There are other ominous trends. One of the biggest trends following red super majorities is not merely restricting the process of voting, but going further to restrict what citizens locally vote on. This trend has the clunky name of preemption, but is very serious.288 In the most gerrymandered states, there are schisms between red-run legislatures and blue-run cities, which have passed all kinds of progressive laws—from higher minimum wages, to banning natural gas hydraulic fracturing, to being sanctuaries for immigrants, to taxing soda and tobacco, to banning guns in public, and more. Red legislatures have responded with new statewide laws to reverse and ban local initiatives. The GOP, which once venerated local control, are now more than willing to preempt what entire populations can vote on. Segregating voters via extreme redistricting and blocking access to the polls is antidemocratic enough. But censoring what citizens can vote on is astounding.
What Democrats, progressives, and independents must realize, whether they are focusing on the House in 2018 or state legislatures, are the structural disadvantages they face. The GOP, in the most heavily gerrymandered districts, has a 6–8 percentage point starting line advantage. These are states where red legislatures have kept passing stricter voter ID laws—which shave off another 2–3 points in the November election, and much more in primaries among blacks, Asians, and Latinos. These states may follow Kobach’s lead and impose new documented proof of citizenship requirements for registrants, which 7 percent of the public lacks. These tactics are followed by other anti-voter moves, from limiting early voting options to ending Election Day registration.
But by summer 2017, it was not clear the GOP’s structural advantages were understood. Few apart from the Democratic Governors Association talk about the importance of upcoming governors’ races, compared to retaking the House. Meanwhile, other Republican gambits in order to preserve their power are surfacing and have to be taken seriously.
When ALEC, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, met in July 2017, it discussed two structural reforms to create a permanent Republican majority. The first was restoring the appointment of US Senators by state legislatures by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. (After November 2016, the GOP held both chambers in thirty-two states, which, if such a repeal were law, would mean they would have sixty-four senators.) As far-fetched as that sounds, ALEC has been pushing red states to pass legislation calling for a federal Article Five constitutional convention, where such a proposal could be raised. So far, twenty-seven states out of the thirty-four states needed have passed resolutions for that convention.
A more likely near-term threat is gerrymandering the Electoral College. Republicans could do that by replacing the statewide winner-take-all system with awarding delegates by House district. If that were law in Virginia, where a bill was introduced but did not pass in 2017, the state’s eleven Electoral College votes would not have gone to Clinton; Trump carried six of its House districts.289 Legislation to do that was proposed in a few states in early 2017, but did not go anywhere.
Too few people pay attention to these potential power grabs. But they would continue what Republicans have done this decade. They have transformed voting to such a degree that it has subverted our democracy. There’s no indication they intend to reverse course and put representative government before their partisan power. If anything, the opposite is true. They are betraying the citizenry by hijacking voting at key nodes across the process.
Every month into Trump’s presidency underscores the antidemocratic result: a political party representing a minority keeps pushing an authoritarian regime of oligarchy, plutocracy, and theocracy. The vast majority of citizens don’t support Trump or the GOP’s agenda, yet they are witnessing their government being taken from them. The stakes for the country are bigger than which party, or party factions, win or lose. If voting is rendered meaningless, representative government will disintegrate and the American experiment will end.
The only way to stop this trajectory is to understand what’s taking place and dismantle the structural advantages the Republicans built into the voting process. This book has tried to describe the antidemocratic features of the 2016 election, which is the latest manifestation of that landscape. It’s possible to quantify these features with metrics that didn’t exist a decade ago. Understanding what is impeding an increasingly diverse citizenry from voting to elect a representative government is the first step in countering the assault on our democracy.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, the party that is the champion of voting rights must step up to the moral challenge to representative government. The party loses its moral authority when it continues to have features like its superdelegate system, a national apparatus that takes sides in presidential nominating contests, registration deadlines and rules that prevent independents from voting in its primaries, as well as presidential caucuses that are manned by inept volunteers. Party loyalists need to stop defending the indefensible and side with all voters.
But the hurdles posed by Republicans are far more serious, insidious, and embedded in law. We have seen enough of the GOP playbook to do more than object. We know how restrictive voter ID laws impact voter turnout, especially along racial lines. We know about the extreme gerrymandering. We know about possibly replacing a legal oath by signature on voter registration forms with paper proof of citizenship. We also know vast numbers of Republicans believe the myth of voter fraud and support policing the vote. We also know half of Republicans would accept a political coup—postponing the 2020 election if Trump and Congress called for that, according to an August poll by the Washington Post. (Even if the US Constitution’s Twentieth Amendment sets terms of office with expiration dates.)290
But we can quantify how much of the electorate the GOP seeks to preempt. This matters because when people start arguing about elections, the first thing that is lost is magnitude and scale: what is the possible or real impact on voters? Arguing about elections is filled with false equivalencies, hyped impacts, distortions, and prejudice. The Republicans cite one-in-a-million incidents as reasons to pass state laws affecting millions of voters. Citizens who want fair and accountable elections, and representative government, need to push back wisely, and know what matters most.
