Balkinization: Formal procedures matter!

Formal procedures matter!

Sandy Levinson

The major disagreement between Jack and myself, spelled out in our epistolary exchanges in Democracy and Dysfunction, concerns the relative weight we assign to political culture as against formal institutions and rules. Both of us agree that each is important, but then we go our own ways in terms of assessing the strength of the two. I do think it is appropriate on Super Tuesday, though, to emphasize the importance of two formal procedures. One is the fact that in order to gain any delegates at all, a candidate has to receive at least 15% of the total vote. Another is the increasing prevalence of "early voating," which, by definition, means that many voters (like myself--I voted two weeks ago, very happily for Elizabeth Warren) cast their ballots without knowledge of future events that might have made a difference. In my case, it is irrelevant that Klobohar, Buttegieg, and Steyer have dropped out since I voted, but I can imagine many voters for whom that is not true. If states had ranked choice voting, then the problem would be dissipated, but save for Maine, that is not currently the case. So it is thinkable--we'll find out later today, that Warren will get almost 15%, but be deprived of any delegates by the fact that the now-irrelevant votes will nonetheless be key parts of the denominator establishing the baseline for the 15%. I don't know what the solution is. Everything is a question of tradeoffs, but it is now obvious that decisions made by the DNC, in blissful ignorance of concrete realities of the situation--is this what decisionmaking behind a veil of ignorance leads to?), coupled with the prevalence of early voting especially in large states like California and Texas, can have real consequences.

Posted 11:42 AM by Sandy Levinson [link]

Comments:

I should think the obvious answer is to abolish early voting. We don't have to sacrifice every other interest on the altar of convenience. Or conflate a decision not to maximize convenience at the cost of everything else with 'vote suppression'.

# posted by

Brett : 11:57 AM

Sandy: I do think it is appropriate on Super Tuesday, though, to emphasize the importance of two formal procedures. One is the fact that in order to gain any delegates at all, a candidate has to receive at least 15% of the total vote. Another is the increasing prevalence of "early voating," which, by definition, means that many voters (like myself--I voted two weeks ago, very happily for Elizabeth Warren) cast their ballots without knowledge of future events that might have made a difference.

Good arguments for winner take all primaries and eliminating early voting apart from absentee ballots.

If the Dem Super Tuesday vote fragments as expected, there is an excellent chance no one will enter the DNC with a majority of delegates and you will have a contested convention decided by unelected party "super delegates" and backroom deals.

Will the DNC follow their "whoever gets the most votes wins" rhetoric and nominate a Democratic socialist a majority of the Dem voters oppose?

I may end up watching the Dem media (CNN/MSNBC) coverage of the DNC to watch the circus - two firsts for me.

# posted by

Bart DePalma : 12:03 PM

Early voting for primaries should probably be limited absent some form of IRV. I can see a week's worth of early voting, provided that no primary occurs within a week of the previous one. That allows for changing events.

Choices for the general election tend to be much more fixed. Not that they can't ever change (one of these old farts might actually die), but that it's far less likely. While I don't use it myself, I can see that it's very convenient for lots of people. Of course, the best solution is to have everyone vote by mail....

# posted by

Mark Field : 12:36 PM

Early voting for primaries should probably be limited absent some form of IRV. I can see a week's worth of early voting, provided that no primary occurs within a week of the previous one.

Another option is to not let SC have its primary three days before Super Tuesday. Either have it a couple of weeks earlier, or on ST.

Indeed, a better organized primary calendar, with states grouped, possibly by region so as to simplify travel, ad buys, etc., seems to be a decent idea.

# posted by

byomtov : 2:25 PM

I agree with all of that.

# posted by

Mark Field : 3:08 PM

"Another option is to not let SC have its primary three days before Super Tuesday. Either have it a couple of weeks earlier, or on ST."

The best option is for the states to get out of running the primaries for the parties. The only election states ought to be running is the general election, and let the political parties, (Which are, after all, private organizations!) spend their own money deciding who they're going to run for office, and handle the details themselves.

The state run primaries are just a case of political parties abusing the power of the state to dump some of their own costs on the taxpayers.

# posted by

Brett : 3:58 PM