Independents in Elections

Florida Governor Charles Crist has announced that he will drop out of the state's Republican primary for the US Senate and instead seek the seat as an independent. In our chapter on political parties, we discuss the fate of third-party and independent candidates. In a New York Times blog post, I connect this analysis to Crist:

Polls show a lot of unhappiness with both major parties. But don’t expect an independent surge in November. At no time over the past half-century has either the House or the Senate had more than a couple of independent or third-party members.

There is currently no reason to think that the 2010 election will produce anything different. The dominance of the Democrats and Republicans stems in part from the mechanics of the electoral process.

Ballot access poses a big hurdle: it can be difficult and costly for other kinds of candidates to get on the general election ballot. Then they find it tough to get campaign money. The major parties have well-established fundraising networks, including contributors seeking to curry favor with incumbent politicians. Those on the outside have nothing comparable.

They also have to contend with the “spoiler” image. Voters worry that, by supporting a minor candidate, they could be helping a major-party candidate that they dislike.

In 2000, Ralph Nader drew votes from Al Gore, thus tipping Florida to George W. Bush — a result that most Nader voters probably did not intend. Six years later, a Republican senator from Montana got “Nadered” by a Libertarian, and his loss enabled the Democrats to take control of the Senate.

Of the few victorious off-brand candidates, most have not been true independents at all, but Republicans or Democrats carrying on a factional struggle. In 1970, New York State elected James L. Buckley as a Conservative. He won because many Republicans saw him as a more faithful representative of their party than incumbent Charles Goodell. Once in the Senate, he caucused with the G.O.P.

Governor Crist is hardly avatar of independence. He was very happy to receive the endorsement of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and was looking forward to the support of the party establishment. He bolted only because rank-and-file primary voters were about to reject him with a thump.

His decision to run as an independent is not the tip of the iceberg. It is a lonely chunk of ice with very little beneath.

Polarization and Deliberation

In our chapter on political parties, we discuss the impact of polarization. William Galston has some thoughts on this topic. On the one hand, he says polarization may have healthy effects, such as presenting the electorate with clear choices. On the other hand, there are downsides. One involves deliberative democracy:

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once commented that while every man is entitled to his own opinion, he is not entitled to his own facts. But the ideological turn in American party politics meant that all too often, each party embraced its own version of reality. It is one thing to say that the 2003 decision to initiate war in Iraq was wrong in principle, quite another to maintain that the 2007 decision to surge troops wasn’t working, long after it had become clear that it was. Ideological polarization, it turned out, meant that rather than being used to test preconceptions, facts were twisted to fit them. So the contemporary system of “responsible” parties turns out to be incompatible with deliberation, one of the requisites of a healthy democracy.

Galston also notes that polarization saps trust in government. While a certain degree of mistrust may heighten vigilance against threats to liberty, some trust is necessary. He uses a Madison quotation that we cite in chapter 2:

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among us for self-government.

Mojave Cross

In our chapter on civic culture and civil liberties, we note the often-controversial place of religious symbols in American public life. In Buono v. Salazar, the Supreme Court dealt with a Latin cross on federal land in the Mojave National Preserve honoring American soldiers who died in World War I. The New York Times reports:

A badly fractured Supreme Court, with six justices writing opinions, reopened the possibility on Wednesday that a large cross serving as a war memorial in a remote part of the Mojave Desert may be permitted to remain there. The 5-to-4 decision provided an unusually vivid glimpse into how deeply divided the court is on the role religious symbols may play in public life and, in particular, the meanings conveyed by crosses in memorials for fallen soldiers.

“A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a plurality opinion joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies would be compounded if the fallen are forgotten.”

Justice John Paul Stevens rejected that view. “The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice,” he wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. “It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith.”

Is the Internet a Force for Political Good?

Has the Internet been a force for political good? In Foreign Policy, Evgeny Morozov raises doubts:

Does it make government more accountable?

Even the most idealistic geeks are beginning to understand that entrenched political and institutional pathologies -- not technological shortfalls -- are the greatest barriers to more open and participatory politics. Technology doesn't necessarily pry more information from closed regimes; rather, it allows more people access to information that is available. Governments still maintain great sway in determining what kinds of data to release. So far, even the Obama administration, the self-proclaimed champion of "open government," draws criticism from transparency groups for releasing information about population counts for horses and burros while hoarding more sensitive data on oil and gas leases.

Does it boost participation?

The Internet has certainly created new avenues for exchanging opinions and ideas, but we don't yet know whether this will boost the global appeal and practice of democracy. Where some see a renewal of civic engagement, others see "slacktivism," the new favorite pejorative for the shallow, peripheral, and fluid political campaigning that seems to thrive on the Internet -- sometimes at the expense of more effective real-world campaigning. And where some applaud new online campaigns purportedly aimed at increasing civic participation, such as Estonia's planned 2011 launch of voting via text-messaging, others, myself included, doubt whether the hassle of showing up at a polling place once every two or four years is really what makes disengaged citizens avoid the political process.

Gallup reports that Democrats have an edge with the young:

Gallup Daily tracking data reinforce the value of younger voters for the Democrats, showing that 18- to 29-year-olds favor the Democratic candidate over the Republican candidate in their local districts by a 12-point margin. In contrast, the Republican candidate is on top among all groups of voters aged 30 and older.

But lower turnout potentially diminishes the value of that advantage:

Younger voters remain less enthusiastic about voting in this year's midterm elections than those who are older, underscoring the challenge facing the Democratic Party in its efforts to re-energize these voters, who helped President Obama win the presidency in 2008.

Lower youth turnout is consistent with historical patterns. As we discuss in our chapter on public opinion and political participation, young people have long voted at lower rates than older people. Here are the turnout rates by age for citizens in the 2008 election:

18-24 48.5%

25-44 60.0%

45-64 69.2%

65+ 70.3%

Bureaucracy and Benefits

At The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes writes:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, state and local government salaries are 34 percent higher than those for private sector jobs. Okay, that’s partly because government workers tend to have white-collar jobs. Benefits, 70 percent higher for these workers, are the real rub. And benefits for government retirees are the most flagrant. They’ve become a national scandal, a fiscal nightmare for states, cities, and towns, and an example of unfairness of the sort liberals routinely complain about but are mostly silent about just now.

The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees has a different take:

However, most public plans require member contributions, and almost all public plans invest their assets and earn additional income. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, state and local pension plans ­accumulated $2.3 trillion in investment earnings from 1982 through 2005, compared with total employer (taxpayer) contributions of $885 billion and employee contributions of $435 billion. Consequently, taxpayers paid 24% of the total amount paid into public plans during this period, with the remaining 76% coming from investment earnings and employee contributions. Every dollar taxpayers paid into public plans generated an additional three dollars, to be returned to the economy as retirement income.

Deliberation and Disagreement

In a paper at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Kevin M. Esterling, Archon Fung, and Taeku Lee look at a natural experiment in which some 3000 people split into small groups and deliberated about health care reform in California. They note that deliberation "requires individuals to listen to one another and to adjust their own views and positions in light of what they hear." They ask an important question:

Are we the kind of creatures who will respond positively -- by tolerating, listening and adjusting in this way --when we engage in deliberation with those who hold with diverse views and who disagree with us? Or, do we recoil from disagreement, entrenching our positions, resenting those who challenge them, perhaps lose confidence in our own positions, and suffer in silence?

From the experiment, they find that "individuals are more likely to learn, to change their minds, to enjoy, and to regard as worthwhile deliberations in which there are moderate levels of disagreement."