ERIK B. ALEXANDER AND RACHEL A. SHELDEN have published a blog post reflecting on the significance of their recent article, which I mentioned a few weeks back in a post on the history of third parties in the United States.
For more than half a century, historians have relied (often implicitly) on a model of organizing U.S. political history around distinct and separate “party systems,” pitting two competitive, stable, national parties against one another for long stretches of time between short bursts of realignment. In the context of the shifting political landscape of 1868, however, explaining the partisan politics of the Johnson impeachment through the party system model is the equivalent of forcing a square peg into a round hole.
They then apply this to Andrew Johnson’s impeachment vote.
How, then, are we to understand the partisan breakdown of the 1868 vote to impeach? If we conflate the Union Party with the Republican Party, was Johnson a Republican? He may have flirted with the Democrats in pursuing a revived Union Party, but he was not a Democrat. And while Democrats certainly supported Johnson’s vision for Reconstruction over that of the Republicans, they did not view him as a member of their party either. In other words, including Johnson in any kind of accounting of the partisan politics of impeachments is confusing at best.
. . . .
We argue that it is high time to shed the confines of that model. Nineteenth-century politics are better described as fluid, unstable, and federal, operating through a series of mechanisms—networks, newspapers, customs, and laws—unique to that era. Political actors used these mechanisms to address the most pressing ideological and constitutional conflicts of their era, often in concert with broader political activism. They could quickly organize new parties to address problems as they arose, and just as quickly discard parties when the issues were resolved (or when absorbed by another party). In this way, parties were deeply integrated into the broader fabric of American political life, rather than serving as its organizing structures.
Politico. RFK, Jr.’s campaign currently depends on money from his VP, Nicole Shanahan. In April, she contributed $ 8 million. Independent presidential candidate + wealthy donor as VP is a well-established pattern to avoid campaign contribution limits. In 1980, David Koch ran as the VP for the Libertarian Party for the same purpose. More interestingly, the article notes:
“Kennedy’s campaign received $843,000 from unitemized donors — those giving less than $200 — in April, down from $1.3 million from such donors in March. It was the lowest unitemized donor total for him for any month this calendar year.
Small donor money may not be necessary to fund Kennedy’s campaign if Shanahan keeps cutting big checks. But funds from donors giving only a little are also one gauge of grassroots support.”
AP News: “Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley sentenced DePape to 20 years for attempted kidnapping and 30 years for the assault, the maximum for both counts. The sentences will run concurrently. He also was given credit for the 18 months he has been in custody.”
Justin here. As the former President’s New York trial begins its denouement, I’ve fielded a growing number of questions about the application of felony disenfranchisement rules in the event that Trump were convicted. There’s vanishingly little chance that the former President will be prevented from casting a vote for himself this fall.
(As with so many issues in the administration of criminal justice of new salience for portions of the public, and with respect to Florida felony disenfranchisement rules in particular, I can think of a lot of reasons why they’d warrant public attention … but not because of a need or desire for more disenfranchisement faster.)
Here’s how it works.
Back in 2019, Donald Trump moved his permanent residence to Mar-a-Lago, which means he’s a Florida voter. (And cast ballots in Florida in 2020 – by mail for the presidential preference primary and state primary, and in person for the general election.)
Florida’s rules on disenfranchisement for convictions out of state apparently depend on the rules out of state. According to the Florida Department of State‘s website, other than convictions for murder or sexual offenses, “a felony conviction in another state makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida only if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the state where the person was convicted.”
Meanwhile, in New York, a 2021 law amended the state code to disenfranchise a person convicted of felony only “while he or she is incarcerated for such felony.” (emphasis added)
So if Donald Trump were convicted of a felony in New York, and if that conviction came with a sentence of incarceration, I’m quite confident that there would still be a vigorous appellate process — lasting many months at a minimum — before any incarceration began, and before his right to vote in Florida were put in jeopardy.
Not all money in politics is bad. This was my conclusion after writing Beyond Campaign Finance Reform. A singular focus on the ways money “amplifies the voices of the super-wealthy few” ignores that it takes money to support the political organizing and mobilizing of working and middle-class voters, and it takes money to counteract the outsized power of economic elites. “Money invested in building sustainable political consciousness and voter engagement is money well spent from a democratic standpoint,” I wrote.
“Money invested in building sustainable political consciousness and voter engagement is money well spent from a democratic standpoint.”
