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Off Topic => General Discussion => Topic started by: Luke Pemberton on February 17, 2015, 07:12:37 PM
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Just got back from Selma, and it gave me a tinier glimpse into the US Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
While watching the film, I wondered whether the Vietnam war accelerated Civil Rights in the US. The reason I ask is that King took a line of argument to President Johnson, namely that he would send Americans to fight in Vietnam but would not send the Army to the south to protect its own citizens. I certainly recall that Malcom X took this line to agitate and mobilise. It had me thinking about where America was at the time with its political consciousness. What would be the contemporary analysis of America during the LBJ Presidency and the civil rights movement. Was it really a wagon that was started by JFK (?) which LBJ could not stop, or were there other factors that drove forward change rapidly under LBJ?
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While I am far from knowledgeable about the situation, my understanding is the movie portrays LBJ as far less supportive of King than he really was. Done this way for dramatic intent.
LBJ was supportive of civil rights from early in his career. Not always publicly though because of the times and his need to get elected. Being able to raise the dead for election day was a big help in that regard though.
Texas no doubt had its share of abuses and racism was a legal institution. But the situation was no where nearly as bad as in the Deep South where racism was a deeply embedded personal and class fight. Like most such fights, it was as much over securing access to scarce jobs among the poor as anything else. Northern institutionalized racism was largely over jobs too.
As far as using the Army, that is a standard line of political rhetoric that can be used for any situation. If we can do .... then why can't we do....... The use of the Army directly would have been, and still is, a violation of the law. The President can under strict circumstances invoke the National Guard, as happened in the North and South on some occasions to protect civil rights. However it took an expansion of powers just to do that.
My recollections from reading about the period in school, which are no doubt colored by being taught in Texas schools, is that for JFK, civil rights was a political position, for LBJ is it was a personal commitment. It has some appeal though when comparing the formative experiences of the son of and East Coast elite family to a farmers son, born in a small house near dusty Stonewall, TX. However it seemed that it took both of them to bring acceptance of the civil rights movement to the federal government and the nation.
How does the movie treat J Edgar Hoover?
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How does the movie treat J Edgar Hoover?
He appears a couple of times in the film. I have a limited knowledge of Hoover, but I would say he is portrayed as I would have expected, a man who is not soft on 'undesirable' elements. At one point he describes King as a deviant. He provides one of the sub-plots in the film, viz. a man who can 'fix a situation' by digging up dirt. He mobilises the FBI to bring King down, beginning with an attack on his marriage.
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Being able to raise the dead for election day was a big help in that regard though.
Please explain more, I think I understand the tone of this statement?
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Being able to raise the dead for election day was a big help in that regard though.
Please explain more, I think I understand the tone of this statement?
LBJ narrowly won his seat in the the House of Reps. by getting "late" votes on recounts in several South and West Texas counties. IIRC in some precincts, there were more votes cast that there were actual living voters. It seems the dead's love for LBJ caused them to rise from the grave?
Purging voter roles is controversial because it tends to disenfranchise the living too. So the dead tend to stay on the roles for some time. They also provide a vote slush fund for corrupt officials.
See this 1990 book review from the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/11/us/how-johnson-won-election-he-d-lost.html
It discusses the primary election that selected the Democratic candidate, because Texas was at that time nearly a one party state. The liberal and conservative factions were wings within one party. This dates back to the Northern and Republican imposed Reconstruction after the Civil War. The general election was a formality almost everywhere. Johnson's civil rights stance ultimately won on the issue but also started a major split among the Democrats.
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How does the movie treat J Edgar Hoover?
He appears a couple of times in the film. I have a limited knowledge of Hoover, but I would say he is portrayed as I would have expected, a man who is not soft on 'undesirable' elements. At one point he describes King as a deviant. He provides one of the sub-plots in the film, viz. a man who can 'fix a situation' by digging up dirt. He mobilises the FBI to bring King down, beginning with an attack on his marriage.
That is pretty much my understanding of the actual events. King was a passionate man who lived out his passions in many ways. His infidelity was nothing particularity unusual. But provided an opening to his political enemies to hold him to some idealized middle America standard that would have required him to be an idealized saint. A standard that was easily overlooked in leaders with whom middle America could personally identify. Just look at JFK.
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That is pretty much my understanding of the actual events. King was a passionate man who lived out his passions in many ways. His infidelity was nothing particularity unusual. But provided an opening to his political enemies to hold him to some idealized middle America standard that would have required him to be an idealized saint. A standard that was easily overlooked in leaders with whom middle America could personally identify. Just look at JFK.
The film portrays him as a very principled individual, a man who believed in non-violent protest. The infidelity side was touched upon, but the plot mainly stayed with the theme of Selma and the interplay between King, LBJ and Wallace.
The friction between King and Malcom X was all but briefly presented where King's wife Coretta met with X, but this play was more about divisions that the FBI and Wallace could exploit.
The film is generally worth viewing. It certainly gave me a new insight into LBJ.
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The film portrays him as a very principled individual, a man who believed in non-violent protest.
That would be the salient point of King that differentiated him from most others, IMO, and the reason to make a film. Just from what I've read about Slema, I would be circumspect about the details in the portrayal of LBJ, who is used for dramatic intent to personify the broader "system" and highlight King's strengths, rather than for personal historical accuracy.
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I really wanted to see Selma, but it was out of theatres before I was gearing up for my annual Oscarpalooza film watching, the one time of year I go to the movies a lot and without Graham. Actually, almost everything was out of the theatres this year, so I don't have much to go on.
