First, the headline says that republicans must gain control of Congress for the economy to recover. Do we really need to remind everyone that Republicans had almost uninterrupted control of Congress from 1995 to 2007. Had Republicans retained control of Congress beyond 2007 does anyone really believe the economy would not still have gone into the great recession?

Second, IBD claims that re-electing Orrin Hatch is crucial if Republicans regain control because “Orrin Hatch will be the first genuine free-market conservative to {become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee}.” Yes, the same Orrin Hatch who cosponsored PIPA until it was politically untenable and wanted to blow up the computers of anyone with pirated software while his own website was powered by an unlicensed copy of software is now “a genuine free-market conservative.” The author, Ernest Christian, claims that all the prior chairmen of the committee whom he had worked with were either liberals or moderates. I’ll take him at his word on that but his description of moderates as “too often … unwilling to make a clear-cut choice between the free-market principles of conservatives and the big-government desires of liberals” is perfectly descriptive of Hatch. The fact that Mr. Christian has been working with every SFC chair since 1970 shows what is really going on here – it’s one old political dog going to bat for another.

For those who want to see the economy truly recover there is only one answer – we need a new generation of conservatives in Washington and we need enough of them there to change the way the rest of the Republicans act in office. As soon as we say “new generation” you know that Orrin Hatch will never fit that bill – he’s as entrenched an incumbent as you’ll ever find.

1. Any budget proposal that I submit will not exceed actual tax revenues for the previous year. Any budget bill that I sign will be paid for, either because Congress has passed a budget that does not exceed the tax revenues for the previous year or because they have clearly raised the necessary taxes as part of the bill to pay for any spending over the amount of taxes collected in the preceding fiscal year.
2. I will not attempt to expand the powers of the presidency. I will stick to my constitutional duties. I will refrain from using the extra-constitutional powers that have previously been granted to the president, such as the ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial, and request that Congress officially revoke those powers from me and future presidents.
3. I will insist that Congress fulfill their constitutional duties. One major part of Congress fulfilling their duties is that I will order all regulatory agencies to enforce only those things that Congress has passed into law and not to enforce regulations created by regulatory agencies based laws passed by congress where those regulations were not specified in the bill. I will not sign bills in which Congress leaves the authority to specify particular regulations to other bodies such as regulatory agencies.
4. I will not sign any bill into law, nor allow any bill to become law without my signature, unless it has been made available for public review and comment for a total of no less than seven days prior to becoming law. The seven days counts only the time after the final version of the bill is made available. That time may include any combination of time before the bill is passed by Congress and time after the bill has been passed by Congress. In other words, Congress may choose to pass bills without allowing seven days for public input but the only way I would act on a bill without seven days of public input would be to veto the bill. I will also not sign any bill into law unless I have had time to read the bill in full.
5. As commander-in-chief of our military I will seek to maximize our national defense. The emphasis there is on the words “national” and “defense” – all military spending and activity will be focused on defending our nation in the most effective ways possible. We will seek to improve our defensive abilities wherever possible. If the use of military force ever becomes necessary under my watch I will act decisively with the intent to end the conflict as quickly and effectively as possible.
6. I will not run a campaign for a second term. I will simply do my job as President. My campaigning will not exceed participation in scheduled debates and defending myself against any false accusations that are made by those who hope to replace me. If that is not enough to win me a second term then I do not deserve a second term.

As I considered the ideas that I wrote I asked myself whether any of the current candidates would ever articulate a platform like this. My conclusion was that none of them would. I suspect that some Ron Paul supporters would argue that Dr. Paul runs a platform not unlike this. I’ll admit that he comes the closest but I am still not sure that what he would do fully correlates to what I think we need in a president – which may indicate that I have not fully fleshed it out above. Either way – I’d love to hear thoughts on the platform I have outlined.

Second, maybe it’s because general elections have become much less competitive over the years. … If people believe that their votes are less likely to sway the outcome (either way), then they might not bother to show up.