Philanthropists are coming around to the same view. Increasingly aware of the centrality of political engagement and organization to reinforcing democratic norms and practices, the Democracy Fund is spurring democracy grantmakers to fund nonpartisan democracy work early in the 2024 election cycle, arguing in a series of announcements, op-eds, and blog posts that donors should not wait until this coming fall to pick their priorities and should instead move monies out the door now. Grants will fund efforts to “recruit and train community canvassers, organize voter registration drives, and combat disinformation and misinformation, among other election-related efforts.” As Joe Goldman, the Fund’s president, recently wrote in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, along with Laleh Ispihani, the executive director of Open Society-US, and Deepak Bhargava, the president of the JPB Foundation, “Nonprofit organizations perform essential election work in our democracy. In communities around the country, organizations help recruit poll workers, organize nonpartisan voter registration drives, combat misinformation, support local election officials, and work to ensure that the diversity of our electorate is represented in our election process.” This money is important to democracy but needs to be available early to be effective.
This All by April initiative follows the Democracy Fund’s January report, “Field in Focus: The State of Pro-Democracy Institutional Philanthropy.” The full Field in Focus report is rich in detail but also a rare and important window into the contemporary priorities of institutional grant-makers. It makes clear that institutional grant-makers, led by the Democracy Fund, have their eye on the right questions:
How can philanthropy better support the movement for a more inclusive, multiracial democracy?
And how should democracy work be defined?
The report makes clear that grantmakers also increasingly understand that democratic work goes beyond voter registration and election administration. Several areas of new and increased focus include ensuring an effective census and a fair redistricting process, promoting racial and social justice, preventing political violence and anti-hate efforts, and tracking and combating misinformation and disinformation.
While there is much to be commended about this turn in philanthropy, it is also worth observing the limitations that remain in their vision. Returning to where we started. Early funding is critical, especially for organizations working for and with historically marginalized voters. Nevertheless, the “boom-and-bust cycle” that grassroots organizations decry as destabilizing, the one driven by presidential election cycles, is a bug associated with the singular focus in the democracy reform community on nonpartisan actors as the solution to America’s democratic failures.
Early funding is critical, especially for organizations working for and with historically marginalized voters. Nevertheless, the “boom-and-bust cycle” that grassroots organizations decry as destabilizing, the one driven by presidential election cycles, is a bug associated with the singular focus in the democracy reform community on nonpartisan actors as the solution to America’s democratic failures.
In a functioning party system, the boom-and-bust cycle would not be an issue. Political parties would maintain a year-round presence at the state and local level, engaging and organizing the electorate, responding to their needs, and channeling the priorities of their civic allies. Community groups, unions, churches, and other peer-to-peer civic groups would be folded into the party and assured of financial support.
The democracy reform field’s focus on non-partisanship is a requirement of the Internal Revenue Code. But it is also an ideology, with deep roots back to the Progressive Era. It is a worldview that romanticizes individual voters (their interest in political knowledge and capacity for rational action) while eschewing party-centric paths to good governance and a healthy democracy. It is a worldview that romanticizes individual voters (their interest in political knowledge and capacity for rational action) while eschewing party-centric paths to good governance and a healthy democracy.
I am not suggesting that institutional philanthropy invest in political parties. That is far outside of what tax-exempt funds can or should be used for. But democracy-minded philanthropists can and should explore systemic reforms that can change the incentives shaping party behavior, with an eye toward creating a healthier party system. (In this regard, though perhaps the focus of a future post, they should be wary of systemic reforms that are candidate-centric.) They should leverage their money to create political institutions that make philanthropic investment in democracy significantly less necessary.
Democracy-minded philanthropists can and should explore systemic reforms that can change the incentives shaping party behavior, with an eye toward creating a healthier party system.
Justin Grimmer, Michael Herron and Michael Tyler in ELJ. Abstract:
In the wake of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists has advanced ever more expansive claims of vote manipulation, going so far as to allege that all American elections are subject to manipulation—even in largely Republican states. In the extreme, these conspiracy theorists argue that candidates in U.S. elections are selected rather than elected. We evaluate two recent sets of claims about vote manipulation that allege algorithms are used to shift votes towards preferred candidates. Even though these claims are distinct, they fail for similar reasons. For example, both sets of claims assert that “unnaturally” accurate predictions of election results are evidence of vote manipulation, an allegation that is a result of predicting a variable with itself. Furthermore, both claims make easily refuted errors in logic and data analysis and in addition misrepresent historical election patterns. While recent claims about vote manipulation are prima facie outlandish, their effects on policy and the public are real. Refuting false claims about vote manipulation is essential to ensuring the continued functioning of U.S. elections and American democracy more generally
New Jersey Globe:
Eugene Mazo, a Rutgers law professor with a penchant for filing for political office in order to test out state election laws, has just barely survived a challenge to his nominating petitions for the special election… Continue reading
Jodi Kantor for the NYT:
After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts:… Continue reading
See this statement, issued partially in response to Commissioner Dickerson’s proposal on making it easier to get exceptions to disclosure for those facing a risk of harassment.