, to cutting hours and days for voting. The GOP faces increasing opposition to its moves, but opponents need to help people comply with the tougher laws.

Another openly announced GOP policy is gerrymandering, designed to reduce the number of Democrats elected to state legislatures and Congress. Under this system, bizarre district lines are drawn to cram as many Democrats as possible into one district, allowing the GOP to pick up more seats.

This year, that system will end in Pennsylvania, where the congressional delegation has been 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats. The parties are evenly divided in votes cast statewide, so the likely outcome is nine members each. The GOP sponsors most gerrymandering, but in a few places the Dems do the same.

If efforts to reduce voter suppression and gerrymandering succeed, either the House or Senate or both could flip from GOP control to the Democrats. In today’s negative political atmosphere, many incumbent Republicans have chosen not to seek reelection. Their seats have become more competitive.

The president’s party usually loses seats at mid-term elections. To an unusual degree, the president himself has become what may be the major issue of the election, particularly if discussion of impeachment surfaces.

Given their strong congressional majority, until quite recently the possibility of the GOP losing control of Congress would have seemed impossible. But this array of troublesome developments suggests that control of Congress is a toss-up.

More usually, voters will see presidential hopefuls in both the Democratic and Republican parties helping legislative candidates across the country as a way of building their political organizations for the 2020 primaries. This process should reveal who expects to challenge Trump.

Without election corruption, Maine has managed to add its own level of election confusion. It’s about ranked choice voting.

In a referendum, voters decided to end elections going to the candidate getting the most votes, if less than an absolute majority. RCV allows voters to pick more than one choice, in rank order, with their votes being electronically redistributed until a candidate has a majority.

The Maine Supreme Court found parts of RCV unconstitutional, leading the Legislature to delay its use until the State Constitution was amended. RCV supporters want voters to overturn part of that new law.

In June, the confusion may end up placing Maine voters in an unusual position. They may be asked to cast primary votes using RCV, for the first time ever at any state level, but also if they support the Legislature’s delay. In theory, they could agree to suspend using RCV now, but also cast their primary votes under that system.

Decisions on RCV issues will continue to rest with the Maine Supreme Court. It may take a few years for this confused system to sort itself out, and there could be still other legal challenges. For example, does RCV violate the rule of one person, one vote?

As in any discussion of elections, people are urged to vote. Fair enough, but the system will continue to become more vulnerable unless voters go beyond campaign TV spots to understand the system, candidates and issues.

Those who tamper with the election system try to exploit voters’ ignorance and apathy. To protect free elections, people need to be well-informed not merely well-intentioned.

Trump’s politics of change yields chaos, kills compromise

People say they want change. Politicians promise it.

Barack Obama offered change “we can believe in,” for fear of leaving the false impression that he meant to alter America democracy.

Donald Trump offered change by making proposals that broke with traditional policies. It’s possible that he means to alter American democracy.

Even if many, or even most, people want change, they say they also want it to be bipartisan and carried out peacefully. But these days political change seems to cause chaos. Perhaps what people want – change without chaos – is impossible.

To further complicate the equation, there needs to be some political continuity. Bringing broad change rapidly may produce clean breaks from the past. But previous policy produced some positive results.

Even more important, by recognizing the need for continuity, government can reassure foreign allies and give business the predictability essential for investing and planning.

Despite these considerations, the Trump administration has reduced the formula to its simplest terms. Change equals chaos.

Perhaps the prime reason for pushing change without considering the ensuing confusion is that Trump promised major changes and believes that such promises won him the White House. 

Surprising even himself by winning, he wants to stick with the formula that seems to have worked.

Also, the president’s main focus is himself, so many of his tweeted actions are launched more for their immediate public effect than for their impact, especially long term. In fact, his aides often seem to be chasing after his tweets to deal with the impacts not taken into account.

To be fair, Trump promised change. Many voters, including some of his supporters, thought he would mellow when he learned the difficult political and diplomatic balancing acts that go along with high office. Trump would become a more conventional president. Instead, he stuck to many of his promises.

When observers express surprise at the loyalty of his “core” voters, they may miss the appeal of keeping promises, no matter what they were or their unsuspected implications. For them, Trump may be entirely different from traditional politicians and that, more than policies, is what they want.

Among the problems of governing the way he does is that policy is developed on the fly. Trump reacts to his instincts without talking with advisors. In fact, the high turnover in top administration jobs leaves him with only the most loyal not necessarily the most savvy.

Recently, he launched a trade war with China, ignoring its effect on U.S. consumer prices. He had previously kept his promise to quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he saw only as a bad trade deal rather than as an attempt to encircle China together with a dozen other countries.

