One Person, One Vote?

The Supreme Court just heard a case on Tuesday, Evenwel v. Abbott, over whether state legislative districts must equalize the number of voters or the number of people.  The particular state in this case is Texas, where districts are apportioned by number of people and where the number of voters per district then differs greatly in some cases.

One person, one vote sounds nice -- until you give it some thought.  Of course children are persons, but we exclude them from voting.  Non-citizens are also not supposed to vote, though many do in some districts, especially those controlled by the Democratic Party.  Many people though eligible to become voters do not register to vote.  Many people who are registered to vote skip many or some elections.  There simply is no sense in which one person gets one vote and one share of representation.  There is no feasible way to achieve any such outcome in the future.

The Constitution originally handled the problem this way:

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and Excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Consequently, districts for the House of Representatives were equalized for the total number of people, excluding untaxed Indians and two-fifths of slaves.  The free Persons included non-citizens.  The idea at the time was that those men eligible to vote would represent all men with insufficient property to vote, children, women, non-citizens, those bound to service for a term of years, and all slaves.

The 14th Amendment changed the apportionment for the House Districts by only excluding Indians not taxed.  It went on to punish states that denied the right to vote to male citizens of 21 years of age or older by reducing the House representation in proportion to their numbers in ratio to the total number of male citizens 21 years of age and older.  The idea was still clearly that male citizens of 21 years or older would represent all women and all non-citizens.

But how should the House Districts properly be set up?  By extension, how should state legislative districts be set up?  Is it reasonable to assume that those who vote are trying and able to represent the good of those who cannot or will not vote when they cast their vote?  These are substantive questions.  It is not unreasonable for fairly reasonable people to disagree on the answers.

At the time the 14th Amendment was written, it was considered that House Districts should be apportioned in accordance with the number of voters or eligible voters.  That idea was shot down immediately when Representative James Blaine, Republican of Maine, examined the census data and found that since the ratio of men to women was much higher in Western states than in the Eastern states, the Eastern states would lose massive representation if it were based on the number of voters or eligible voters.  Women could not vote, but they were valuable for inflating the numbers of persons for representation, much as slaves had been in the South in the past.

It is now easy for all citizens of age to vote.  Despite this, in many areas very low fractions of the citizens chose to vote.  They are either not sufficiently interested or they are so infused with a sense of futility that they see no point in voting.  Should uninterested people or those so infused with a sense of doom and futility be given representation that they will not use? 

In most cases, such uninterested or futility-bound voters especially occupy highly Democrat districts.  So many Progressive Elitist Democrats believe such non-participating voters or potential voters should be represented because they, the Progressive Elitists, will cast their votes in the interest of the apathetic or doomed-in-futility persons.  Yet these same Progressive Elitists have long claimed to be doing this, especially to minimize economic inequality.  Nonetheless, the Congressional Districts with the worst economic inequality are almost exclusively Democratic and have been for decades.  Clearly, the Progressive Elitist voters, who do vote in high percentages, either do not actually vote to reduce economic inequality or they do so with a complete misunderstanding of the consequences of their votes.  They are clearly horrible at representing the interests of the less educated and less inclined to vote people in their districts.

In general, people who vote either vote their own interest or they vote for the interests of others without actually understanding their interests.  Let us be realists and recognize the facts and human nature.  People barely able to motivate themselves to vote rarely have any understanding of the legitimate role of government, the important political issues of the time, the principles of the candidates, and the manner in which new laws and regulations will affect our futures.  In the era of
Big Government these issues are often much more complex than they were in the past in America.

We should also note that it is clear that people are not good at representing the interests of children.  We see this in the miserable public education system we have, in the huge national debt, in the terrible future liabilities of Social Security and Medicare, and the complete disregard for the effect of compounded economic growth rates on the standard of living of Americans 30 or 40 years from now.  Few voters weigh the future enough to look to future outcomes.  Consequently, they are nearly worthless as representatives of the interests of today's children.

House districts, both federal and state, should simply be apportioned on the basis of the number of voters in the last several elections, assuming they do not exceed the number of eligible voters as they do in some Democrat districts.  This apportions representation according to the numbers of citizens of age to vote who actually have an interest in government.  Yes, many of them will not understand the issues and the consequences of their votes either, but this is the one form in which One Person, One Vote is actually achievable in the form of One Voter, One Vote.

