interviews
After the Polls Close
by John Fortier
October 19, 2020
This interview with John Fortier, Director of Bipartisan Policy Center’s Democracy Project, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Why do we have an Electoral College?
Our election system is really much more of a states’ issue than people realize. We vote differently in different states, and the Electoral College really is the mechanism by which we vote through the states.
Who makes up the Electoral College? Who are our electors?
Sometimes people think of the Electoral College as a point system — if you win a state, you get some amount of points — but, really, when you vote, you are electing a slate of electors.
Slates of electors — one Republican, one Democrat — are nominated or elected by the parties in each state. On election day, the public votes for one of those slates.
The vote on November 3rd typically results in an Electoral College majority. There is a second election in December amongst electors, but it is not widely discussed or covered, mostly, because it doesn’t matter. Electors are loyal to their parties and typically vote as expected. The new Congress then votes to validate the Electoral College votes on January 6th, and by January 20th we reach inauguration. Usually, there are not any great hiccups in the process.
Does that change if it is a close election?
Even in a close election, we don’t think too much about the Electoral College. However, there are a few things that have happened in the past that could happen again.
First, there can be “faithless electors” — electors who vote against the popular vote of their state. Electors, for the most part, have the ability to act freely, and some people worry that they could tip a very close election if a few electors were to change their votes at the last minute — they could move the total for a candidate from 270 to 268, for example. However, in the past, faithless votes tend to be protest votes that do not really amount to anything.
Recently, a number of states have passed strict laws that bind their electors to the popular vote of their state. Previously, laws asked that electors be bound and, in some cases, imposed small fines on faithless electors, but there were no severe constraints. In the 15 States that now have this power, electors will be replaced if they vote the wrong way.
I wasn't sure if that was going to pass constitutional muster, but The Supreme Court upheld it this summer. The Supreme Court actually, in their footnote, hinted at the idea that the only case where this would cause additional hiccups is in the scenario that a candidate unexpectedly drops out, dies, or, for one reason or another, is not on the ticket. Which, of course, is something that has been in the conversation over the last couple of weeks with the president having Covid.
Another thing that can happen is the bargaining amongst the electors. In the 1968 election, George Wallace, a third-party candidate, won states and won electoral votes. Amongst the Nixon and the Humphrey electors, there was some discussion about coming together to exclude the Wallace electors. They didn’t want the election thrown into the House of Representatives, which is what happens if the Electoral College is tied.
But these are sort of odd situations, and these aren't the issues that keep me up at night.
What would you consider to be the more pressing concerns with the Electoral College during this election cycle?
I think the more realistic scenario that we could see is something like what started to happen in 2000 or what happened in 1876. In both cases, because the state race was so tight, there was a real question as to which slate of electors, the Republican slate or the Democratic slate, should be appointed.
In Florida 2000, if Al Gore were to pull ahead in the recount, would a second slate of electors need to be appointed? Eventually the Supreme Court stepped in and halted the recount in Florida, and the Republican slate of electors was appointed. But, imagine a scenario where the dispute is not resolved.
There are cases where two slates of electors may be appointed, and there is no set way to resolve that conflict.
Eventually, the dispute will end up in Congress’ hands, but it is not clear in The Constitution how Congress is supposed to decide. After 1876, when multiple slates of electors were actually sent in, Congress passed the Electoral Count Act to try to address how to approach that sort of scenario, but, I would say, it still is ambiguous.
It is also important to note that though we do have popular elections in every state, popular elections are not guaranteed by The Constitution.
Early on in our democracy, many state legislatures would directly appoint state electors. If you had a Republican legislature, you would appoint a Republican slate of electors. While this faded out after the Civil War, an argument — a controversial argument — was made by the Florida legislature in 2000. The Republican legislature felt that Democratic attorney generals were unfairly favoring the recount for Gore, so they wanted to step in and send the slate of electors to Washington themselves.
