Why Americans don't vote

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction... The instability, injustice, and confusions introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.

James Madison The Federalist Papers, #10

So, the Texas primary season is over, or at least it is for those whose races did not leave them in a position to face a runoff. But with the season being for the most part over, there comes the usual grumblings and wailings from my friends about low voter turnout whenever Americans hold elections. Several months ago, after the City of Houston elections, there was the same complaint - some 15 percent of registered voters in Houston bothered to vote in the City of Houston general election for Mayor and Council. So, Felicia Cravens asks, "why don’t people vote in primaries?"

The Wizard has a confession to make. Years ago, I used to get incredibly upset about the same issue. "Why don't people vote?", I go screaming to myself. Don't they understand! It matters so much! It's the end of the planet if they don't vote! A woman named Jackie Juntti complains on Facebook of suffering from the battered voter syndrome.

At the same time, the leftist "progressives" have been complaining recently that America is "ungovernable", which really means that they are going absolutely bananas because the Democrats hold three out of five seats in both the House and the Senate, as well as the Presidency. Yet incredibly, the Democratic Party has not been able (yet) to push through Obama Care, nor have they been able to push through Cap and Trade.

So what has led America to this sorry state of affairs? Better yet, one might want to ask whether this is a sorry state of affairs to begin with?

First of all, we need to go back and reread the words of the Founders. Madison had done his homework when he traveled to Philadelphia in 1789. Madison knew from reading history that establishing America as a pure democracy would create a serious danger whereby the fiery passions of the public would end up invoking whipsaws of policy, egged on by the mob. The turbulence that lurks in all of us would be erupting constantly. Peace and tranquility, which is a precursor to happiness and progress, would be a rarity.

Therefore, Madison and the rest of the Founders rendered a Republic. But more importantly, they also knew that even though many Americans would declare that they love liberty and freedom, their actions would often belie their words. So, being ten steps ahead of the rest of us, as they always were, the Founders created a political system that made it very difficult to get anything done. Two bodies of Legislators, along with an Executive, and all the affected interest groups, all have to come to some kind of agreement that this is the way in which things are going to be. Passing legislation on big issues that affect large swaths of the populace in America is like trying to herd around a bunch of cats. You have to corral them all in order to get something done.

"But wait, Wizard!", come the objection. And yes, I know, somebody out there is going to come up with some point where some President or some lower level public official did something quite easily. But people who do that are missing the forest for the trees. How many times have Presidents in America tried to push through universal health insurance? Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton, and now Obama? Remember, compulsory universal health insurance was something that was enacted decades ago by just about every other wealthy country in the world - except the United States.

That in turn should lead us to examine the political regimes of other countries. Why is it that other countries found it relatively easy to enact such legislation, whereas in America, the progressives have tried over and over and over again to reach the summit?

In the United Kingdom, for example, we don't have such lofty notions such as judicial review of laws, but rather we find such concepts as Parliamentary Supremacy. In other words, Parliaments in Britain and some other countries can make laws on just about anything they damned well please, and they can't be questioned by courts. In contrast, in the United States we have a Bill of Rights and judicial review. Governments can't always do what they want and sometimes legislation is struck down. In other words, there are more barriers in the United States to doing things, but it also means that each branch of government has to pay at least a little bit of attention on whether other branches of government will stomach what each other is doing.

Moreover, we also inherited from Britain the idea of single member representative districts, whose officials are usually elected by a plurality, an electoral system otherwise known as winner take all or first past the post. SMP style electoral systems can produce some stunning results. In the 1997 UK general elections, the Labor Party led by Tony Blair, came to power off of an election where the Labor Party won 43 percent of the votes, yet got 63 percent of the seats in Parliament. Because the Labor Party got over 50 percent +1 seats in Parliament, they got to make all the rules, and since Britain is a unitary state and not a federal state like the United States is, nearly all the power is embodied in one political body - Parliament. Parliament also controls well over 90 percent of all taxation spending in the UK, with town councils being responsible for the petty remainder. To put things bluntly, if Britons decide to elect a Labor government, they are going to get more government than they would if the install a Conservative Party government. In other words, it matters who gets elected.