They need to realize the stakes and yet not give up hope. Nobody knows where the Trump-Russia probes will go. Nor if disgusted voters will turn out in such large numbers in 2018 that they will swamp the GOP’s ten-point starting line advantage in a wave sweeping them from office. Meanwhile, voters should look at all possible ways to take back this process. Extreme redistricting is increasingly in the news, with maverick Republicans like former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger saying backroom mapmakers need to be replaced by citizens’ commissions. The political class needs to know the public has their number.
One such glimmer of hope emerged from the Greens’ recount. Unlike most of this book, it concerned voting’s finish line: verifying the count. John Brakey, the election transparency activist, pointed to a development that can lead to citizen-led verifiable vote counts, even with electronic voting machines. It’s a humble prospect, but in the right direction.
“In an ‘ah-ha’ moment, Election Integrity investigators realized that 40 percent of the voting machines presently in use have the built-in ability to transparently verify reported election results RIGHT NOW,” he wrote for a presentation at the Left Forum in New York City in June 2017.291 “The machines that are used to count hand-marked paper ballots are rapidly being replaced with technology that uses digital imagery to count scanned ballot images. At the current rate, by the next presidential election, approximately 85 percent of the country will generate scanned ballot images.”
Brakey envisions crowd-sourcing recounts and audits using images of marked ballots. It’s not entirely magical thinking, when you consider NASA puts online telescope images of distant galaxies so thousands of volunteers parse them to find new stars.292 Of course, it would be better if American elections were held using
ink-marked paper ballots that were openly counted and rigorously audited. Brakey believes in the better angels of democracy. But he also knows who and what he’s fighting. Many local election officials do not want citizens to pore over ballots to see if their votes have been accurately counted.
Such is the state of our elections in 2018. The closer you look, the more antidemocratic features emerge. Right now, American democracy is in deep trouble. Anything that restores rights of voters and engages citizens cannot be overlooked. Nothing less than the nation’s future, the majority voices of citizens, and our future, is at stake.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS PRESENTED IN this book span more than a decade of being a journalist who was given the opportunity to interview, observe, collaborate with, and learn from scores of people with different roles in the voting sphere. These include journalists, lawyers, activists, scholars, foundation officials, candidates, campaign workers, and many authors I have not met but whose work I’ve read for years. As Bill Moyers said, journalists are beachcombers on the shores of other people’s wisdom. That is the case here.
This book began with an unexpected call from John Bonifaz, a voting-rights attorney I met in the 1990s, whose work has crossed my path over the decades. My coverage at AlterNet of the 2016 recounts caught Skyhorse’s attention and launched this journey. But this book also reaches back to Vermont in the 1980s, when I was a reporter and met Bernie Sanders and became press secretary on the first campaign electing him to the House. Bill Stetson led me to many people in Bernie’s campaign and in Democratic Party circles, including some who freely gave insights but asked not to be named, as they still work in politics.
The recounts put me back in touch with a community of activists, attorneys, and journalists I met after Ohio’s 2004 election. They include Mark Crispin Miller, Bob Fitrakis, Jonathan Simon, Harvey Wasserman, John Brakey, and others. Special thanks go to Don Hazen who has supported my work for many years at AlterNet starting with covering voting rights in 2008, and Bill Moyers and the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
I also must thank David Becker and John Lindback, who let me assist Pew’s effort in 2010 to modernize voter registration and in so doing introduced me to many dedicated civil servants, academics, and technologists who want to improve elections and expand the vote. They gave me a greater appreciation of the complexity and layers involved in the process and still do.
Then there are the election law groups and affiliated scholars whose work has helped to document and quantify how voters are marginalized on partisan lines. These include the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, Advancement Project, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Demos and others cited in the endnotes. Their reports, legal briefs, and resulting court rulings from their work all contributed—as did legal documents, reports, and other records from those who wanted to tilt the field.
There are also many analysts and journalists who I have not met but whose work informs these pages. These include the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman, FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten, and many excellent reporters at the Washington Post, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Politico, USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Intercept, Associated Press, and local TV.
Numerous books also contributed. Especially noteworthy are those by Michael Waldman and David Daley. David was very generous with his time and encouraged this effort to peel back the layers of how elections are structured. Other big contributions include drawing on voluminous reporting from The Nation’s Ari Berman, efforts pressing public officials for answers by Greg Palast, and videos by filmmaker Lulu Friesdat. Pro-democracy activists also played a part, such as early postelection analyses by Election Justice USA, recount organizers like Warren Linney, and Verified Voting’s Barbara Simon. Thanks to Keith Conkin for proofreading drafts and suggesting what needed clarification.
I must also thank my family for their support and encouragement. My parents, Ronnie and Sheldon Rosenfeld, continue to encourage me and take pride in my work; my siblings for their feedback; Beth and Danya Sauerhaft who marveled that I made and met my deadlines.
