Welcome

I thought I’d start a blog in order for me to write down my thoughts on politics, elections, and whatever else I feel like writing about. So here it is. My first two posts are my two recent contributions to the blog of the United States Studies Centre, re-posted here.

Making Way for the Radical Centre (August 22)

In a 2006 New York Times article, columnist Thomas Friedman outlined his hope that the American two-party system would soon be swept away by an insurgent third-party movement, and went as far as to outline a vague platform for this party (which he called the ‘Geo-Green’ Party) to run on. He published a similar column last month, providing details of a new organisation, Americans Elect, which seeks to provide voters with a web-based virtual presidential nominating process leading to the selection of a bipartisan ticket.

At a recent guest lecture at the University of Sydney, Friedman sounded a similar note, declaring that the democratisation of information which has been wrought by the Internet would soon lead to the unravelling of the Democratic-Republican duopoly. His enthusiasm for third-party movements is commendable, if misplaced. The rise of the Tea Party movement has reiterated that any insurgent group in American politics must gain a foothold in one of the major parties in order to wield power effectively. We don’t remember the Progressive movement, for example, for Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 presidential run on the Progressive ticket, rather, we remember the influence Progressives held as factions in both major parties during the same era. Whether it’s because of Duverger’s Law or the ability of the primary system to draw third-party movement into either of the two major parties, no third party has got to the stage of electing a president since the GOP’s rise between 1854 and 1860.

The ‘Americans Elect’ group, which Friedman describes, isn’t the first attempt that has been made at using the Internet to subvert the two-party system: Unity08 tried it in 2008 with a modus operandi that sounds eerily similar to that of Americans Elect (including web-based polling to reveal voters’ top concerns, and a requirement that the ticket consist of one Democrat and one Republican). Despite a high-powered group of backers, including two senior officials from the Carter White House, the group never made it to the 2008 primary season, due to a lack of support and the departure of some of its key backers to a movement to draft New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

It is for these reasons that Friedman’s most recent article on the prospects of a third party challenging for the presidency gave me a sense of deja vu. In addition, his statement that Americans Elect is financed by “serious hedge-fund money” also makes a mockery of his characterisation of it as some sort of grass-roots movement. In his final paragraph, Friedman compares the potential impact of Americans Elect on the two-party system to the effect of Amazon.com and iTunes on the publishing and music industries. I would extend the analogy a little bit – just as people still buy books and CDs despite the existence of Amazon.com and iTunes, we can confidently predict that Americans will still buy the Democratic and Republican parties at the polls in 2012.

The End of Gerrymandering? (September 22)

Fourteen ordinary Californians were recently given the opportunity of a lifetime – they were chosen at random (allowing for a suitable balance between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents) to serve on the Citizens Redistricting Commission, which was tasked with redrawing the state’s fifty-three federal House districts, eighty state House districts, forty state Senate districts, and four Board of Equalization districts. The Commission has recently completed its work, but its maps may face potential legal challenges, both from the state’s Republican Party and from Mexican-American civil rights groups (the latter concerned about potential negative affects on the representation of Latinos). Whatever the outcome of these challenges, California has set an example that may spread to other states.

The Commission was created following the passage of Proposition 20 in 2010, which had the support of electoral reformers and a bipartisan coterie of politicians, including then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his predecessor, Gray Davis. It is intended to tackle gerrymandering, an unfortunately common aspect of the American political landscape which regularly sees congressional districts assuming oddly-shaped spurs running narrowly along highways and rivers to connect otherwise disparate communities. The authors of the proposition hoped that a panel of average citizens could do a better job than elected officials.

While a handful of other states employ non-partisan commissions to do the work of redistricting, California’s experiment is unique in its use of randomly selected members of the public. This is an unusual way of staffing a slate of officials, but one which has precedents in some of the most notable democracies in history, such as ancient Athens and medieval Venice. The Golden State suffers from a gerrymandered electoral map designed to protect incumbents – only one has lost a congressional seat there within the last decade – as well as to protect the level of representation of minorities. A look at the new maps shows that many members of Congress are indeed in danger, hence the legal challenges.

It remains to be seen whether the process initiated by California will spread to other states. Already, the Florida chapter of the ACLU is attempting to qualify a measure for the ballot that would limit gerrymandering in that state. If the American public is tired of partisan gerrymandering, but unwilling to trust the job of redistricting to unelected bureaucrats, as is the case, for example, in Australia, other states would do well to copy the Californian model. Random selection would tap into Americans’ traditional anti-elitism, as well as their current lack of confidence in their political class, while providing them with a serious solution to the issue of uncompetitive and oddly-shaped legislative districts.