Adding to the weight on political outcomes of those districts with higher voter turn-out is likely to raise the quality of the People's Voice about as high as one can accomplish by any means except an improved education system or other educational efforts.  If the reward in political outcomes is greater for those who already care enough to vote, perhaps they will make a greater effort in the future to think about their votes.  These more thoughtful voters then may even realize a bit greater responsibility not to do harm to others, including those others who do not care to vote.  But realistically, one will be giving a greater voting weight to those who are voting for the interests of those they know best, themselves and perhaps their immediate family and friends.  That is not a bad thing.  Most great wrongs are done when people vote or act for others they do not even know, or when they pretend to do so.

How might one determine the number of voters for these district apportionment purposes?  How about the last four elections in the previous decade with re-apportionment occurring once a decade?  It would be nice if one could just make this the last four elections, but the re-districting effort and battles would be too much.  As for why four elections, the fluctuations in voter turn-out are great, especially the differences between Presidential elections and those when voting on the President does not occur.  The last four elections will include two presidential and two non-presidential elections.  It will include elections when no vote was up in the state for Senator in Congress.  It is a good number to average out, though it may slightly lag overall population shifts.  I would gladly live with that population shift lag for the many benefits of One Voter, One Vote, One Share of Representation.

As for state legislative districts, a variety of formulas are fairly reasonable and determining what formula to use should be left up to the states.  Only very unreasonable state decisions should be corrected by the Supreme Court.  Among the unreasonable apportionments would be those that count non-citizens.  Perhaps counting citizen children should also be considered unreasonable, though I am less adamant about this than about the non-citizen count.

Which brings up the need to also tackle the problem of ineligible voters casting ballots as another aspect of the voter representation problem.

Marriage and Party

There is an interesting post at the American Enterprise Institute on the correlation of the percentage of children raised by their biological parents by state and the correlation with Republican or Democrat states.  It has long been clear that college education results in a higher percentage of children being raised by their biological parents and a higher fraction of the population in the Democrat states has a college education.  It has been clear that having Asian ethnic parents provides the highest parental presence, followed by white parents, Hispanic parents, and finally black parents.  This study adjusted for the effects of college education and parental ethnicity to find that there was some residual positive correlation between Republican states and a greater percentage of children being raised by their biological parents.

This graphic was particularly interesting:

The reddest states, or those most consistently Republican, had the highest percentage of married adults.  The question is this:  Are people more likely to be married because they are Republican voters or they more likely to be Republican voters because they are married?  It is most likely more correct to say that whether someone is married or not is a significant factor in how that person votes.

We know that nearly 60% of self-identified Republicans are married and that two-thirds of unmarried women voted for Obama and Democrat Congressional candidates in the 2012 election (see here).  A majority of married women voted for Romney in 2012 (53% to 46% for Obama).  Overall, Romney won 56% of the married voter vote to Obama's 42%.  So, it is clear that a voter's marriage status significantly influences the party for which a person votes.  As a consequence, it is most likely more correct to say that a higher percentage of children are raised by their biological parents in Republican than in Democrat states because a higher percentage of adults are married in Republican states.

One may question this by noting that since the number of people with college educations is higher in the Democrat or Blue states, then the fact that a college education correlates with a greater likelihood of parents raising their children together may offset the difference in marriage rates.  This is where the adjusted data for education and ethnicity comes in.  The yellow bars show that adjusted data and the adjusted marriage percentages for adults are still higher in the Red states than in the Blue states.  It appears that marriage is more valued in the Republican states than it is in the Democrat states, consistent with the rhetoric of the respective parties.

Marriage can most certainly be of great value to those in a marriage.  It is a partnership that is much more loving and intimate than any other, with huge advantages in security and living efficiency as well.  Some Republicans claim that this makes traditional marriage the cornerstone of society.  In my evaluation, while traditional marriages are clearly extremely important, there is plenty of room for non-traditional marriage concepts to offer many of the same advantages to people who do not satisfy the limitations of the traditional marriage concept.  The advantages of marriage are a right which should be available for everyone to claim with willing adult partners.  This freedom will then make our society even stronger and better for the highly differentiated individuals of which it consists.

