Category Archives: political polarization

“In Electoral Disputes, State Justices Are Less Reliable GOP Allies than the U.S. Supreme Court—That’s the ‘Problem’ the Independent State Legislature Claim Hopes to Solve”

legislation and legislatures, political polarization, Supreme Court

Rebecca L. Brown, Lee Epstein, and Michael J. Nelson have this new article in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Here is the abstract:

Scholars have identified serious drawbacks to the independent state legislature (ISL) claim, which precludes state-court review of election laws, thus preventing state guarantees like “free and fair elections” from being enforced. Considering its flaws, we ask why ISL would be pursued so fervently and why the Supreme Court, in Moore v. Harper, adopted a version of it. Examining data that compare election-law outcomes in federal and state supreme courts, we found that state supreme court justices, even if Republican, are not reliable supporters of the GOP electoral agenda. The Roberts court, by contrast, has voted in the GOP-supported direction in most election-law cases it has decided. This, we argue, is why ISL is promoted so vigorously: it takes electoral disputes—such as who can vote, what the rules for counting are, and such—out of the hands of state courts and places them squarely into the hands of the Supreme Court, a reliable partisan ally.

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“Political Parties and Loser’s Consent in American Politics”

political polarization

Geoffrey Layman , Frances Lee, and Christina Wolbrecht have this new article in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Abstract:

Social science has established that political parties have been indispensable to American democracy and their most active members as keepers of the democratic flame. The aftermath of the 2020 presidential election raised questions about the role of the parties in protecting democracy, particularly the fundamental democratic norm of “loser’s consent.” We argue that recent political developments—close elections, ideological polarization, participatory party nominations, and changes in campaign finance and media—have worked to undermine the parties’ commitment to loser’s consent. We use recent survey data to show that party activists no longer demonstrate greater commitment than do ordinary citizens to democratic norms—especially to loser’s consent. We also examine how parties and voters responded to the post-2020 crisis of democratic legitimacy, finding that both parties prioritized their political interests over democratic health. However, a small number of voters did deviate from normal partisanship and helped to shore up American democracy in the 2022 elections.

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“Murkowski Won’t Vote for Trump and Declines Ruling Out Leaving the G.O.P.”

political parties, political polarization

NYT:

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said in an interview released on Sunday that she would not vote for former President Donald J. Trump. She also did not rule out the possibility of leaving the Republican Party.

In the interview, which Ms. Murkowski gave to CNN, she said that she would “absolutely” not support Mr. Trump in the general election in November. She said that she wished Republicans had nominated someone whom she could vote for, but that she “certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”

Asked whether she might leave the party and become an independent, she said that she considered herself “very independent-minded” and added, “I just regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump.” But she did not give a yes-or-no answer, saying: “I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times. Let’s just leave it at that.”

If Ms. Murkowski left the Republican Party, it would be welcome news for Democrats facing a brutally difficult map in the Senate elections in November. Three of their current seats are up for election in red states, and several more are up for election in swing states. There are almost no opportunities to pick up seats currently held by Republicans, and there’s no room for error, given their very narrow majority.

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“Ranked-Choice Voting is MAGA’s Latest Target; Leonard Leo and other far-right power players are attacking a bipartisan election reform.”

alternative voting systems, political polarization

Brendan Fischer writes for Documented (here’s the version at Rolling Stone):

An organized and well-funded network of right-wing groups is spending countless millions attacking a bipartisan election reform that could threaten the MAGA political project.

Ranked-choice voting — which allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, rather than just selecting one — has been used in state and federal elections in Alaska and Maine, and has been gaining momentum in dozens of other states and municipalities, often with bipartisan support. Voters in Nevada and Oregon will hold referendums on adopting the system in 2024, and several other state and local governments have also been considering ranked-choice voting measures.

But beginning in early 2022, and intensifying in 2023, a range of so-called “election integrity” groups, from Leonard Leo’s Honest Elections Project to Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, have made stopping ranked-choice voting a top legislative priority.

Five states have since banned any city or county government from adopting the system, and at least six other states are considering similar measures this year. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) approved a model bill banning ranked-choice voting last year, a Turning Point Action official successfully pressed the Republican National Committee to adopt a resolution opposing the practice, and the Heritage Foundation has organized grassroots activists to oppose ranked choice voting in several states.

The far-right fixation on ranked-choice voting “is a bit bizarre,” said Rick Hasen, a professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA’s Law School. “It’s not really an issue of ‘honest elections’ or ‘election integrity,’” he said. “It’s a debate about the best way to translate voters’ preferences into election winners.”