In contrast, because we have a federalized nation, the political power is far more spread out and atomized in the United States. There is a central government in Washington, but there are fifty states, and thousands of towns and cities. The federal government has taken in some two thirds of all taxes since WWII, but state and local governments are responsible for the other one third. States and local governments also set rules on policing, criminal justice, land and water use matters, transportation, amongst many other issues. The result is what Madison intended - a political system where an attempt to preserve liberty and freedom to put into place by limiting the power of any one political actor or body to do damage to others. Californians may run themselves into bankruptcy and enact all kinds of kooky rules, but the fact that California is doing so is not necessarily going to harm other states or localities. Furthermore, Californians can move if they get fed up with their state of affairs and go elsewhere. In other words, our Founders set up a system where they tried to make it where it didn't quite matter so much who is in charge. How many times have you heard the old phrase, you have a choice between twiddle dee dom and twiddle dee dee?

So, we have single member legislative districts, but does it have to be this way? Of course not, and in many countries it isn't. In Germany, voters cast two votes - one for a district representative and one for a political party. 50 percent of the seats in the German Bundestag are apportioned by single member districts, and the other 50 percent are apportioned by how many votes each party receives in the election in what is called a mixed member proportional electoral system. One result is that there are more political parties in Germany, but another result is that in order to obtain a ruling majority, parties often have to form coalitions with other parties, whereas in the United States that doesn't happen. One of the two parties wins a majority and wins power, but even then, the ruling majorities in Congress are often uneasy majorities, as can be witnessed in the liberal / blue dog coalitions of Democrats that Nancy Pelosi presides over in Congress. Pelosi has big problems holding her coalition together, which again makes it hard to get things done.

To give an example of how things could be different in American government, take the election of John Culberson in November 2008 in the Texas 7th congressional district. Mr. Culberson beat Michael Skelley by a margin of 56 - 42 percent. Since a Republican wins the district, but what about the Democrats who voted against him? How are their views represented, or ask yourself whether theirs was a wasted vote? If it was a wasted vote, then why bother to vote in legislative districts where parties have incentives to gerrymander to gain as many seats as possible, packing votes into the seats held by the minoritity and cracking the districts held by the majority, thereby marginalizing the votes of many.

In a proportional representation system, there would be other ways of capturing the sentiment in that vote and people would find voting more meaningful. If there would have been five members apportioned in each district instead of one, the outcome might have been that three Republicans and two Democrats would have been elected to represent the 7th district. One thing Americans might want to consider is adding more seats to our legislatures in an effort to better capture the public sentiments of a growing population. The U.S. Congress has been stuck at 435 members for quite a while now. America gets trade offs - we lose the far edge sentiments of the left and right, but America gains stability and coherence in its government.

This state of affairs also leads into the question of whether any particular election had any meaning or not? I'll be up front: Most people are not going to know the difference, nor are they going to care, who sits on the Harris County Probate Court #3, or some other random court. In general, the higher up the political ladder, the higher the turnout rates are going to be for an election because there is more at stake. More people are going to turn out for a U.S. Senatorial election than one for a local Justice of the Peace court. Why, because a U.S. Senator has more power than a local JP does.

Ask yourself this: In any one particular election, ask yourself what's at stake? Does a particular election have any meaning, or is it basically meaningless? How much power does a particular office holder have? In the November 2009 City of Houston general elections, what was at stake was who was going to be sitting on the deliberative body of a major city. Under Houston's form of government, the mayor has the power, hence one should expect greater competitive pressures to obtain the job verses that of a city council member.