Republicans, who often claim they favor more individual freedom, should embrace an enlarged concept of marriage to be consistent with both equal individual rights and their acknowledgement of the many values gained with marriage.  Those values should not be limited to heterosexual couples.  Everyone has a very broad freedom of association which they may exercise in their private sector choices, whether in a business context or in the context of a domestic partnership.

What Age Were the 10 Million Missing Voters

I noted in this earlier post that nearly 10 million white voters did not vote in the presidential election and that about a million black voters also did not, compared to their numbers in the 2008 election.  What were the ages of the missing voters?

From the CNN exit polls for each election:

2008:

18-29 years old, 18% of voters, 66% voted for Obama, 32% voted for McCain
30-44 years old, 29% of voters, 52% voted for Obama, 46% voted for McCain
45-64 years old, 37% of voters, 50% voted for Obama, 49% voted for McCain
>= 65 years old, 16% of voters, 45% voted for Obama, 53% voted for McCain

2012:


18-29 years old, 19% of voters, 60% voted for Obama, 37% voted for Romney
30-44 years old, 27% of voters, 52% voted for Obama, 45% voted for Romney
45-64 years old, 38% of voters, 47% voted for Obama, 51% voted for Romney
>= 65 years old, 16% of voters, 44% voted for Obama, 56% voted for Romney

So, the only major change in the percentage of voters by age was the decrease in the 30 - 44 year old group who favored Obama in both elections.  They favored Obama by 6% in the 2008 election and by 7% in 2012.  The 18 to 29 year olds increased from 18% to 19% of the voters, but their preference for Obama fell from a 34% differential to a 23% differential.  I expected a sizable decrease here due to the very high unemployment of young adults.  Overrall, the changes in these two age groups did not help Obama relative to 2008.

The 47 to 64 year olds increased in percentage of voters from 37 to 38%.  They had favored Obama by a 1% differential in 2008, but they favored Romney by a 4% differential in 2012.  Those 65 and older were 16% of the voters in both elections.  They had favored McCain by 8% in 2008 and they favored Romney by 12% in 2012.  The changes for both of these age groups helped Romney do better than McCain did.

It is clear though that there were large decreases in the number of voters in each of these age groups, with the biggest decrease among 30-44 year olds who supported Obama.  The relative decrease among 18 - 29 year olds and among 45-64 year olds was slightly less than that for those 65 and over.

There is no simple explanation for the Romney loss based on age.  The lower turnout in this election has a much greater racial make-up than it does an age make-up.  Insofar as it has an age based effect, the harm to Obama was greater than that to Romney.

By age considerations, the reason Romney lost is because he did not get a high enough percentage of the vote in any age group to win.  Yes, the older and wiser the voter, the better Romney did.   No question it would have helped him greatly if 18-29 year olds had massively failed to vote relative to older voters.  I had expected their percentage of all voters to drop in this election relative to 2008, but that sure did not happen.  Apparently, though their absolute numbers dropped greatly, so did those of all of the other three age groups.

As yet, Romney's failure to motivate white voters to vote is still looking like his main, but not his only, problem.  The explanation that many are offering that he simply did not seem to differ in policy enough from Obama for voters to get enthusiastic about him  and come out to vote for him makes a lot of sense.  They decided to stay with the guy they did not like or agree with very much instead of trying someone else they were not sure they liked or agreed with very much.

Romney is Going to Win the Election

The outcome of the 2012 Presidential election will be decided in the six swing states in light gray in the electoral map below.  It is interesting that four of them are in the Midwest.

Romney only needs 8 more electoral votes to win, since a tie of 269 votes each will be decided by the Republican House of Representatives.  I believe that Romney will win at least four of these six swing states.  If so, Romney will add between 38 and 64 electoral votes depending on which combination of four states he wins.  But Romney needs to win only one of Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan or both Iowa and Nevada to win the election.  There is even a possibility that Minnesota is in play with its 10 electoral votes enough for Romney to win.

If Romney sweeps all of these swing states, which is not highly likely, but is also not out of reach, the situation would be:

This would be a most wonderful reassurance that the American People might occasionally lose their marbles, but they have a tendency to relocate them eventually.  The amount of red in the county by county results will then be startling.

