The 2016 presidential campaign is anything but presidential, sweeping the gutter for all the dirt and muck that has lain dormant for decades. I predicted it would be ugly and full of smears so I should not be surprised, yet I am still disappointed that my cynicism has been realized.
The only people who really should love this election are the comics, where their jokes are practically growing on trees, and the pundits whose columns almost write themselves. I contribute a few Facebook memes and share some articles, but find it challenging to come up with anything new and insightful anymore.
Lately Donald Trump has been going around the country saying the election is “rigged”. The media have been enumerating why it is not and cannot be rigged, mostly focusing on the decentralization of the election process and the rarity of in person voter fraud.
But is the Political System “rigged”?
MORE REPRESENTATIVES TO THE PARTY WITH LESS VOTES
From Vox about the 2015 Senate composition after the 2014 election:
“…the 46 Democratic caucus members in the 114th Congress received a total of 67.8 million votes in winning their seats, while the 54 Republican caucus members received 47.1 million votes.”
From Bill Moyers about the 2012 House election:
“In 2012, the first congressional election after the last round of gerrymandering, Democratic House candidates won 50.59 percent of the vote — or 1.37 million more votes than Republican candidates — yet secured only 201 seats in Congress, compared to 234 seats for Republicans. The House of Representatives, the “people’s house,” no longer requires the most votes for power.”
The Senators that comprise the Senate actually were elected over six years in three different election cycles so the national political circumstances were undoubtedly different; yet it is also the large state / small state divide that contributes to this disparity. Of course that was the intention of the Framers as they put into the Constitution a system where one chamber gives equal weight to each state independent of population. One can argue whether this is Democratic or not but it is the system we have always had. So in that sense it is not rigged.
The House is a different story. When Elbridge Gerry signed a bill in 1812 to redistrict Massachusetts to favor one political party, a time honored procedure was established to actually “Rig” the system. One hundred years later, in 2012, Republicans received 47.6% of the total votes yet won 53.7% of the total number of seats.
From Wikipedia:
“By moving geographic boundaries, the incumbent party packs opposition voters into a few districts they will already win, wasting those extra votes. Remaining districts are more tightly constructed, with the opposition party allowed a bare minority count.”
I maintain that this is unfair, unnecessary and undemocratic. It is also as outdated as the old Spoils system before Civil Service.
From the Washington Post:
“…as long as humans are drawing the lines, there’s a danger of bias and self-interest to creep into the process. There is another way, however: we could simply let computers do the drawing for us.”
The maps below are based on the 2010 census data. The computer map is based on an algorithm that “draws districts that respect the boundaries of census blocks, which are the smallest geographic units used by the Census Bureau.”
The computer draws smooth, uncontorted lines to determine districts solely on population and without regard to partisan politics.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE
The Electoral College, another byproduct of our constitution, can also be viewed as unfair and undemocratic. In our nation’s history there have been four elections where a president was elected without winning the popular vote:
1824 John Quincy Adams
1876 Rutherford B. Hayes
1888 Benjamin Harrison
2000 George W. Bush
There are Pros and Cons of the Electoral College System and it seems like reforming or changing it is a subject that comes up every four years, but technically since it is the system we have, it is not something that is rigged. So far there are two states that allocate Electoral College votes proportionally instead of winner take all: Nebraska (5) and Maine (4). If all states did this it would change the elections dramatically, probably to the detriment of the big Blue states.
THE MEDIA
Oy vey! Everyone wants to kick the media, including me. Especially me. It is powerful, influential, more corporate oligarchy than ever and not accountable. Its reports are dumbed down, distracted by the latest shiny object, focused on the lurid, the sensational and the celebrity. Rare is the intellectual rigor to cover political issues and rife are the snarky narratives that boil complex ideas into bumper sticker slogans.
There have been numerous studies of media bias, but like in economics studies, they disagree with each other; critical of models and methodology. Not surprisingly:
“Research into studies of media bias in the United States shows that liberal experimenters tend to get results that say the media has a conservative bias, while conservatives experimenters tend to get results that say the media has a liberal bias.”
In some ways it doesn’t matter which way the bias goes as the country has divided itself where most conservatives only watch/read conservative media and liberals do likewise with liberal media. It is an unhealthy and anti-intellectual echo chamber where ideas are not sufficiently challenged, and compromise or consensus is rarely achieved. Whatever happened to the idea of the Hegelian Dialectic where there is a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (resolution)?
Sometimes the lines cross where one candidate has a disproportionate amount of the media either for or against him/her, even across the political spectrum. This is currently true in 2016; it was also true in 2000, though more through negative false narratives and not as overtly.
The current media has strongly focused more than ever on the horse race, endlessly commenting on and analyzing polls about who is ahead, who is behind, with what demographics and in what locations. This, and the various gaffes and endless accusations predominate the coverage of the election. The creation of “Politicotainment”, to get the most eyeballs and biggest profits has become a circus; a spoon feeding of form over substance; glamor over knowledge; superficial beauty over truth. The Candidates are the stars of the show while the pundits are the clowns acting out of a false sense of sincerity. We are in the seats watching; some of us getting sick on the cotton candy.
MONEY
The money factor is another way in which our system could be considered rigged. An in-depth analysis with charts and graphs can be found at link below. The bullet points show where it is going.
The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know About Money-in-Politics
- Money follow power
- Incumbents nearly always win
- Most Congressional races are not competitive
- Small donors make good press; big donors get you reelected
- Interests behind the money are predictable
- Donors seek a long term relationship
- The fundraising never stops
- Enforcement of campaign laws is weak
- All hell broke loose in the 2010 election
- They don’t have to be crooks
So again one must ask: “Is the election rigged?”
The answer as far as I’m concerned, is Yes. Our Electoral System is rigged. The money factor means we will usually have candidates that are corrupt or at least somewhat subservient to special interests. The gerrymandering means we may get a House of Representatives that do not reflect the Democratic mandate of the voters. The Electoral College means that the President also may not reflect the will of the People. And the media supply the propaganda for the candidate that best meets their corporate desires.
Voting at the polls is not a problem (disclosure: I am a poll worker). But our whole system of government, our representative democracy, is based on everyone having an equal voice, an equal vote. Yet because of money and gerrymandering in particular, and the outsized influence of the media, this is not what we are experiencing today.
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