If I wanted to think of disaster scenarios — this is the sort of case that would be the disaster scenario. This is where there is the least amount of clarity in the election mechanisms after November 3rd. This is where parties could really seriously disagree, and this is where we have no third arbitrator to decide between the two of them. The parties would have to work it out on their own.
Are there deadlines that are important to know in the electoral process?
The president’s term ends on January 20th at noon.
Despite conversations about postponing the election, it would be incredibly hard to do. The deadline is in The Constitution.
If the election is not resolved by the inauguration, if it is still with the House of Representatives, then perhaps we have to go to the line of succession. But January the 20th at noon is when a new president has to take office.
There are two other dates that might matter. They're both in law, not in The Constitution, so theoretically they could be moved. There is the meeting of the electors, which is on December 14th this year. There is also the “safe harbor” deadline which is 6 days before the meeting of the electors, which is set by law to try and aid in the counting by ensuring no interference from Congress if the counting is complete by the set deadline. This date was highlighted by The Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, and was one of the reasons they stopped the recount.
Recently, it seems there have been a lot of claims that the electoral process is undemocratic, and a push to move us towards a national popular vote. Do you think the Electoral College is still a democratic system?
The Electoral College has never been particularly popular in the modern era. Many people think that we should have a national popular vote — it is a more natural line of thought. And if we were to start from scratch now, maybe we would instill a national popular vote.
But is the Electoral College system undemocratic? I guess that I am not fully convinced of that.
We are a country of states. And though a few times there has been a difference between who wins the Electoral College and who wins the popular vote, it still is very unlikely to happen.
The proposal for a national vote, as it stands, is a halfway house, because it is really hard to amend The Constitution. States can appoint electors directly based on whatever criterion they want, and so the idea would be to appoint electors based on national popular, rather than the states' vote. But, there are some issues with that. What happens if the election is really close? You can’t really recount a national election, you can only recount the states. You would also have to make sure that all the states are uniform in their elections. And maybe that's a good thing, maybe people would like that. But maybe when we get down to the nitty-gritty and people will say, "Well, we really liked the way we vote in Alaska, it's good for us, or we like the way we vote in Oregon."
It is hard for a party to be on the losing end of this system twice within 16 years, and perhaps once more again, but I think there are reasons to be cautious about changing the system.
interviews
Losing Our Religion
by Lonna Atkeson
October 14, 2020
This interview with Lonna Atkeson, professor at University of New Mexico, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
Lonna Atkeson | I study political science, election science, and election administration, and have been studying these subjects for a very long time. I like to think of myself as someone who has elections in my DNA. When I was a very little girl, around seven years old, I set up my own ballot boxes around my neighborhood. I have always loved elections, and see myself as having a long term connection with these questions and interests.
frank | How do voters establish their perceptions of election integrity? How does rhetoric affect the perception of integrity?
In political science, we measure the perceived integrity of elections with a couple of questions. How confident are you that your ballot was counted correctly? How confident are you that all the ballots in your state were counted correctly? In the nation? From these questions, we can assess how people feel about the legitimacy of the process.
This election year is obviously complicated with COVID, and the election process itself is much more complicated this time around for voters. That can lead to confusion, and confusion can go on to affect how voters ultimately feel about this election's integrity. The way people perceive the election is largely rooted in their own experience.
We have also been presented with two very interesting narratives about election integrity— one on the left and one on the right. On the left, you hear concerns about the potential for voter suppression. On the right, you hear issues about voter fraud.
Is there legitimacy to those narratives? Is voter fraud something to be worried about? Is voter suppression a legitimate thing to be worried about?
To begin thinking about this question, I think it is important to ask — what is the goal of an election? There are three pillars: integrity, access, and finality. These pillars work in tension with each other. The more accessible the system is, the more open it is to mischief. The more you tighten the system to prevent mischief, the lower access is, and the more likely you are to prevent some people from getting the opportunity to vote. You can make changes to both integrity and access, but then you change the finality of the election — when is this process going to end? We need some sort of finality, and finality is almost certain to be affected in this election as we expect to see a longer counting process.