Third, maybe it’s because Utah strengthened its caucus-convention system in the 1990s, making it harder to force a primary and easier to win in convention.

I won’t pretend to have any insights into which of those two options might be a driving factor. What I thought was interesting was that in suggesting potential solutions to the three possible causes he listed non-partisan runoffs as a potential way to address each of the two plausible causes of the problem.

This was interesting to me four a couple of reasons. First, back when I was doing a lot more political writing than I have been recently, the issue of increasing participation in the political process was one that I was vocal about addressing. I suggested that increasing levels of citizen participation would be akin to our nation experiencing a new birth of freedom. Second, because in lamenting the voter turnout in 2008 – where we actually had fewer people voting than in 2004 despite a larger population of eligible voters – I suggested an idea that was very much like non-partisan runoffs (a term I had not heard before today). My suggestion was that in voting districts where one party received more than 60% of the votes that party would be required to field two candidates on the ballot. That idea really would work best in a runoff system where the top two candidates, regardless of party (assuming neither got over 50% initially), then had a runoff (I would suggest the Saturday after the election). In areas where the dominant party managed to get both of their candidates in the top two it would be the equivalent of an open primary between those two candidates (after the party delegates had weighed in on which two candidates should carry the banner at their conventions).

A chart from an earlier post by Adam shows that prior to me becoming old enough to vote, Utah always had at least 60% participation or more in presidential election years and 40% participation or more  in non-presidential election years. Since that time we have never hit either of those benchmarks and our participation has gone from above average to below average (measured against the rest of the nation). That leaves me with two questions:

1. Is this a generational issue?
   • Did people starting about my age an younger lower our participation levels by not stepping up to the plate when they came of age?
2. What effect would an idea like non-partisan runoffs have?
   • What would it take to implement such a systemic change?
   • How could we make such a system work in conjunction with the rest of the nation where federal elections are concerned?

I would love to hear what others think about those questions because if I really thought it would make a difference and that it was possible to make such a change I would start finding ways to get the issue on our legislative agenda (not this year of course – that would be impossible).

First let me provide some metrics that some people might be interested in – we had 264 delegates eligible to vote in this election. Of those, 258 showed up and received credentials but only 257 cast ballots.

At the meeting there was discussion about the practice in IRV voting of still only choosing one candidate – more generally that can be applied to choosing anything less than all the candidates. We can’t really know for sure how many people put less than all 8 candidates on their ballots but in the last round 7 ballots were discarded because they did not include either of the remaining candidates – Todd Weiler and Randy Shumway. This means that the election was finally counted with 250 out of 264 possible votes.

Now on to the issue of perceived electability.

I had the sense before the voting that this would come down to a two-way contest between Todd Weiler and Randy Shumway. That was based on what I had observed of the campaigns and what I had seen and heard from various delegates. The interesting side note to that was how many people I heard speaking favorably about Tim Hawkes but wondering whether he could win.

When the results were announced my instinct that it was a two-man race was confirmed as evidenced by who the last two candidates were. When I saw the full results from all seven rounds I discovered that my impression of Tim’s widespread appeal showed up strongly in the voting. From the very first round it was actually a three-man race. Todd had the lead in every round (in fact, until the final round Randy did not receive more votes than Todd received in the first round) but the top three were always Todd, Randy, and Tim in that order. Tim had 58 votes and the fourth place candidate had 16 votes. All the candidates below Tim combined for 43 votes in the first round. The fact that many of those who liked Tim questioned whether he could get elected bore out in the phenomenon that in the first 6 rounds – until he was eliminated – Tim  gained more votes than any other candidate. By the time he was eliminated, Tim was only 4 votes shy of Randy.

Tim and Todd seemed more similar than Tim and Randy as shown by the fact that most of Tim’s votes went to Todd. That leaves me to wonder whether there were 5 of those who supported Todd as their first choice who chose Tim second based on the perception that he could not win. If so and they took that perception out of their calculations Tim would have beaten Randy for second place.