As I have noted before, the polls have weighted their results much too heavily toward Democrats by assuming there are either many more of them than Republicans or by assuming they are more likely to go to the polls to vote.  I believe that the Rasmussen and more recent Gallup attempts to identify the relative numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and Independent voters are very close to the actual case and the 2008 breakdown of voter affiliations are not applicable.  There are more Republicans than Democrats now and they will go to the polls in larger numbers than the Democrats will.

Romney still has a large, typical Republican advantage with male voters and Obama's 2008 advantage with female voters has almost disappeared.  Romney has a large advantage with Independent voters.  Obama is hoping for more black and Hispanic voters in this election than in 2008.  This is not going to happen.  In fact, there will be fewer black and Hispanic voters in this election.  They have been hit much harder by unemployment and some are concerned with Obama's stances on issues of religious belief.  His percentage of black voters voting will be lower.  Also, more Democrats than last time and more than usual will crossover and vote for Romney.  Republicans have a tradition of less crossover voting for Democrats and fewer than usual will do so this time.  18 - 29 year olds still favor Obama heavily by 55% to 36% of likely voters, but 9% of likely voters in that group are undecided.  Only 48% of these young voters say they will definitely vote and those voting for Romney are more likely to vote.

While the economy, ObamaCare, energy policies, the level of government spending, and the deficit will all cost Obama most heavily, the last of the undecided voters are being well pushed toward Romney by the Obama disgrace in failing to protect the Ambassador and others in the Benghazi consulate and then lying about the situation.  Those still undecided will almost all vote for Romney.  Consequently, it now appears that Romney will win 4 to 6% more of the popular vote than Obama.  That will translate into a substantial win in the Electoral College vote.

Obama Justice Department Will Not Enforce Law with Racial Impartiality

Long ago, J. Christian Adams, left the Justice Department because his case to prosecute two New Black Panther Party members for voter intimidation in the 2010 elections was set aside by higher officials in the Obama administration Justice Department.  He has said over and over that this was because the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department will not enforce The Voter Rights Act in a racially neutral way.  They are only willing to prosecute white intimidators for interfering with the voting rights of black Americans.  According to the Obama Justice Department, white voters do not have an equal right to vote.  This last week, Christopher Coates, a senior attorney still with the Justice Department, testified that this was the case and added information on earlier cases against black intimidators the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department will not prosecute.  The Civil Rights Division is run and controlled by racists.  There is no other term for this.

Obama and his ACORN partnership

John Fund made a number of interesting comments in the Wall Street Journal about ACORN and Obama's relationship with it. On the many Sunday news shows he appeared on, only one asked him about his connections with ACORN. Despite the scandals due to the video taping of many workers supporting illegal actions, he said

Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely.

Fund says that Obama and ACORN go back to 1991, when he took time off from his law career to operate a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, which was an ACORN partner and was later folded into ACORN. Obama's effort added 135,000 registered voters in Chicago and gave an upset victory to Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over the incumbent, Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democrat primary.

Obama was recognized as a community organizer expert and became a favored trainer at ACORN's Chicago meetings. In 1995 he served as ACORN's lawyer and worked on a lawsuit to force Illinois to comply with the federal Motor Voter Law. ACORN later used that law's weak voter registration requirements to add huge numbers of fake names to the voter rolls. In 1996, Obama's listing of his supporters in the campaign for the Illinois Senate started with ACORN, though it was not an alphabetical list.

Choosing a President

Ask most people what criteria they use to choose a president and they will say something like:

• He should be smart.
• He should have experience.
• He should look presidential by looking good and being self-assured.
• He should make me feel comfortable and that I can trust him.
• He should care about the people.
  

In reality these translate into:

• He should not be really smart, because then he would not be like me, but the mainstream media should say he is smart.
• He should have been busy creating coercive laws, but know nothing about business and running other voluntary organizations.
• He should be a megalomaniac who is sure that he knows what is best for the rest of us and he should look like someone a good-looking woman might choose for sex.
• He should have a silvery tongue and be able to convince me to follow him off a cliff.
• He gives never-ending speeches claiming that he cares about people, but he gives money to special interests to get their vote and deprives everyone of their liberty.