On the other hand, I have studied a lot about the Civil Rights Movement. JFK wasn't particularly interested; it was Bobby who pushed for him to call Coretta Scott King when MLK was in jail, because Bobby cared more and was able to make an argument about how it would play. When LBJ became President, he used a lot of "we must pass this for our fallen leader!" to get Civil Rights legislation passed, but it was mostly a line. Some years before, all Southern congressmen but three signed a document against integration and equal rights for blacks. Those three were Al Gore, Sr., Estes Kefauver, and Lyndon Johnson.
When he signed the Voting Rights Act, he said, "This will lose us [the Democratic Party] the South for a generation." But he did it anyway.
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I really wanted to see Selma, but it was out of theatres before I was gearing up for my annual Oscarpalooza film watching, the one time of year I go to the movies a lot and without Graham. Actually, almost everything was out of the theatres this year, so I don't have much to go on.
If you get the chance to see Selma then it is worth a watch. Maybe not for someone as versed in these matters as you as it still had the dramitisation factor overlaid, but as a British citizen it made for an interesting watch. I much preferred Lincoln, I felt that was less Hollywood than Selma.
JFK wasn't particularly interested; it was Bobby who pushed for him to call Coretta Scott King when MLK was in jail, because Bobby cared more and was able to make an argument about how it would play.
I was always under the impression that it was JFK's personal crusade.
When he signed the Voting Rights Act, he said, "This will lose us [the Democratic Party] the South for a generation." But he did it anyway.
I was actually quite surprised looking at the 1977 election where the Democrats won the college vote across the south during Carter's election to office. Now, someone can help me here.
I understand how the electoral college vote works in terms of deciding the President, but does it mean that if every state votes Democrat based on the college vote, not a single Republican is returned to the House of Representatives or Senate? I was looking at Regan's first election, and he swept the board in the college vote.
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I understand how the electoral college vote works in terms of deciding the President, but does it mean that if every state votes Democrat based on the college vote, not a single Republican is returned to the House of Representatives or Senate? I was looking at Regan's first election, and he swept the board in the college vote.
The Electoral College is used for the selection of the president and vice-president only. Members of the Senate and House and are voted on separately; the Senate to six-year terms and the House to two-year terms. There are two Senators per state elected on a state-wide vote. For the House, each state is divided into congressional districts, and each district elects its own representative. Senate elections are staggered, with roughly 1/3 of the Senate up for election every two years. The entire House is up for vote every two years. It is not uncommon for a State to vote for one party in the general state-wide election but vote for the other party in some of the local congressional races.
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The Electoral College is used for the selection of the president and vice-president only. Members of the Senate and House and are voted on separately; the Senate to six-year terms and the House to two-year terms. There are two Senators per state elected on a state-wide vote. For the House, each state is divided into congressional districts, and each district elects its own representative. Senate elections are staggered, with roughly 1/3 of the Senate up for election every two years. The entire House is up for vote every two years. It is not uncommon for a State to vote for one party in the general state-wide election but vote for the other party in some of the local congressional races.
That makes sense to me when we hear that a President had lost control of the Senate. So could you be in the position where you have a Democrat in the Whitehouse and the Senate and House are controlled by Republicans?
The way I understand it is that the Senate is a bit like our Lords and the House if a bit like our Commons, except that the Prime Minister's party tends to control the commons while he is in office, unless of course he has small majority or parliament is hung.
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So could you be in the position where you have a Democrat in the Whitehouse and the Senate and House are controlled by Republicans?
Absolutely. That is what we have right now. It is actually rare that all three branches are controlled by the same party. At the end of President Bush's administration, Republicans had the White House and the Democrats had both houses of congress. When Obama was elected in 2008, that gave the Democrats control of everything, which is how they managed to push through Obamacare. During the 2010 mid-term elections*, the Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives (largely as a means to check the Democrats and keep them from having total control of the agenda in Washington) . In 2012, Obama was re-elected while the Democrats retained the majority in the Senate and the Republicans the majority in the House. In the 2014 mid-term elections, the Representatives took over control of the Senate, giving them majorities in both houses of congress.
* Mid-term is the name given to elections that occur in non-presidential election years.
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When Obama was elected in 2008, that gave the Democrats control of everything, which is how they managed to push through Obamacare.
That's what I thought, and why I asked. The staggered elections of Senate and 2 year elections to the House really turns over the politics in Washington? So when the President does not control the House or Senate how does he ratify bills?
When Blair got elected here in 1997 and 2001 he had some imposing majorities he pushed through his policies very quickly. With Labour being out of power for 18 years and various back channel deals to soften the left of the party the shape of our country changed very quickly as legislation was pushed through.
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That's what I thought, and why I asked. The staggered elections of Senate and 2 year elections to the House really turns over the politics in Washington? So when the President does not control the House or Senate how does he ratify bills?
A bill is introduced in congress and must be approved by both houses of congress before it go to the President. The President then must sign it for it to become law. (If the President vetoes the bill, it can still become law with a 2/3 vote from each house of congress.) Obviously when control is split between parties, more compromise is necessary to get anything done.
Right now the two sides are so fundamentally opposed on almost every major issue that there is little compromise. Congress currently has historically low approval ratings, and Obama's approval is poor as well. When the Democrats controlled everything, they largely shut the Republicans out of the process (such as pushing through Obamacare with little consideration for Republican ideas, and without obtaining a single Republican vote). Thus, when the Republicans gained back the House, they tried to put the brakes on the Democrats' agenda. When the Republicans in the House passed their own bills, they went to the Senate and got swallowed up by a black hole named Harry Reid (the Democrats' majority leader in the Senate). Reid wouldn't even allow the bills to be debated in the Senate, much less be voted upon. Last November the voters gave the Republicans control of the Senate and a larger majority in the House. The Republicans aren't exactly popular, but the voters obviously became disgusted with how things were working in Washington, particularly the disfunction in the Senate, and felt a change was needed.
