Voter Suppression

 

Nineteenth Amendment

They thought we were a joke
They tried to dash our hopes
With every word they spoke
They tried to revoke
A woman’s right to vote
But we made it

Voter suppression (revoking the right to vote) is still with us, and that also isn’t a joke.

“Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.”

This is the text of Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (emphasis added).  Voter suppression laws directly affect the apportionment of seats in Congress.  The suppression of any voter reduces the population that is used in the apportionment of congressional representatives.  Before any apportionment is undertaken, the impact of voter suppression laws must be considered..  An argument will be made that over suppression laws do not DENY the right to vote, they make the right to vote more difficult.  However if any voter suppression law is intended to deny individuals their right to vote, it should be considered in any apportionment.

While the text of the Fourteenth Amendment refers to male citizens, the Nineteenth Amendment must be considered to change this to also include female citizens.

While the Supreme Court may have ruled in Shelby vs. Holder that, under the Voting Rights Act of  1965, Congressional oversight of mapping of the districts in which the congressional representatives are elected  was no longer appropriate, this does not remove Congress’s responsibilities for the apportionment itself that determines the number of those representatives. While Congress may have made the apportionment process automatic following a decennial census, this only determines the total population.  The Census does not report on the voters who have been denied the right to vote.  This still must be considered before any congressional reapportionment can be determined, or the joke is on us, the voters.

Apportionment

 

You're The Man 

If you've got the master plan
I got the vote for you, hey, hey
Got the vote for you, 'cause you're the man. 

You don’t have a vote in Congress, your representative in Congress is your vote. 

The 4 million persons in the Census of 1790 were used to apportion, by state, the seats in the United States House of Representatives.  In 1790 there were 67 seats.  Even though the population of the United States in 2020 has just been released as 331 million persons, an increase of over 8200%, this does not mean that the number of seats in the House has also increased by 8200% to 5,544.  A  Congressional law fixed number of seats at 435 and an automatic process for apportioning those 435 seats,  but that number is NOT in the Constitution.  The Constitution only requires that each state has at least one representative. 

The apportionment was based not on voters but residents (including women and children who could not vote at that time).  The issue of including enslaved persons was contentious and the subject of much debate.  Should enslaved persons, be counted towards the apportionment, even though they also could not vote.  This was not a trivial issue.  The Constitution contains many provisions that prevented the tyranny of the majority; through checks, balances, super majorities, and compromises.  In 1790, the enslaved population represented 0% of the population in Massachusetts, but 38% of the population in Virginia.  Apportioning House seats based on including, or excluding, the enslaved population would create vastly different apportionments.  A 3/5 rule was a compromise such that “slave” states did not immediately receive the majority of House seats.  Unsurprisingly the apportionment of seats remained a contentious issue before, and after, the Civil War that abolished slavery, but the number of House seats was not capped at 435 until 1913, no apportionment was made after the 1920 census, and the formula used was codified and made automatic in 1941.

The current automatic process is not the only way to apportion House seats.  One proposal, the Wyoming rule, would apportion House seats based on the ratio of a state's population to the least populous state, currently Wyoming.  This would meet the requirement that each state have at least one representative, but this would give California, the most populous state, 69 seats rather than its current 53 seats. This would also increase the current size of the House from 435 seats to 573 seats. While this number might not be practical if all representatives were required to be physically present in the House Chamber, but given today’s remote meeting technology, this may not be a burden.

If the population increased by 8200% from 1790, increasing the number of seats in the House of Representatives by 855% does not sound so radical.  Not all voters can expect to vote in the House, but if the number of seats was increased from 435 to 573, the residents might expect that their vote could be reflected in “the man.”

Words

 

Words

It's only words, and words are all I have
To take your heart away

You might only have words, but those words are important.

You have to be careful with words.  Cockney rhyming slang or highly technical language can do more than just be the words that are spoken.  The words, and the accent which is used to pronounce them, may reveal more than intended about the society to which the speaker belongs.  That language may be meant to exclude others ( if you are not "in with the in-crowd", you prove that by not understanding the slang of the "in-crowd"), but not being able to use the words of a society or its preferred accent does not mean that you are not trying to be a part of a society. 

My maternal grandmother spoke only Polish, but she still considered herself to be an American.  My paternal Irish ancestors did not learn English because they thought that was the superior culture, but because they were forbidden to speak Gaelic.  I try to remember them and not use words to keep people out, but to use words to include people and to speak the truth.  The important thing is the truth, not the words. 

Freedom

 Freedom '90

All we have to do now

Is take these lies and make them true somehow

All we have to see

Is that I don't belong to you

And you don't belong to me yea yea

Freedom

Freedom

Freedom

You've gotta give for what you take

Being in favor of freedom does not mean that you are for Freedom Caucuses or Conferences.

Testing support for freedom by support for “freedom” caucuses is like asking “Are you still beating your wife”, leading, questions.  Posing the "wife beating" question that way and only allowing yes or no responses, implicitly assumes that at one time the respondent has beaten his wife.  A yes or no response provides no information if the respondent  NEVER beat his wife. 