He took great credit for a soaring stock market, but failed to recognize that his protectionist trade policy and attacks on Amazon would bring it down.

Trump gets a lot of his policy ideas from Fox News. He likes the outlet because it praises him. It lauds him because he follows Fox’s policy proposals, often based on false data.

One place where Trump’s desire for change has run into some reality is his relationship with Congress. At first, he seemed to believe that his surprise victory should cause Congress to fall in line behind him. He missed the fact the legislators also have real powers, especially when both parties can agree.

That’s what happened with the government spending bill. The parties engaged in horse-trading, but avoided paying the full bill for Trump’s wall, which Mexico was supposed to finance. The president was furious, but bipartisan majorities left him no choice but to sign.

Because of his refusal to learn on the job, it’s likely only two major bills will have passed in the first two years of solid GOP rule – the tax cut and the spending bill. If the Democrats gain this fall, even less will happen before the next presidential election in two years.

Maine echoes Washington. Referendum voters decide to accept federal Medicaid expansion. Gov. LePage creates chaos by refusing to allow it. He continues to believe that he is above mere democracy. Ignoring the law, he closed the prison facility in Washington County. A judge made him reverse course.

With his term ending, LePage won’t learn how to govern in the time left. With two years left in his term, Trump won’t learn how to govern, because of his personal limitations.

Both are right that change is needed. Change requires courage, to be sure, but also some wisdom to keep the chaos under control.

Heated debates arise over census, Second Amendment

Americans love their Constitution, but most of us probably don’t fully understand it.

That became evident this week in major news stories. They both show that we may miss two important facts.

First, most of the Constitution applies to all people within the borders of the United States, even if they are not citizens.

Second, people in the United States have more rights than the relative few listed in the Bill of Rights.

The Framers of the Constitution, the 39 men who agreed in September 1787 on the draft document, wanted the House of Representatives to be directly elected by citizens. The number of seats allocated to each state is to be determined by the state’s population, counting just about everybody, not just citizens.

Remember that women did not have the right to vote, though they were citizens, and the new country was attracting immigrants, not yet citizens. Yet both women and immigrants were directly affected by the federal government. They were part of the population, but only men could the vote.

To know the correct allocation of seats, the Constitution requires that everybody, citizen or not, should be counted every ten years. Slaves were originally counted less, and Indians, when not taxed, not at all. Both are now fully counted. The first census was in 1790, and there is a census every ten years.

Over time, the federal government began to operate some of its activities and provide financing to states based on state populations. As a result, the census, with questions added, became the best way to know about some characteristics of people so that the federal support could be distributed proportionately.

The census was not used for law enforcement out of concern that some people might avoid being counted, which would undermine the basic constitutional purpose of the census.

Now, the Trump administration is proposing to add a question about citizenship to the census questionnaire. Because most government programs are not run for citizens alone, the prime purpose of the question is law enforcement. If people refuse to be counted or lie about citizenship, they may face deportation.

By using the census to remove people from states, the result may be under-representation of some states. Remember, the Constitution says people, not only citizens, should be counted.

That provision is consistent with other parts of the Constitution. For example, the Bill of Rights applies to all people in the United States, not only citizens. Everybody has freedom of speech.

Some states are taking the federal government to court over the citizenship question in the census. One possible result may be that no questions may be asked in the census beyond the simple count required by the Constitution.

The other event this week was an article by John Paul Stevens, a retired justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Responding to the student gun control demonstrations in the wake of the Parkland shootings, he called for the repeal of the Second Amendment. That would allow the kind of gun control the students wanted.

The N.R.A. immediately responded, seeing his statement as an attempt to sweep away a basic right, protected by the Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence says people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Rights do not come from government. People naturally have rights.

When the Constitution was debated, Alexander Hamilton opposed the Bill of Rights. He argued that people had many rights and listing only some of them would give the mistaken impression that these were the only human rights.

But many states wanted protection from government action that would excessively restrict at least a few of those rights, notably where the British king had cracked down. But the Bill of Rights states there are more rights, “retained by the people.”

Even if the Second Amendment were repealed, the right to “keep and bear Arms” would not have been repealed. But some its supporters say the Second Amendment is needed to ensure it as an absolute right, one the government cannot limit in any way.

The Supreme Court decision that every person has the right to own and use a gun also found that reasonable limits could be placed on the right. Keeping guns out of schools was one example given. The Court had long ago ruled that any right has its limits, especially when its use can harm others.

These two situations – who the census counts and the extent of the Second Amendment – take us back to understanding the Constitution. If only we had paid attention in civics class.