I have no idea how things are going to work out under Republican control of congress. Having control of both houses should allow them to get some bills passed. Whether or not Obama signs them is an entirely different question. Obama seems to me to be an ideologue that doesn't know how to compromise. And the Republicans don't have the majorities needed to override a veto. I don't have much hope that we're going to see a lot of progress made over the next two years.
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I have no idea how things are going to work out under Republican control of congress. Having control of both houses should allow them to get some bills passed. Whether or not Obama signs them is an entirely different question. Obama seems to me to be an ideologue that doesn't know how to compromise. And the Republicans don't have the majorities needed to override a veto. I don't have much hope that we're going to see a lot of progress made over the next two years.
That sounds really messy. Here we can have a hung parliament, where one party wins the most seats but does not hold a clear majority to command the House of Commons. At the moment we have a Coalition Government with the Conservatives and Liberals holding power. At the last election the Conservatives had the most MPs voted to the commons but not enough to form a majority government. This May is our election, and as the polls stand we could have a hung parliament again, but this time it might get messy in terms of who holds the balance of power. Many political commentators have voiced that the UK could see 3 party politics for some time, and with the Nationalist vote in Scotland holding up it could become a constitutional nightmare.
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Here we can have a hung parliament, where one party wins the most seats but does not hold a clear majority to command the House of Commons.
With just two major parties, it's really unlikely that could happen here in the states. Theoretically it could because there are always a few members of congress that are elected as Independents. However, they are often just Independents in name and will still caucus with one party or the other. For instance, the Senate currently has two Independents that caucus with the Democrats. In the last election, the Republicans needed to get to 51 out of 100 seats to gain control even though at 50 they would outnumber the Democrats 50-48. This is because the two Independents were counted as voting with the Democrats. And in the event of a tie, the Vice-President casts the deciding vote, so that would give the Democrats the tie-breaker. The current Senate stands at 54 Republicans, 44 Democrats, and 2 Independents that caucus with the Democrats.
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In addition to Bob's fine description of the political situation, I'll add this. US politics are very divided today. At the times of the Voting Rights act, for instance, the bill passed with stronger Republican support in the House, in terms of voting percentage. (Democrats 221-61, Republicans 112-24) The country too is pretty divided overall and there is no issue like Voting Rights that addresses a specifically identifiable injustice to bring people together. Today each major party is taking a more fundamentalists stance that suggests the other should in some way be purged from the government. And of course each side blames the other for instigating the events that have lead to the stand off.
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If you get the chance to see Selma then it is worth a watch. Maybe not for someone as versed in these matters as you as it still had the dramitisation factor overlaid, but as a British citizen it made for an interesting watch. I much preferred Lincoln, I felt that was less Hollywood than Selma.
Oh, I'm planning to see it on DVD, but that won't be just now, because it isn't on DVD yet.
I was always under the impression that it was JFK's personal crusade.
Nope. He basically wasn't interested at all. Bobby convinced him it was right, and he went along with that, but I'm not actually sure there were any subjects that he was really passionate about that we associate with him.
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And of course each side blames the other for instigating the events that have lead to the stand off.
Yeah, its pretty frustrating listening to the back and forth bickering while nothing gets done. While each side has their heels dug in, they call the other side obstructionists. As the old saying goes, it takes two to tango.
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A couple of other comments on the differences between US and UK governments.
The US is the canonical example of a "presidential" system, while the UK government is the canonical example of a "parliamentary" system. The US federal government consists of three distinct branches: executive, legislative and judiciary. The President is head of the executive branch.
Unlike the UK and other countries with the parliamentary system, the President is not a member of Congress; he/she is separately elected for fixed 4-year terms (maximum of two) independent of Congress. This gives the US President considerably more independence than a UK Prime Minister, who is out of power whenever his party loses control of the House of Commons.
The Congress can still remove a US President from office through impeachment, but by design this is a difficult and time-consuming two-step process; it is not a matter of simply passing a vote of no-confidence and calling for early elections. First, the House of Representatives votes to impeach by a simple majority, analogous to a grand jury returning an indictment. The process then moves to the Senate, which holds a trial. Conviction requires a 2/3 vote. This is a very high bar, especially today.
Only two US presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew (not Lyndon) Johnson and Bill Clinton. Neither was convicted in his Senate trial. One president (Nixon) resigned to avoid almost certain impeachment and conviction. The same process can (and has) been used to remove federal judges, who normally serve for life, but again it is very difficult and time-consuming so it has only been done a few times, usually after a judge has been convicted of a serious crime like bribery.
Much time is spent in US civics classes explaining the "separation of powers" and "checks and balances" on which the US federal government is based. Most state governments have a very similar structure, though the specific names are different. The President can propose legislation to Congress, and as Bob mentioned, if he refuses to sign it into law after both houses have passed it Congress can override that veto with a super-majority vote.
One of the President's most important roles is to appoint federal judges who serve for life to give them independence from day-to-day politics, but they must be confirmed (approved) by the Senate. He also appoints ambassadors, cabinet members (what you'd call "ministers") and agency heads, also with Senate approval. The President conducts foreign policy, but treaties must also be ratified by the Senate before they take effect. (The House has no role in confirming appointments and treaties).