So the way people perceive the election is going to be in part affected by the narrative that they're placed in, as well as whatever experience they have with their own ballot and their own election system. Does their ballot get rejected? Do other people's ballots get rejected? How many ballots get rejected? People are seeing all these things on social media where people are receiving someone else's ballot. These are all new experiences for people, and they're having to evaluate them individually. What does that mean for the integrity of the process? We haven't talked about these things very much, but they could be very important in this election, and they're important in elections generally.
The conversation seems very specific to the United States. Why do you think that is? And how does the public perception of elections affect the democratic underpinnings of the U.S.?
I think it's about the affective polarization going on in the US — voting is just another space to be polarized. Again, the left and the right see things differently. Integrity and access are both natural things to look at when looking at an election. You can be more concerned about one or the other, depending on what your experience is, or depending on what the narrative of your party is.
The question of how the public is going to view the legitimacy of this election, is really the major question at hand.
The aftermath of the election is also going to be hugely important. Obviously, if it's a blowout election, then things are going to be easy to resolve. But if it's a close election, and there's a lot of rejected ballots due to people engaging in a process that they're inexperienced with, how does that affect the perceived legitimacy?
In May, in a local New Jersey election, there was an average of 10% rejection rate across all of the counties. If we see that kind of rejection rate in a close state like Pennsylvania or Florida, how is that going to affect our perception not only of the legitimacy of the election, but the legitimacy of who takes office?
It's one thing, to feel like, I voted in this process and I don't like the people who got elected, but I believe that they're legitimately elected. It's another thing to feel like, I don't like the people in office and I don't even think they belong there — in fact, I don't even think we elected them. That has the potential to undermine democracy. That is what is scary about this election.
What can people do to prepare for a disputed outcome?
If you're concerned about the post office, then drop your ballot off. Most states allow you to drop your ballot off at an early voting location or the county election official office. People should be primarily concerned about securing themselves. I think that's fundamental, because if I'm in control of my process, if I know what's happening, and if I have some sense that other people are doing the same, then I am going to have greater confidence in the election.
A lot of people are looking to the 2000 election and to Florida. It seems that the difference is, both candidates were prepared to walk away based on the result. How does this moment feel by comparison?
Gallup polled people's perspectives on the legitimacy of both the 2000 election and the 2016 election. The public response was the same in both elections. Despite all the loud rhetoric, most people accepted the legitimacy of the election, no problem.
Sometimes I wonder how much the voices, and the extremism of social media, enhances fear, outrage, and anger in an outsized way. If you were to just look around your own life, it's not that dangerous. But when we look at images, we have these mirroring neurons in our minds that make us feel like we are there too — that's why we like watching sports and dancing. And of course, that is a problem in politics, because it enhances the extremism in our society. No one's going to get away from social media, but, probably, that is what we should do.
How should the media participate in the narrative about the election's integrity and legitimacy?
I think that's really complex because, again, there are two, rather extreme, narratives circulating. And everyone seems to be embedded in these narratives in a way that I have not seen before. Historically, we have not seen high levels of attitude constraints — the level of consistency between attitudes within an individual belief system. However, in the last decade, attitude constraint has increased. That is largely because we are embedded in systems, the media being one, that encourages us to create more constraint among our belief systems. It aligns everybody into much clearer tribes and camps than we have seen before.
People on both the left and the right clearly feel that the government is unresponsive, but their solutions and policy preferences are distinctly different. And we have gotten much worse at being tolerant of each other. I teach political behavior, and I added a moral component to my class where I actually try to teach intellectual humility. I think that we have lost a reasonableness.
We have such a tendency to see such undesirable traits in each other.
I live in a home where my sons are Republicans and I'm not, so I have to deal with this all of the time. Living in a home that is divisive makes me have to be not divisive, and I don't think we're living in many places where that's an opportunity anymore. I live in this unique home, in a unique environment. I come from a working-class family — I'm very educated and my family's not very educated. My family could be considered more Trumpian right now, and we have to be really tolerant of each other, but most people don't have to be.