But most of all, I want to thank my partner, Lynda Beth Unkeless, who encouraged this project from the start, was endlessly patient as it took up our spare time, and still found surprises and contributions in libraries and articles that sharpened its content and focus.
Finally, I thank my editor, Jonathan McCullough, for his incisive eye and comments taking the manuscript to a higher level.
ENDNOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. “It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class,” by Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu, Washington Post, June 5, 2017. This report said two-thirds of Trump’s voters earned more than the annual national median household income. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/05/its-time-to-bust-the-myth-most-trump-voters-were-not-working-class/?utm_term=.fc6044e39471&tid=a_inl.
2. “New Video: Watch Wisconsin Election Officials Reject Hand Counts After Electronic Scanners Make Big Mistake: ‘I am just stunned at how inaccurate the whole thing is,’” by Lulu Friesdat, AlterNet.org, December 16, 2016, http://www.alternet.org/new-video-watch-wisconsin-election-officials-reject-hand-counts-after-electronic-scanners-make-big.
3. “Trump Is Dividing The Country, US Voters Say 2–1, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Most Trust Media More Than President,” Quinnipiac University, August 23, 2017, https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2482.
Also see: “Fox News Poll: Voters’ mood sours, 56 percent say Trump tearing country apart,” by Dana Blanton, FoxNews.com, August 30, 2017, “The number of voters happy with how things are going in the country is down 10 percentage points since April and stands at just 35 percent.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/08/30/fox-news-poll-voters-mood-sours-56-percent-say-trump-tearing-country-apart.html.
SECTION I: THE DEMOCRATS
CHAPTER 1: BERNIE SANDERS
4. “Democratic National Convention, 2016,” BallotPedia.org. Sanders had 1,832 pledged delegates from the caucuses and primaries, 45 percent, compared to Clinton’s 2,219 pledged delegates. There were 713 superdelegates in addition. https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_National_Convention,_2016.
5. “Bernie 2016,” Presidential Principle Campaign Committee, US Federal Election Commission. This is the FEC summary page, showing Sanders’s campaign raised $237.6 million. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00577130/?cycle=2016.
6. “Revised Debate Memo,” April 27, 2015, wikileaks.org. This email contains the Clinton campaign memo describing how the DNC coordinated with her campaign to schedule the televised debates in late 2015 and early 2016. After getting the schedule it sought, her campaign pushed the DNC to add another debate before the New Hampshire primary.
https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5688#searchresult.
Also: “Leaked Email Proves DNC Rigged Primary Debates,” by Dan Wright, shadowproof.com, October 12, 2016, https://shadowproof.com/2016/10/12/leaked-email-shows-dnc-rigged-primary-debates/.
7. “Sanders campaign sues DNC after database breach,” by Catherine Treyz, Dan Merica, Jeremy Diamond, Jeff Zeleny, CNN.com, December 21, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-dnc-suspension/index.html.
Also: “Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Give the voter file back to Bernie Sanders’ campaign,” Petition by Carl Gibson, MoveOn.org, https://pac.petitions.moveon.org/sign/debbie-wasserman-schultz-2.
CHAPTER 2: WHO WON IOWA?
8. “The Iowa caucuses: An accident of history,” by David Jackson, USA Today, January 29, 2016, http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/01/29/iowa-caucuses-history-jimmy-carter-julian-zelizer/79426692/.
9. “Hunt Commission,” wikipedia.org. The DNC convened the Hunt Commission in 1981 after a tumultuous 1980 convention, which, in turn, created its super-delegate system. https://e
n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_Commission.
10. Eugene V. Debs, wikipedia.org. Excerpt: “Debs ran as a Socialist candidate for President of the United States five times, including 1900 (earning 0.63% of the popular vote), 1904 (2.98%), 1908 (2.83%), 1912 (5.99%), and 1920 (3.41%), the last time from a prison cell.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs.
11. Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In, by Bernie Sanders, Thomas Dunne Books, 2016. p. 170–171. https://us.macmillan.com/ourrevolution/berniesanders/9781250132925.
12. “Editorial: Something smells in the Democratic Party,” The Des Moines Register editorial, February 3, 2016, questioning whether Clinton had won and noting the ineptly run contest. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/caucus/2016/02/03/editorial-something-smells-democratic-party/79777580/.
13. Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, Crown, 2016, page 111, http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/search/shattered?q=shattered.
14. “Statement on Hillary Clinton’s Victory in the Iowa Caucus,” by Hillary for America’s Iowa State Director Matt Paul, February 2, 2016, https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/statements/2016/02/02/iowa-caucus-victory/.
15. Iowa’s nightmare revisited: Was correct winner called? Report by Jennifer Jacobs, Feb. 2, 2016, questioning the accuracy of Iowa’s Democratic Caucus count and winner, http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2016/02/02/iowas-nightmare-revisited-correct-winner-called-caucus-night/79702010/.
Inside Job Page 15