Although the President commands the military, in principle he cannot declare war; that power is reserved for Congress. However, since the mid-20th century the President has usurped much of Congress's war-making power; this has been a perennial issue ever since the Vietnam War.
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I should also say what it means for a political party to "control" a house of Congress, because it's much more than simply having the most votes on the floor. Much of the real work of Congress is done in an extensive hierarchy of committees, each headed by a chairman or chairwoman. At the beginning of each term of Congress, committee chairs are appointed and ratified by a vote that always goes right down party lines; this means that when the Democrats (or Republicans) have even a slight majority in the House or Senate, every single committee chair in the House (or Senate) is a Democrat (or Republican).
Committee chairs are extremely powerful people because they control the agenda for committee meetings and can completely block some piece of legislation they don't like, or exact concessions from other members to let it pass. So even when some bill might attract enough "defectors" from the other party to pass were it to reach the floor of the main chamber, it might never get there. This is one of the main reasons the work of Congress can grind nearly to a halt when politics are as polarized as they are today, even when one party has only a slight majority in that particular house.
And because we have a bicameral legislature, where both houses have to pass every bill before it is sent to the President, many bills can die between them when they're controlled by different parties.
People used to work around these problems with lots of compromise and quid-pro-quo, but that seems to have largely broken down in recent years with the increasing amount of polarization between the parties. There are many possible explanations, but that's a whole separate subject.
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Thank you all for the considered replies. They made interesting reading. I am now more knowledgeable.
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Yeah, its pretty frustrating listening to the back and forth bickering while nothing gets done.
I generally prefer nothing get done in Washington since I find neither sides ideas to be particularly compelling. So for the most part I avoid the frustration by ignoring the bickering and reducing my expectations for political good manners. And voting for someone else when I can.
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I understand how the electoral college vote works in terms of deciding the President...
Congratulations, you probably know more than many U.S. citizens.
Every now and then critics will argue that the Electoral College should be scrapped and that presidential elections should be decided based on popular vote. They claim the Electoral College gives a numeric advantage to the smaller states. On the other hand, the winner-take-all method of voting favors the larger states. Personally, I prefer the weighting of the Electoral College, where each state has a number of electors equal to its number of congressional members (both houses). Whenever I think about trying to explain it to somebody, I'm reminded of this scene from the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
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Bob - I love the allusion to IAMMMMW - it fits perfectly.
I keep having to explain to my friends that the US is a federation of states, and those states elect the President through the Electoral College. The framers of the Constitution recognized that a straight numerical vote would have given an unfair advantage to the more populated states (New York and Massachusetts in the 1770's?).
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Whenever I think about trying to explain it to somebody, I'm reminded of this scene from the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
That made me laugh. We had a referendum on alternative voting in the UK in 2011. It was rejected and we keep the first past the post system. I'm not sure any voting method is entirely fair, but I'm glad of one thing. At least I get a say in who I choose to lead my country, despite it not being completely perfect.
Thanks for answering all my questions. It cleared up my misconceptions.
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I'm not sure any voting method is entirely fair, but I'm glad of one thing. At least I get a say in who I choose to lead my country, despite it not being completely perfect.
Any voting system will be sufficiently fair if all interested parties have an opportunity to understand the rules before the election and address unfairness at that time. Then the rules need to be inviolate after the election with all decisions based on the prior rules.
Post election rule changes were what got Florida in trouble with the Supreme Court in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, ultimately resulting in the decision for Bush in Bush vs. Gore.
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Thanks for answering all my questions. It cleared up my misconceptions.
If you get C-Span on UK cable it might be occasionally instructive. It is a cable network that provides live overage of Congress. However most of the time it is like watching for the subtle color differences as paint dries. C-Span used to carry question for the Prime Minister. A far more lively event. I always enjoyed watching Margret Thatcher and less so John Major. I cut my cable about that time so never got to see Tony Blair.
There is of course live C-Span streaming these days. But it may not work for non-subscriber to cable.
http://www.c-span.org/live/
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Any voting system will be sufficiently fair if all interested parties have an opportunity to understand the rules before the election and address unfairness at that time.
Maybe fairness was the wrong word, but in the UK there are those that argue when a party gets a significant proportion of the popular vote and does not have an MP in the Commons, then is such a situation truly representative of the peoples' views. The Green party are a good example. Many have argued for proportional representation. However, it was pretty much thrown out in the 2011 referendum. But, I guess if one is standing for MP and rules are transparent, then that is fair for all individuals concerned.
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C-Span used to carry question for the Prime Minister. A far more lively event. I always enjoyed watching Margret Thatcher and less so John Major. I cut my cable about that time so never got to see Tony Blair.
One of my favourite moments from Blair, but the Tories didn't really help themselves:
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Maybe fairness was the wrong word,
It is a word whose definition is flexible enough to include whatever is necessary to get the speaker what he really, really wants.
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I keep having to explain to my friends that the US is a federation of states, and those states elect the President through the Electoral College. The framers of the Constitution recognized that a straight numerical vote would have given an unfair advantage to the more populated states (New York and Massachusetts in the 1770's?).
Virginia and Pennsylvania, as I recall. Massachusetts to a lesser extent. But at the time, New York was still pretty rural. Most of Manhattan was still uninhabited.
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Yeah, its pretty frustrating listening to the back and forth bickering while nothing gets done.
I generally prefer nothing get done in Washington since I find neither sides ideas to be particularly compelling. So for the most part I avoid the frustration by ignoring the bickering and reducing my expectations for political good manners. And voting for someone else when I can.
My understanding, though (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), is that the Congressional gridlock is a problem for government agencies like NASA, because they have little certainty over their budgets, and annual threats of shutdowns play havoc with longer-term projects.