As a professor, I go out and talk to my community all the time. Even eight years ago, I could go out into the community and have a discussion about interesting ideas. Now when I go out in the community, I feel like people mostly want me to tell them what they want to hear. That's a switch. It wasn't like that a decade ago.
Regardless of the result of this election, I find it hard to think about what happens beyond November 3rd. The polarization seems hard to overcome.
I'm expecting a whole barrage of litigation regarding the integrity of ballots or arguments about the counting of ballots on November 3rd, but I can't think much beyond that either. If I try to think about what a different administration would look like under COVID, is it really going to be much different?
Between the parties, there are push and pull factors. When you think about how working-class Americans have turned to the Republican party and turned to Trump, that is not just a pull factor. The Democratic party has made a huge effort to push those people away. It's part of the rhetoric these leaders use as well. Both Clinton and Obama spoke about working-class voters in a certain way that sent a message to working-class voters that they were not wanted in the party.
It seems to me that we only ever focus on the pull factors, and we don't think about how it's both a push and pull system that works to move people into different camps. That is much more dynamic and a much more complete understanding of what is going on in our political system.
I think if we are adamant Republicans admit the failure of their party lies in race, we should be equally staunch about Democrats acknowledging the failure and abandonment of the working class.
My family is all working class, they're all out there in the grocery store, while all of my professor friends are locked away in their houses, Zooming along. To me, this moment seems like such a class issue, but we don’t seem to be talking about it in that way at all.
Our conversations in the political realm seem to consistently fail to get to the root of people’s needs. There is an underlying feeling in this country that the government is unresponsive. I mean, I have heard politicians talk about bringing businesses together for cheaper health care and lowering the cost of prescription drugs for basically my entire life. I've heard the same messages, from both sides, over and over and over again. People have experienced this over and over again, and who is or isn’t in power hasn't mattered much to their bottom line.
There are many reasons why people could find Democrats unattractive and Republicans or Trump attractive. We all think that politicians are liars. The thing about Trump is that he wears that all on his sleeve. He’s honestly dishonest. Do you know what I mean? I think for some people, they look at him and think, well yeah he's dishonest, but so is Biden, so is my Congressman.
Right, and when people operate under the guise of morality and ethics, it feels more evil.
Morality is something that worries me so much in politics. It results in equating politics with religion, because moral authority is what religion has. If you have a moral reason to do something, you can't and won’t compromise. There is no ability to compromise — if you claim moral authority, there's a line in the sand.
The whole design of the American government is to try to compromise — to thwart majoritarianism, to thwart the passions of the people, and to thwart moral authority. Madison was obsessed with the possibility of the majority being tyrants, and the whole system is designed to stop that and to enforce incrementalism.
But now, I hear politicians regularly use the word moral – easily, which is dangerous because morality prevents them from compromising. It leads the people to believe there is only one right outcome. And as we see the decline of religion globally, is politics the next religion? We tried hard in this country to remove politics from religion, but it seems that as political ideology becomes more constrained and more important in people's lives, we are moving to a place where politics is our religion. Especially on the left, because people on the right actually have another religion that they are attracted to. That is very worrisome.
Promoting politics as religion is dangerous, and promoting politicians as idols or celebrities is dangerous too. It makes it easy to forget they work for you, because celebrities have fans, fans act as a congregation, not as a critical electorate.
It's too affective. It's not rational. Where's the rationality? We've been moving away from rationality towards affective politics, and that is problematic.
When I think about candidate campaigns, I think of them as love affairs. I think it is a really great metaphor for the way you are introduced to a candidate. You can think about this in the context of 2008, where there is this love affair with Obama. And what happens in a love affair? You project onto a person and see yourself in them — they believe this, or they are just like me on this. And over time, you come to realize, well, no, they're not just like me. And the love affair starts to change. But because politics is a collective love affair, not an individual one, the projections can remain longer. In a collective world and as a collective person, I can continue to project onto them because what is the real impact on me?