My best guess is that this phenomenon is based on widespread misunderstanding of how IRV voting works. Based on how I have heard people talk about it, it seems that many people think that their vote is counted less if it is not their top vote – they think their vote is wasted if they do not guess correctly who is going to win. They seem to instinctively feel that having a second choice vote hurts their first choice candidate rather than recognizing that their second choice candidate can never receive their support unless their first choice candidate is already eliminated which only happens if their first choice candidate was viewed less favorably than their second choice candidate.

I suspect that the voting patterns would be different if people understood that IRV gives them the opportunity to rank all the candidates rather than being dependent on how all the other voters vote if the person they first voted for is not one of the top two vote-getters. They don’t need to see how others voted in the first round before deciding where to throw their support in the second round.

This one key promise is that  a recognition that representation is a two-way street. Whoever wins this special election must demonstrate their understanding of that fact by proactively maintaining open lines of communication with their constituents. I wrote about this a couple of years ago and have been very happy to see multiple candidates speaking to this aspect of holding office. This must include them communicating to constituents in asynchronous ways (websites being the most widespread method for this currently) and regularly being available for synchronous public communication (open houses or townhall meetings being the methods I have seen used for this by others).

Just as those who have made this promise already will be higher on my ballot than those who do not, the first and most crucial step that the winner can do to earn my support for future terms – whether I supported him or not and whether he made this promise or not – it to keep this promise that has been made by multiple candidates in this campaign.

To the Voter

First, if you do not feel informed your task should be to get informed. Even if today is the election day you might be able to get informed enough to vote if you are have time to cram for the election. If you have no understanding of what the issues are it might be pretty hard but if you generally know the issues you should be able to get a feel for the candidates enough to decide if anyone deserves your support.

Second, if you do not get informed you cannot complain about what is happening – even if you voted. If you do get informed you can lobby for what you see as right but you can’t complain about who is actually making the decisions if you did not vote when they were elected.

Third, do not be afraid of a blank ballot. In other words, if none of the candidates merit your support for a particular office don’t feel that your time was wasted. In the case of municipal elections where you have the chance to vote for multiple candidates it is okay to not vote for a full suite. For example, in my area today I had the opportunity to vote for three candidates. If I had felt that there were only two candidates who had earned my support I could cast a ballot for only those two. Worst case scenario, write someone in for the final slot.

To the Activist

First, encouraging people to vote is wonderful but do not be satisfied with telling them to vote or worse, with telling them who to vote for. It’s fine to advocate for candidates that you support but always give some reason why you support them. (“Because they belong to my favored party” does not count as a reason!) Whenever you encourage people to vote always encourage them to become informed. Feel free to offer information but don’t stop encouraging them to vote if they disagree with you.

Second, encourage people to be informed before there is voting to do. Better yet, encourage them to participate. Promote attendance at caucus meetings and candidate events, not just the ballot box.

Third, for those who believe that a caucus system is subject to being overrun by fringe elements, dismantling the caucus system is not the solution to that problem. Caucuses favor those who show up. People who show up tend to be informed already or else they get informed quickly (sometimes by adopting the view of those who were already informed and sometimes by gathering information to counter the prevailing view of attendees). Primaries tend to favor those with money. That money is as likely to come from fringe elements as it is to come from mainstream voters – actually, it is more likely to come from fringe elements.

The solution to caucuses being dominated by fringe elements is to increase participation in the caucuses. There may be other tweaks worth considering, but the point is that ending the caucus system does not fix the problem.

Conclusion

Voting is our opportunity as citizens but simply casting a vote is not enough. We must take the time to become informed and to be involved. And we should encourage others to do the same – even if they disagree with us.

I have been pleased with the process at times and disappointed with the results at other times. I am going to talk about what has happened in the redistricting process so far, good and bad, and also answer the question of what I think is the appropriate process for completing this decennial task.

Redistricting 2012

The redisctricting process started off on a positive note this time as the census granted us a fourth seat. That was expected but it was nice to have it official. The next positive step came as the legislature vowed to conduct the process in a transparent and participatory way. This included the fact that they made a tool available online where anyone could submit a map for consideration. Some people may complain that the promise of transparency was an illusion but if we are honest we must admit that generally speaking the process has been very open to inspection even if the development of specific maps was done without discussion.