Presumably if NASA staff are working to prepare a rocket for launch when a shutdown comes, then it's down tools and hope things don't deteriorate too much over the shutdown.
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...We had a referendum on alternative voting in the UK in 2011. It was rejected and we keep the first past the post system.
It's a bit different in Australia and in our states.
At the Federal level our House of Reps is like the HoC, and the Senate equivalent to the HoL (except that its members are elected).
For the Reps, we have preferential voting, which is similar to FPTP, except that a candidate has to get more than 50% of the vote to be elected. To do this, we voters number all candidates in order of preference. Then, if no candidate gets 50% of the vote, the candidate with the fewest first preferences is eliminated, and their votes distributed among the remaining candidates on the basis of their second preferences. If still no candidate has 50% of the vote, you repeat the process, and so on until one of the last two candidates must reach 50%.
For the Senate it's a bit more complicated, and also since the last election more controversial. The Senate has 76 seats - 12 for each state and 2 for each territory. At each election half the state-based senators and all the territory-based senators face election, meaning each state's voters have to choose six senators. In order to be elected a candidate has to achieve a quota of 1/7th of the popular vote. If they get more than one quota the excess is transferred to the next party candidate on the ticket. This is usually good enough to elect five of the six senators. Working out who gets the last seat is tricky, and this is where the controversy has arisen.
Once all the quotas have been distributed a process of elimination similar to the preferential system for the Reps is used, with the candidate attracting the lowest popular vote being eliminated and their preferences distributed. Lather, rinse and repeat until finally one of the remaining candidates accumulates enough votes to get a quota.
Because of a rise in the number of candidates in Senate elections, back in the 1980s there was a change to the electoral process. Instead of numbering all the candidates in numerical order (potentially over 100 candidates in some cases), voters were allowed to place a 1 against one party, and the preferences would be distributed in accordance with a preference list determined by that party. Now the order of preferences determined by each party became a secret game before each election, with all the various parties lobbying each other to get favourable positions on each others' preference tickets.
Then came along this guy about 10 years ago, whose name I forget, but whose nickname is The Preference Whisperer. His skill was maths, and he seemed to have a far better instinct for how the voting system worked than anyone else. What he did was facilitate negotiations between minor parties and so-called micro-parties to lock in preference deals that seem to have a lot more power than people would expect.
As a result, a couple of candidates were elected to the Senate at the last Federal election despite getting minuscule primary votes. Instead they got their quota by accumulating the transferred votes of other micro-parties as they were eliminated from the count.
The sinister aspect of this is that few voters knew anything about these micro-parties, and almost certainly not their preference lists. However many of these parties had names which would be likely to appeal to some aspect of the community.
Hypothetically it wouldn't take much work to set up a perfectly legal bunch of parties, say, the Loonie Left Party, the Crazy Right Party, the Maisy Middle Party, the [name your hobby] Party, then arrange preference swapping deals between all of them. Come the election, some voters will vote for each party simply on the basis of the party's name. Then, when the votes are counted, their swapped preferences will give one of these parties' candidates a good chance of getting the last Senate seat in that state.
The significance of this lies in the power of the Senate to block the government's proposed legislation.
Back in 2004 the Liberal-National coalition won control of both the House of Reps (thus forming government) and the Senate, meaning in theory they could guarantee the passage of all their legislation. But in the four elections since then the party in power has not had control of the Senate, with the balance of power held by some combination of minor and micro parties.
Arguably, the Labor government of Julia Gillard following the 2010 election did the best job of getting its legislation passed in the Senate. This was despite operating as a very rare minority government in the Reps (you might remember that on the old Apollo Hoax board I started a thread about that election and the aftermath).
By contrast, the current Liberal-National coalition government under Tony Abbott has a solid majority in the Reps, but has had a devil of a time getting its legislation through a hostile Senate. The government's first budget was delivered in May last year, and now, eight months down the track still some of the associated legislation hasn't been passed. The main problem seems to be the government's unwillingness to, you know, negotiate. They seem to have the attitude that because they have a majority in the Reps, the Senate should just sit back and do the government's bidding. The thing is that the minor and micro party Senators represent such a broad swathe of political views it surely shouldn't be too hard to find some combination of Senators to support each piece of legislation.
And a bigger problem for the government is that things are likely to get worse. Over the last 40 years the proportion of votes given to non-major parties in the Senate has grown steadily from ~10% to ~30%.
I'm not sure any voting method is entirely fair, but I'm glad of one thing. At least I get a say in who I choose to lead my country, despite it not being completely perfect.
Quite true.
Another difference between Australia and most other countries is that voting is compulsory. Yet despite most people only having to spend half an hour or so twice every three years undertaking their civic duties, we still manage to find some people willing to complain about having to vote.
Most voting centres in Australia are local government primary schools. Election day is therefore an opportunity for schools to run a sausage sizzle and maybe a raffle to raise some cash from locals. So my message to people whingeing about having to go out and vote is to look at it as an opportunity to do something for your local school.
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The Senate has 76 seats - 12 for each state and 2 for each territory
QLD 12
NSW 12
VIC 12
SA 12
WA 12
TAS 12
NT 2
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TOT 74
What is the other territory?
ETA: Never mind, I just realised it must be ACT
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Every now and then critics will argue that the Electoral College should be scrapped and that presidential elections should be decided based on popular vote. They claim the Electoral College gives a numeric advantage to the smaller states. On the other hand, the winner-take-all method of voting favors the larger states. Personally, I prefer the weighting of the Electoral College, where each state has a number of electors equal to its number of congressional members (both houses).