Freedom Caucuses treat rights as absolutes when they are not.  Rights are protected, but they are never absolute.  You have the RIGHT to shout fire, but that right is not absolute.  You have the DUTY not to shout fire in a crowded theater.   You have the RIGHT to bear arms.  You have the DUTY not to use those arms in a mass shooting.  Confusing rights with duties is the opposite of freedom.

Perspective

 

One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor

It's just apartment house rules

So all you 'partment house fools

Remember: one man's ceiling

Is another man's floor

It may be a floor to you, but it may be a ceiling to someone else.

Perspective matters.  You can't just develop the best solution from your perspective. You do have to consider other perspectives as well.  Take a store for instance.  From the perspective of the store operator, if he could just got rid of the customers, who only misplace items on the wrong shelf, or buy items, he would not have to restock the shelves.  However from the perspective of the customer, if you couldn’t find or buy any items from shelves, you wouldn’t patronize that store and that store would close.  So store operators need customers and customers need store operators.

Economists classify goods as rival ( are charged a price) or non-rival ( are not charged a price); and exclusive ( if I use a good, no one else can use that good) or non-exclusive ( if I use a good then someone else can also use that good).  We are used to dealing with Private goods that are rival and exclusive ( like  pieces of food).  That item has a price and if I consume it, then you can not also consume it.  Cable TV is rival and non-exclusive.  It has a price but my using it in my house, does not prevent you from using it in your house.

The problem is that some goods are rival and exclusive from the perspective of the seller, e.g. a seat at a concert.  But those same seats are rival and non-exclusive from the perspective of the buyer.  The buyer is interested in the concert and will pay for a seat at the concert which is non-exclusive, but is ONLY interested in the concert, not the seat, which is exclusive.  That same seat will not interest the buyer unless that concert is playing.  That seat may be a floor to you, but it is a ceiling to the concert hall operator.  Perspective matters and coming up with solutions that recognize all perspectives is important.

Ranked Choice Voting

 

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Now laughing friends deride
Tears I cannot hide,
So I smile and say, when a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes.

Should we bring back the smoke-filled rooms at political conventions?

I would suggest that selecting candidates through primaries, rather than through conventions, has changed the dynamic from a ranked order method to a plurality method.  Candidates used to be selected based on a majority of the convention.  After many ballots and smoke-filled rooms, supporters of candidates that did not have a chance of winning changed their support to candidates that they preferred.

Primaries replaced those smoke-filled rooms.  Rarely do political conventions go to even a second ballot.  However primaries also select candidates that receive a plurality of the vote rather than a majority of the support.  By doing so, candidates that might be the last choice of the second-place finisher, are selected.  The process may be more transparent, but it has replaced a ranked order system, as imperfect as it was, with one where the plurality wins.  Eventually, according to Duverger’s Law, there are only two parties and voters may choose the least offensive candidate, rather than the best candidate.

There are  polls for the best college football or basketball team, which is basically a ranked order system (e.g. how many first-place votes, etc.) which is then used to select the teams for the Football Championship playoffs and is considered in seeding the teams for the NCAA March Madness playoffs.  Why do we select sports teams using ranked order, but select candidates for election by  primaries?  Kind of makes you wish for those smoke-filled rooms again.

Trade

 

Money, Money

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
A buck or a yen
A buck or a pound.
Is all that makes the world go around
That clinking, clanking sound
Can make the world go 'round

Does a buck still make the world go around, and should it?

If one county produces petroleum but needs grain, and another country produces grain but needs machinery, and still another country produces machinery but needs petroleum, it is possible that a three-country trade agreement could take place.  However just like in sports, multi-party trades are complicated and hard to complete.  Trading is easier if it is conducted using a currency that each party can earn, and then use that currency to complete their own trades.  In 1944 at Bretton Woods that international reserve/trading currency was established to be the US Dollar.  While the Nixon Shock of 1971 abolished the Bretton Woods agreement,  the US Dollar is still the preferred medium for international trade. According to  Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), the US dollar, a buck, was used in 51.9% of the international currency transactions in 2014. The second, with a 30.5% share of the totals is the Euro, which was not even a currency yet in the song from Cabaret, which was set in pre-WWII Berlin, and which replaced the mark. The British pound was third with a 5.4% share of the total value, followed by Asian currencies, such as the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan.

As international trade increases, this causes an increase in the demand for US Dollars.  This means that the US trade deficit must increase, or else this international trade could not take place.

This is the Triffin dilemma, named for the Belgian-American economist, Robert Triffin, and has been known since the late 1960s, although the dilemma can be traced to a 1932 lecture by French economist Jacques Rueff. As long as the US Dollar is the international trading and reserve currency, if international trade increases, then the US trade deficit will also increase.  Additionally short term domestic economic objectives, such as controlling inflation, may result in conflicts with long term international objectives. That this was known long ago, does not make it any less true.  After all, the fact that money makes the world go around is also still true.