Personally I was also excited when the House District base map was adopted because it placed me in a house district that was not straddling a county line – meaning that the county delegates in my precinct now have a say in selecting the nominee for their state representative rather than being forced to leave that responsibility with a lower number of state delegates from the precinct.

Everybody knew when this process started that the most maneuvering would come in connection with the Congressional District map. This has proven clearly to be the case. The problems associated with this map are not unique but people tend to care more about the outcome of this map than they do about some of the others. Most of the disappointing aspects of our redistricting process this year have centered on this map.

Right from the beginning while the maps for state house, senate, and school board were being developed the maneuvering for the congressional district map was already commencing. Democrats were preemptively accusing Republicans of planning to gerrymander the districts to oust Congressman Matheson. Coupled with that assertion they were vocally calling for the committee to carve out a safe democratic district in Salt Lake County so that the urban Democrats there would not feel disenfranchised by being lumped into districts with Republican dominated suburban and/or rural regions.

Despite such an ominous beginning on that important map I was very pleased when the six finalists were announced from the committee. Among the six maps were pizza slices as the Republicans tended to favor and doughnuts as the Democrats advocated for. There was one map among the finalists that was drawn by a citizen and even one map that bore no resemblance to either pizza or doughnuts.

The saddest part of the process came a few days later when the committee took one of the more political of the six finalists and incorporated the worst of both Democrat and Republican wishes to a horrid combination pizza/doughnut where half of the city of Bountiful is in the same district as St. George while carving out a safe Republican district in Utah County that is nearly surrounded by the convoluted South Davis to St. George district.

My Vantage Point

In order to put my description of the ideal redistricting process in context I feel I should share my political persuasion for any who are not already familiar with it. I am decidedly conservative. Of the two major parties I definitely identify most closely with the Republicans and would love to see Republicans in all four of our congressional seats – especially if they were serious about a sustainable fiscal policy (just being “Republican” is not good enough for me). I have been unimpressed by all the “Fair Boundaries” posturing which really amounts to an anti-Republican position despite the rhetoric of fairness. That being said I believe in the principle that everyone should get a fair say in the representation. I don’t believe that we should have four Republicans in Congress simply on the basis of a cleverly drawn map. Likewise I do not believe that we should create districts based on the current incumbents (either to protect or to oust them).

Redistricting Ideal

The ideal way to do redistricting would be to ignore any political considerations. It should be done by a trained cartographer/statistician who has no connection to the area being mapped. They should have access to the census data on population but no record of voting history or incumbency. When the number of districts is not changing the lines should follow the existing district boundaries as much as possible to maintain continuity for voters (especially if the lines had previously been determined according to these criteria). If the number of districts is changing there should be no reference to existing boundaries except possibly if one of the existing districts correlates closely to the ideal population for the new districts.

The problems in the current process are all political considerations such as how to protect or oust incumbents and what defines a community of interest.

The ideal process would be so politically agnostic that if citizens were randomly reassigned to new places of residence so that the population density was unchanged and demographics were completely altered the map would make as much sense before the reassignment as it did after. It makes sense to keep a county or city within one political subdivision where possible and to split it between as few as possible when necessary.

If we followed those criteria the best map of the six finalists was the one by David Garber. The second best of the six was the one by Steve Clark. Both of these were far and away better than the map by Rep. Sumsion that was tweaked to form the adopted base map. I am confident that the reason the Sumsion map was chosen instead was because of the other thing that those two maps have in common, they were both drawn by citizens (another political consideration) and therefore did not have a champion on the committee with as much emotional investment as Rep. Sumsion had for his map. In saying this I am not accusing Rep. Sumsion of anything nefarious or sinister. I fully expect that the author of each finalist map would consider their own map to be the best of the bunch. The problem is that these two maps, which were the best of the bunch, did not have a government official behind them to push for their adoption. I suspect that they were the first two dropped by the committee and that the Harper and Sumsion maps were the last two standing because they each incorporated the doughnut concept that the Democrats favored.