The electoral college does give extra weight to the voters in smaller (in population) states. This is indisputable.
Each state is given a number of electors equal to the number of its representatives in the House of Representatives plus those in the Senate (two). Wyoming, the least populous state, has 584,000 people and three presidential electors. This is about 195,000 people per elector.
(Three electors is the minimum per state. Non-state territories get none, except for the special case of the District of Columbia. It gets three electoral votes even though it has no voting representation in the Congress. Despite having a larger population than Vermont and Wyoming, half of it is black so it is very unlikely to ever gain Congressional representation as long as the Congress remains so conservative.)
California, the most populous state, has 38.8 million people and 55 electors. That's 705,000 people per elector. I.e., each citizen of Wyoming is given 3.6 times the weight of each citizen of California in a presidential election.
One reason is obvious: the inclusion of two senators in each state's electoral count triples the weight of a small state, while having very little effect on a large state. A second is that every state gets at least one representative in the House no matter how small its population. The most populous state with only a single Representative (and 3 electoral votes) is Montana, with a little more than a million people, almost twice as many as Wyoming.
The electoral college was originally created because it was thought that the people should not vote directly for an office as important as the presidency. Eventually, however, each state (with very few exceptions) passed laws requiring each of its electors to pledge their votes to whoever won the popular vote in that state. It has therefore become what we communication engineers call a "nonlinear combining function" and making it possible for the winner of the popular vote to still lose the electoral college vote. This actually doesn't happen all that often; the last time was when George W. Bush beat Al Gore in 2000, an event known as an "electoral college inversion". Even when an inversion doesn't happen, the nonlinearity tends to make the elections look much more skewed than they really are.
Imagine how different the world would be today if we elected our presidents by straight popular vote.
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Any voting system will be sufficiently fair if all interested parties have an opportunity to understand the rules before the election and address unfairness at that time.
Maybe fairness was the wrong word, but in the UK there are those that argue when a party gets a significant proportion of the popular vote and does not have an MP in the Commons, then is such a situation truly representative of the peoples' views. The Green party are a good example. Many have argued for proportional representation. However, it was pretty much thrown out in the 2011 referendum. But, I guess if one is standing for MP and rules are transparent, then that is fair for all individuals concerned.
I'm pretty sure someone has demonstrated that a seat-based political system eventually leads to a two-party system, while proportional representation leads to a multiplicity of parties. The danger of the former is that off-party views rarely get a look-in - you have to take the whole legislative platform of one party or the other. The danger of the latter is that governments can only be formed with unstable coalitions - see particularly Weimar Germany and post-WW2 Italy.
Here in the ACT we have a voting system which is a bit of a hybrid. It's called the Hare-Clark system and was copied from Tasmania, which introduced it about a century ago. The ACT is divided into electorates, but each electorate sends multiple members to the one-house Assembly. At the moment we have three seats with 5, 5 and 7 members. But for the next election the Assembly will increase to 25 members with five 5-member seats.
The voting system is a bit like the Federal Senate one - to get elected you have to get 1/6th of the popular vote, with any excess going to the next candidate on the ticket. * And if the last seat is unfilled, the unelected candidates are eliminated in order to distribute their preferences.
As a result, since we got self-government back in 1989, we've had only one majority government - all the others have been coalitions of some sort.
* Actually not strictly true, but it simplifies the explanation.
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C-Span used to carry question for the Prime Minister. A far more lively event. I always enjoyed watching Margret Thatcher and less so John Major. I cut my cable about that time so never got to see Tony Blair.
One of my favourite moments from Blair, but the Tories didn't really help themselves:
Question Time can be entertaining in the Federal Parliament, as it's one place where the Opposition can lay some effective punches on a poorly performing government or minister. But likewise, an effective Prime Minister can energise a government with a powerful response to a question, whether from the Opposition or one of its own members (a so-called Dorothy Dixer).
In the case of the Senate, some fireworks also come from what's known as Senate Estimates. This is where cross-party committees interview ministers and their senior bureaucrats. For Opposition Senators it's another big opportunity to embarrass the government, usually through uncovering some scandal or other in a government department (for the bureaucrats, however, Estimates is a nerve-wracking experience).
Of course some have also been good speakers outside Parliament too.
Here's an example of some good political banter from over the years: (with a language warning, courtesy of Kevin Rudd).
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My understanding, though (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), is that the Congressional gridlock is a problem for government agencies like NASA, because they have little certainty over their budgets, and annual threats of shutdowns play havoc with longer-term projects.
It's a problem for everybody, actually.
The US government has so many checks and balances, considered by the founders to be absolutely essential to prevent a slide into tyranny, that it pretty much forces everyone to bargain and compromise. While it has always been possible for individuals to bring things to a standstill (e.g., filibusters in the Senate) this used to be relatively rare. It was invoked only when the individual involved felt very strongly about an issue, and that could be seen as a good thing if it prompted the others to listen and reconsider their positions.
But such a system tends to break down when the parties are not amenable to compromise. This has been increasingly common in recent years, and there are many theories as to why.
One is that congressional districts -- which have winner-take-all elections -- have become increasingly "gerrymandered". Boundaries are drawn by the party in power in each state, which is strongly motivated to concentrate the other party's voters in as few districts as possible. Those districts then tend to elect politicians with relatively extreme and uncompromising views since they know they face relatively little opposition back home.
Another possible cause is our primary system. In most states, a "primary election" is held in the spring whereby each party selects the candidate that will later face the candidate from the other party in the November general election. It has become common in recent years for the ultra-conservative "Tea Party" faction of the Republican Party to drive out moderate incumbent Republicans during the primary campaigns. The primary losers can still run as third-party or write-in candidates in the general election and sometimes even win, but it's a difficult proposition.