Well, what should be the principle upon which a rational person would make his choice for president? It would be great if he were very smart, if he had real experience in living a happy and productive life, if he had self-confidence, but also understood that the job of the president is so overblown now that no one could perform that job well, that he has a clear understanding that he serves the people, and that he knows that the best way to care about them and to serve them is to govern in accordance with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But note that none of the other characteristics is really important and useful unless he will act as President in a manner consistent with his role as set out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If he is smart, but he uses his intelligence to consistently seek more power over the lives of individuals, then his intelligence is in the service of the Devil. The same is true if he looks presidential or has years of experience turning out coercive laws. If people think he cares about them because he makes promises that government will deliver goodies to them, then he is dangerous and will soon control us all by making us dependent upon his goodies and fearful of his taxes and service mandates. If he has a silvery tongue, this is also a great danger if he uses it toward evil goals.

The Declaration of Independence placed sovereignty for the first time squarely in the hands of the individual. The individual has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And, yes, to his property, which word was left out because it was clearly already covered by the given trilogy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration declared that just, legitimate government became so only if it served the people by protecting their individual sovereignty by ensuring their inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government and its leaders could and should be overthrown if they did not act in recognition of the inalienable rights of the individual, which all of the people enjoyed and which none of the people had to apply to government for. Their rights were inalienable and could not legitimately be denied by government.

The Constitution attempted to bring about the mechanisms of government which would help to direct government to fulfill its goal of protecting the individual's rights and thereby serving the sovereign people well. The Preamble sets this understanding up. It states that the Constitution is to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." The Constitution then embarks on enumerating a very carefully chosen list of powers held by the President, the Congress, and the Federal Courts. It is very obvious that these powers are very limited. Let us examine some of the powers that Congress was given:

• To borrow money on the credit of the United States
• To regulate commerce between the states, foreign nations, and the Indian tribes, where regulate meant to keep the states from interfering with free trade, as they had been doing.
• To establish naturalization and bankruptcy rules.
• To coin money and establish weights and measures.
• To establish penalties for counterfeiting.
• To establish post offices and post roads.
• To provide for copyrights and patents.
• To set up federal courts inferior to the Supreme Court.
• To define and punish piracies and felonies on the high seas.
• To declare war and make rules for captures.
• To raise and support Armies.
• To provide and maintain a Navy.
• To provide for calling forth the Militia.
• To tax for the purpose of performing the above powers. There was no implication that taxes could be levied and used for other purposes, though some soon claimed they could be and were opposed by such men as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison.

The President and every Congressman have a primary function of protecting the Constitution and its protections of the rights of the individual. The President is explicitly required to make the following oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States , and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Any president who does not do so is illegitimate and a threat to the inalienable rights of the individual and clearly subject to overthrow by our birth certificate, The Declaration of Independence. Therefore, the most central principle for choosing a president is clear: He must be the man who will do the best job of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States, whose central purpose is to honor the inalienable right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by maintaining government's very limited scope of action and leaving as much as possible to the individual choice of those who are the people.

Many people opposed the idea of establishing a Bill of Rights, since they said that the powers of the Federal government were so limited that they could not be used to violate the rights of the individual. There was no need to declare a right to freedom of speech, since it was clear that the government was given no power to limit freedom of speech. In fact, when the decision was finally made to put together the Bill of Rights, one of the original amendments, Amendment IX, states "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This makes it very clear just how jealously the people claimed their inalienable individual rights!

Today, we should do no less. Today, we are much more threatened by illegitimate and overblown government than the colonies were by the government of King George III and a Parliament in which they had no representation. The actual encroachments upon the rights of the individual in the colonies were small compared to those we now experience in America. The level of taxation was microscopic compared to the present. The redistribution of wealth and the requirements for service were small in comparison. There are now many more limitations upon our right to lead productive and self-directed lives. We are allowed the freedom to make a much smaller fraction of our life choices now. The mere fact that a plurality of voters may choose to violate the Constitution and the rights of the individual does not lessen the horrible fact that the rights of the individual and his sovereignty are under brutal attack. This government, backed by this plurality of voters, is illegitimate.

Just as the most singly critical principle for choosing a President is whether he will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, so is that also the most important criterion for choosing any member of Congress. We do an awful job of choosing those people as well as choosing Presidents. The people we have chosen have proven very adept at violating our individual, inalienable rights. This is no surprise, given that few of us recognize the most important principle for choosing our President and our representatives in the House and Senate. Most people have richly earned the loss of their liberty, but they must be damned for also losing that of the few who deserved their liberty and for losing that liberty for our Posterity!