Levy addresses what he calls “three jurisprudential issues that are central to the debate over same-sex marriage: religious freedom, federalism, and judicial activism.” Unfortunately those three jurisprudential issues are not the core of the debate over same-sex marriage. They are one step removed from the core of the debate but they are the focus of the legal wrangling because the proponents of same-sex marriage have declared the debate of the core issue, namely whether same-sex marriage is beneficial for society, to be resolved in the affirmative. This is a critical re-framing of the issue because if that core issue were truly resolved in the affirmative it becomes much easier to make the arguments in these satellite issues and thus produce the intended legal outcome for proponents.

In addressing the issue of religious freedom Levy makes his first major logical mistake with his statement that “the right to same-sex marriage is not a constraint on religious beliefs or practices.” The mistake is that this statement assumes that there is a right to same-sex marriage – an assumption that he has never even attempted to justify. The logically correct statement, in the absence of a justification for the assumption, would have been “a right to same-sex marriage would not be a constraint on religious beliefs or practices.” That statement is logically correct and would make the rest of his argument stand (waiting for some valid proof that such a right actually exists). It is true that a right to same-sex marriage need not constrain religious belief or practices but just because that is true does not provide evidence that such a right actually exists. He makes the same mistake again in his final statement that “Proposition 8, because it violates the Equal Protection Clause, cannot be allowed to stand regardless how large the majority that voted in favor.” Proposition 8 only violates the Equal Protection Clause if there is a fundamental right to marriage – which he obviously believes. The fact is that there is no right to same-sex marriage. In fact there is no right to heterosexual marriage. The fact that government recognizes any marriages is strictly extra-Constitutional. It could be argued that government should not recognize any marriages just as well as it could be argued that government should recognize any form of marriage, but it cannot be argued that there is a fundamental right to marriage.

Levy’s next logical mistake is in his argument on federalism. He correctly states that “States may not discriminate, without justification, by recognizing heterosexual but not homosexual marriages.” When he then attempts to prove that  they have no justification for this discrimination between heterosexual and homosexual relationships he makes the mistake of arguing based on the margins of the statistical norms.

No justification has been shown.  How about procreation?  No.  Infertile persons are permitted to marry even though they cannot procreate.  Child rearing?  No.  Studies show that children do just as well when raised by same-sex parents.  Promoting traditional marriage?  No.  Allowing gay marriages does not deter heterosexual marriages.  Conserving government resources?  No.  The Congressional Budget Office found that recognizing same-sex marriages would save money.  We’ll have fewer children in state institutions, lower divorce rates, and less promiscuity.

All of those statements sound true. Of course we do recognize the marriages of those who are infertile but it masks a fundamental difference between heterosexual and homosexual unions. I don’t have the statistics but I would be surprised if anything less than 80% of heterosexual unions included the raising of children as a central facet of the relationship at one time or another. Either they are raising children, or they have, or they intend to. Few heterosexual couples choose to get married unless they expect to raise children together as part of that relationship On the other hand, I would be even more surprised if more than 5% of homosexual couples ever expect that raising children will be a central feature of their relationship.

The unnamed studies he refers to showing that children raised by homosexual couples do just as well necessarily have a very small sample size and can hardly be considered a sound basis for making widespread social alterations through public policy.

While it is theoretically true that allowing same-sex marriages does not deter heterosexual marriages there are studies showing that the marriage rate in societies that allow homosexual marriage fall much further than the marriage rates in societies that recognize only heterosexual marriages.

Finally, the argument that “{t}he Congressional Budget Office found that recognizing same-sex marriages would save money.  We’ll have fewer children in state institutions, lower divorce rates, and less promiscuity” is complete hot air. Not that the Congressional Budget Office has no such finding – I have no doubt that they have exactly such a finding. The problem is again that there is no reasonable sample size to draw such a conclusion. The conclusion is based on assumptions which are nothing more than conjecture and, like some of the critical assumptions under-girding the apocalyptic fantasies that are promoted by global warming evangelists, those assumptions would doubtless prove fatally flawed if truly tested in the laboratory of reality.