But, here is another point: What difference was there amongst the candidates? Did any of the four candidates - Annise Parker, Peter Brown, Gene Locke, or Roy Morales propose any radical changes in city governance? Did any of them propose to sell off Houston's two main airports? Did any of the mayoral candidates propose going to Austin and asking for legislation empowering Houston to collect 20 cents of gasoline taxes to solve Houston's transportation woes? No. Did any of them propose doing away with property taxes and implementing sales taxes? No. Did any candidate propose scrapping rail and rethinking Metro Rail? The closest thing to that was Roy Morales stating that Metro was a bully and that we should examine elevated rail for safety reasons. Peter Brown was specifically going to implement greater land use controls if elected, but otherwise there was not that great of difference between the candidates.

So, if there was not that great of difference between the candidates, what else was at stake for the public in competing for a job that one person once described at the Houston Chronicle website as being a glorified dog catcher? If you had to call the fire department because your home or your neighbor's residence had caught on fire, and they showed up, would it have mattered whether Annise Parker, Peter Brown, Bob Lanier, or Roy Morales were the ones sitting in the Mayor's chair when that happened? What about your City Council member? Probably not. So ask yourself - what difference does it make to you who sits in the Mayor's chair or on council, and hence why bother to vote?

In the 2009 Texas primaries, what was at stake? Both main parties (and there are two main parties, because we have single member districts, right?) chose their candidates for the Texas legislature and Governor, but not who was going to be the Governor! And what if you are an independent voter who does not subscribe to either party? Why should you have voted?

Another issue at stake is asking how much does you vote really matter? In the 2008 Presidential and congressional elections, 60 percent of eligible Americans, over 120 million in all, voted in the Presidential election. How much of a probability is your vote going to be the one that mattered? Ask yourself the same thing in any election - in the 2006 Texas primaries, there were over 600,000 voters who voted, a far smaller number. But you still needed to ask yourself what was the probability that your vote was the one that mattered? It was non-existent.

So, do you want people to vote? It is possible to force people to vote, indeed compulsory voting is the law in a number of countries. Such laws are usually enforced by small fines, or threat of disenfranchisement if someone habitually fails to vote. But one needs to ask whether such notions are compatible with liberty and freedom. Do you want to live in a country where it is compulsory to participate in politics? Better yet, how much knowledge do people really possess about political issues? Yet compulsory voting would be compelling them to participate in the political arena.

Admittedly, this entry is a mess, but America's political system was designed to make things bland and unexciting, thereby discouraging participation in politics. Yes change could come, but it would come slowly and in increments, not through sudden explosions or radical change. Elections and voting do matter in America, but they usually don't matter as much as people think, because of systemic barriers to more political parties, of fractured government power, and barriers put in the way of the expansion of the state. By doing this, our Founders wanted people to dedicate their energies into commercialism, to solving problems through private means or by charity, and not by force of the state, and for them that was the way in which liberty and freedom would be preserved. Did it work? Well, for 140 years it generally did, but WWII changed everything.

Barring a meltdown and a revolution, which is a distinct possibility, it will take another 70 years to roll things back and even then there are plenty of interest groups and people favoring bigger government that will stand in the way of liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility. And so it goes that the great American experiment roll onwards.

Wizard

The University Line FEIS

I'm going to be up late tonight. After reading some work related stuff, I'm writing a response to Harris County Metro's FEIS for the University rail line. This is the fourth public reply comment I've made on Metro's rail lines. In previous public comments, I've submitted photos to Metro, the FTA, and to members of Congress, that show all the "for lease" signs and boarded up property along Main Street that contradict economic development claims, I've shown empty streets near Crosstimbers and ridden Metro buses to dispute their travel savings time claims, I've predicted cost escalations, have shown evidence that Metro's rosy future cash analysis predictions are garbage (why would Metro Chairman David Wolff otherwise be writing editorials in the Houston Chronicle demanding that Metro's sales tax territorial jurisdiction be expanded?), and have asked whether all we are doing is simply turning bus riders into rail riders, just to name a few things. But every time, Metro gets their FEIS approved, as they simply brush aside any public criticisms with simple one line replies, as they waltz their merry way towards bagging federal grants.

Why bother? The NEPA / EIS process, like nearly everything else the federal government does, is full of nothing but bullshit.

Wizard