Yet another cause is war, which is almost always highly divisive and polarizing, and we've kept them going for over 13 years now.
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Every now and then critics will argue that the Electoral College should be scrapped and that presidential elections should be decided based on popular vote. They claim the Electoral College gives a numeric advantage to the smaller states. On the other hand, the winner-take-all method of voting favors the larger states. Personally, I prefer the weighting of the Electoral College, where each state has a number of electors equal to its number of congressional members (both houses).
The electoral college does give extra weight to the voters in smaller (in population) states. This is indisputable.
Each state is given a number of electors equal to the number of its representatives in the House of Representatives plus those in the Senate (two). Wyoming, the least populous state, has 584,000 people and three presidential electors. This is about 195,000 people per elector.
(Three electors is the minimum per state. Non-state territories get none, except for the special case of the District of Columbia. It gets three electoral votes even though it has no voting representation in the Congress. Despite having a larger population than Vermont and Wyoming, half of it is black so it is very unlikely to ever gain Congressional representation as long as the Congress remains so conservative.)
California, the most populous state, has 38.8 million people and 55 electors. That's 705,000 people per elector. I.e., each citizen of Wyoming is given 3.6 times the weight of each citizen of California in a presidential election...
We have a similar situation in Australia.
House of Reps seats are allocated in proportion to population, so New South Wales has the most seats - 48 out of 150. But there are some skews. For example, Tasmania is guaranteed at least five seats even if a population distribution would require them to get fewer. This was a compromise placed in the Constitution to encourage Tasmania to join the Federation back in 1901.
Now Tasmania has a population just over 500,000, meaning each seat represents a little over 100,000 people. By contrast, the ACT has a population of about 385,000, but we have only two seats, meaning each seat represents nearly 200,000 people. The problem for the ACT is that each time a seat redistribution is done, the ACT falls just short of qualifying for a third seat.
It's even worse in the Senate. As a state, Tasmania gets 12 Senators, meaning each Senator represents a bit over 40,000 electors. But the ACT as a territory gets only two Senators.
So despite having three-quarters of the population of Tasmania, we have less than a quarter of the political representation Tasmania has.
At the state level, the Tasmanian Parliament has a Lower House with 25 members, and an Upper House with 15. This compares to the ACT's one-house Assembly of (currently) 17 members. (Tasmania then has local governments too, though I wonder how much time members of shire and city councils spend in those jobs.) People grumble about the quality of the politicians we have at the moment and wonder how adding another 8 at the next ACT election would improve things. Personally I think it'll be good to increase the size of the talent pool.
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Here's an example of some good political banter from over the years: (with a language warning, courtesy of Kevin Rudd).
I was warned that Australians tend to use the B-word quite openly and not much is considered of its use. In fact it is quite a term of endearment used in the right company and context, so it does not surprise me that the Australian house gets slightly fruity. I do love Australians and their relaxed use of language. I wish us stuck up Poms could learn a little bit more from our antipodean cousins.
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My understanding, though (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), is that the Congressional gridlock is a problem for government agencies like NASA, because they have little certainty over their budgets, and annual threats of shutdowns play havoc with longer-term projects.
Presumably if NASA staff are working to prepare a rocket for launch when a shutdown comes, then it's down tools and hope things don't deteriorate too much over the shutdown.
I tend to think of them as symptoms of the same problem. Divergent views on the direction the government should move. NASA has faced long term budget uncertainty from Nixon's time forward. Now if the country came around to my way of thinking, then gridlock would be over! ;)
NASA certainly provides an easy target for budget cuts because it has no goal that peaks national pride like the Apollo program did. The planning for a Mars mission is increasingly looking like a open ended program rather than a goal that would be achievable with chemical fueled rockets and other projects currently under development. If the program is on the right track, then NASA needs to better explain the achieveability of its goals. So, while NASA does some real science programs, it's lack of a cohesive direction opens it to accusations of being a corporate welfare program for aerospace/defense contractors.
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The electoral college does give extra weight to the voters in smaller (in population) states. This is indisputable.
I know. When I used the word 'claim' I didn't mean it isn't true, I mean that's the reason they claim the system isn't fair.
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I know. When I used the word 'claim' I didn't mean it isn't true, I mean that's the reason they claim the system isn't fair.
Depends on what you mean by "fair", I guess. If you believe that every US citizen should have an equal say in electing the president, the electoral college is most definitely unfair. Not only does it give greater weight to residents of less-populous states, but it gives no weight at all to residents of US territories like Puerto Rico, even though they are US citizens.
The effect of these systematic biases of the electoral college are open to debate, but it seems reasonable to claim that it tends to elect more conservative presidents than would a system of direct popular voting. The less heavily populated states are mostly rural, and residents of rural areas tend to be more conservative than urban populations. So the states with the heaviest per-voter weight tend to be the most conservative (with a few exceptions like Vermont and DC). On the other hand, the most unfairly treated state (in terms of having the most residents per electoral vote) is Texas, which is hardly liberal. (I'm not sure why it's Texas, not California; I'll have to investigate this.)
There have been only three electoral college inversions in US history: 1876, 1888 and most recently 2000 -- when the decidedly more conservative candidate was elected despite losing the popular vote. (The 1824 election landed in the House of Representatives, so it's a special case).
Before 2000, I used to think that the next time an inversion were to occur the Constitution would be changed with lightning speed. I was obviously wrong.