The central questions are what reason we have to recognize and support marriage in society and whether recognizing same-sex marriage would be similarly beneficial to society. If recognizing marriages is only a matter of convention then it should be done away. If there are benefits then the only reason that we should provide any recognition or support for same-sex unions is if they provide like benefits to society. If we really want to lean on the Equal Protection Clause here the way to do it would be to remove benefits or add penalties for those who claim marriage (heterosexual or otherwise) and then avoid those aspects of marriage that we have deemed beneficial. For example, if we deem stability to be one of the benefits of marriage that deserve government support we could penalize those who seek divorce within a specified time frame. That would be a good step backward.

Those who worry about eroding heterosexual marriage recognize that what passes for marriage today is only a shadow of the institution that has formed the foundation of civil society for all of recorded history. Those who have done their homework generally recognize that the erosion of marriage to today’s 50% divorce rates really took off when we removed the barriers to the dissolution of marriages. If proponents of same-sex marriage would like to use sound logic, or would like to argue in favor of granting benefits to same-sex couples that do participate in the benefits (such as social stability and child-rearing) that give us reason to support heterosexual marriage, or even if they would like to argue in favor of penalizing heterosexual married couples who do not provide any benefits more than the average same-sex couple we should be happy to entertain their perspectives and try to ensure that all citizens are treated equally before the law. So long as they insist on trying to change the law simply because there are some exceptions, or simply because we have already badly damaged the institution of marriage there is no reason to budge from our unequivocal support for only the union of man and woman.

Regardless of how much some people may talk about the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States during their celebrations on the fourth day of July each year, and despite reports suggesting that participation in such celebrations makes children more likely to identify politically as Republicans, it seems obvious to me, based on the situations that we currently face as a nation and the fact that they have been steadily building under the leadership of both major parties, that what is really being celebrated on this day is fireworks.

Certainly some are celebrating as much as fireworks, parades, and traditional American cuisine all at once, but none of this constitutes a celebration of American independence, of our nation, or of our system of government. True celebrations of these things may only take place in the most insignificant of ways on this national holiday. Some may argue that a real celebration of our nation’s independence and of our system of government takes place at the polls each November. I would agree that voting is a real form of such a celebration, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Only those who do as the generation of Americans who actually won our independence and established the foundation of our government can truly be said to celebrate our independence. That requires days, weeks, and even months over the course of each year. It means getting informed about the issues of the day. It requires participating in civil, if spirited, debates about the proper solutions to the challenges that are most pressing. It means helping family, friends, and neighbors to also understand the issues and participate in the debates. Of course it includes carefully choosing the people who will represent us in the various offices of government for which we are able to vote. It also means raising the next generation with an understanding of what we have been given and the continual effort it takes to keep our citizen-driven government operating.

The only place fireworks factors into any of those things is in possibly capturing the imagination of our children with the opportunity to connect that excitement with the type of government we have now. While there is apparently some evidence to suggest that these displays of pyrotechnics tend to coax children toward the conservative regions of the political landscape there is no evidence to suggest that they help the children to understand and appreciate the realities of government and what it takes to preserve the liberty that our nation was built to preserve.

In short, the true celebration of our independence is in the perpetuation of that independence.

I realized that the apparent disconnect was not as stark as it first appeared (11 out of 12 disapproving of Congress while 9 of 10 chose to reelect their Congressional representatives). The reality is that eleven out of twelve people people disapprove of Congress but only five out of twelve vote for someone new when given their current member of Congress as an option.

The fact that six out of twelve voters disapprove of Congress and yet they consistently vote the same people back to represent them over and over again is evidence of a colossal failure on the part of the voters of this nation. They fail to recognize that Congress is working exactly as designed given the input they provide at the polls in November of each even year.