Edit to add: The chart with this information is at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_population_per_electoral_vote.png. Electoral votes are assigned only every 10 years after a census so it's possible that Texas' population has grown so much since the last census that it has the most residents per electoral vote even though its total population is still less than that of California.
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Depends on what you mean by "fair", I guess.
As above, fair is so ill defined that it can be invoked used to support almost anything.
Fair in that each vote have equal weight
Fair in that each vote is counted
Fair in that the election is swiftly concluded without suspicion of post election maneuvering.....
One problem with direct voting is that the if no one gets a majority, then there must be an alternative method of selection. Such as a runoff or the preferential voting method Peter B. mentioned. Runoffs are "unfair" to voters that cannot go to the polls twice or loose motivation. IIRC preferential voting can lead to "unfairly" selecting a winner that was not among the top first choice candidates. Defaulting to Congress if there is no majority leads to post election maneuvering.
Right now it defaults to the electoral college, who are selected by the prevailing party of the state. But the system makes an lack of majority in the college a rather unlikely possibility.
Every system will have some unfairness's in it.
used to think that the next time an inversion were to occur the Constitution would be changed with lightning speed.
It is always seems easier to stick the not perfect but familiar rather than move toward some uncertain problems.
Electoral votes are assigned only every 10 years after a census so it's possible that Texas' population has grown so much since the last census that it has the most residents per electoral vote even though its total population is still less than that of California.
You have no idea how the oil boom has caused people to flood into Texas. Since the last census, Exxon and BP have consolidated their formerly wide spread domestic businesses into the Houston area. Then there are the roughnecks, truck drivers, seismic crews, service crews...... Rural roads are clogged with trucks and small trailer towns are built to just to give them all a place to live. With $50 oil and $3 natural gas, they may all be gone by the time the next census starts though.
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Depends on what you mean by "fair", I guess. If you believe that every US citizen should have an equal say in electing the president, the electoral college is most definitely unfair.
I think the small states should have a greater say in the presidential election process than what population alone would give them. Each state makes up 2% of the union, and that equal balance shouldn't be ignored. I think the Electoral College strikes a good balance between equal representation and population-weighted representation.
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I think the small states should have a greater say in the presidential election process than what population alone would give them. Each state makes up 2% of the union, and that equal balance shouldn't be ignored. I think the Electoral College strikes a good balance between equal representation and population-weighted representation.
There's a similar argument here for proportional representation. At the moment we have one Green Party MP in the House, but the Green party polled 1% of the popular vote. Crudely, by proportion of the vote one could argue that 1% of MPs should be Green. Similarly, in the 2005 election, Labour only had 5% more of the popular vote, but had almost twice as many MPs.
British politics appears to be in state of flux at the moment, with the rise of nationalist Scottish politics and UKIP, and what appears to be the demise of Liberal support, we could be entering an interesting period of multi-party politics, much like we have seen on the continent.
When I use the word fair, I belive I mean fairness to what the votes actually translate to representation of the people's views. But, as I have said, I'd rather live in a democracy, even if it is not perfect.
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I'm pretty sure someone has demonstrated that a seat-based political system eventually leads to a two-party system, while proportional representation leads to a multiplicity of parties. The danger of the former is that off-party views rarely get a look-in - you have to take the whole legislative platform of one party or the other. The danger of the latter is that governments can only be formed with unstable coalitions - see particularly Weimar Germany and post-WW2 Italy.
A situation which has largely governed UK politics for most of the last 120 years. A few analysts would argue that given the situation at the end of the last Labour term, the political situation here has moved away from the two party bias. The basis for this argument was that even with the unpopularity of the Brown government, Cameron could still not command a majority. I think there were many in Conservative central office that did not understand what they needed to do. I think there were those around the country that felt they still remembered the Tories of old, and those wounds still linger. With the Liberal vote holding reasonably firm we moved towards a Coalition.
The damage that forming a Coalition with the Tories has yet to be seen, but current polls put the Liberals in 5th, behind Con, Lab, UKIP and Greens. Some analysts here suggest we are heading for a period of Coalition governments.
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When I use the word fair, I belive I mean fairness to what the votes actually translate to representation of the people's views.
It is as good of a goal for fairness as any.
The devil though is in the details on how to accomplish it. Just because a scheme works one time, for one group, doesn't mean it always will provide a practical level of fairness any other time. All we can do is try.
It seems to me that the uncertainty of the kind parliamentary situation you describe would not play well here and that most people prefer the "stability" of our two party Congresional system. I for one, would like to see some "instability" in government, though. Rather then just welcome a new group of Congressional overlords every few years.
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It is as good of a goal for fairness as any.
I believe our democracy if fair in the sense that we are allowed to vote, the counting is quick and transparent so fraud is unlikely, and the rules are clear for all candidates. I'm still undecided if 'proportion of vote' is translated into 'representation' in the Commons in a fair manner. But, as you have reminded me, what is fair. It is vague, and a loaded term.
The devil though is in the details on how to accomplish it. Just because a scheme works one time, for one group, doesn't mean it always will provide a practical level of fairness any other time. All we can do is try.
Absolutely, and hence my ambivalence towards PR and First Past the Post.
It seems to me that the uncertainty of the kind parliamentary situation you describe would not play well here and that most people prefer the "stability" of our two party Congresional system. I for one, would like to see some "instability" in government, though. Rather then just welcome a new group of Congressional overlords every few years.
I too want to see instability. I think politicians should be kept on their toes and reminded they are elected by the people to serve the people. I recently went to a conference about education in our country and a phrase that I connected with was 'power is not absolute, with power comes responsibility.'