“I would guess,” Hasen said, “that the reason for the fear of ranked choice voting is that it could help elect more Republican moderates rather than more extreme Republicans.”

Ranked choice voting is one of the few — if not the only — democracy reforms that still has bipartisan support. For example, 21 cities in deep-red Utah use ranked choice voting, where it is broadly popular, and bills to implement it have attracted Republican co-sponsors in states like Wisconsin, Virginia, and Georgia. The organized attacks on ranked choice voting appear aimed at eroding support for the reform among Republican lawmakers and conservative activists.

Groups backed by right-wing activist Leonard Leo are playing an outsized role in the campaign against ranked choice voting. Leo, who served as former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, helped construct the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. In 2021, he was put in control of a $1.6 billion dark money fund to help push U.S. politics to the right.

While Leo’s relationship with Trump has frayed — he reportedly considered boosting another MAGA-aligned candidate, Ron DeSantis, in the GOP presidential primary — the success of his political project relies on electing far-right candidates under the same system that produced Trump….

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“The winner-take-all incentives that have racially polarized America – and led to Trump”

political polarization

Steven Hill:

Amidst all the ink and electrons reporting on the bitter partisan divisions that gnaw at America today, what has been missing is due recognition of how extreme policy positions and failure to compromise are incited by certain fundamental realities of our national character as well as our political system.

The first fundamental reality is simply demographics — where people live, and how partisan demographics naturally line up along regional lines. In this era of the infamous Red vs Blue America map, the nation has balkanized along regional lines with heavy partisan overtones. Like other large winner-take-all democracies, such as the UK, India and Canada, entire regions of the U.S. have become one-party fiefdoms.

The Democrats control the cities, most of the coasts and a small chunk of the Midwest and Southwest, while the GOP dominates the South, the Plains, the Mountain West and most of the sparse flyover zones between the coasts. While a picture is worth a thousand words, the ominous-looking Red vs Blue map barely begins to encapsulate the consequences of these partisan-laden demographics.

The second fundamental reality is how those regional partisan demographics are funneled as votes through our winner-take-all electoral system. In over 90 percent of the “me against you” legislative districts — at both federal and state levels — it’s only possible for one side to win. There are simply too many of one type of voters packed into that district.

In the vast majority of states, this effect is occurring outside whatever shenanigans take place as a result of partisan gerrymanders during redistricting. This is a matter of where people reside, and the fact that only one side can win in this zero-sum game. In the vast majority of districts, demography has become destiny. Someone should print that on a bumper sticker.

Consequently, party leaders and political experts can reliably predict who is going to win nearly all of the 435 US House seats. FairVote has forecast that in the 2024 elections, only 26 seats – six percent – will be toss-ups, the least in the last 25 years. FairVote not only can tell which candidate will win each race, they can predict the margins of victory. In a double-barreled corruption, that in turn allows party leaders to focus their “Pyramid of Money” resources on the handful of battleground districts and states.

In combination, these two realities of partisan regional demographics combined with the winner-take-all electoral system add a sharp geographic schism to America’s destructive polarization. This mix of geography and partisanship, especially when combined with race – which I will discuss in a moment – constitutes an extremely toxic brew that has usually been explosive whenever it has appeared in US history.

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Ned Foley-Ben Ginsberg-Rick Hasen Amicus Brief Warns SCOTUS of Political Instability, Potential Violence, and Voter Disenfranchisement If It Avoids Deciding Merits in Trump Disqualification Case

political polarization, Supreme Court

Thanks to the excellent work of Michael Kimberly and Charles Seidell of the McDermott Firm, Ned Foley, Ben Ginsberg and I have filed this amicus brief supporting neither party in the Trump disqualification case at the Supreme Court. Below is part of the Introduction and an excerpt comparing the situation in 2020:

Amici often do not see eye to eye on matters of law or policy. But they join together in this brief to make a single, urgent point: A decision from this Court leaving unresolved the question of Donald Trump’s qualification to hold the Office of President of the United States under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment until after the 2024 election would risk catastrophic political instability, chance disenfranchising millions of voters, and raise the possibility of public violence before, on, and after November 5, 2024. And the grounds for avoiding the merits are not credible: Colorado manifestly had the authority to determine Mr. Trump’s legal qualification for the office he seeks, and this Court has jurisdiction to review that federal-law decision on its merits. 

To punt on the merits would invite chaos while risking great damage to the Court’s reputation and to the Nation as a whole. The country is more polarized today than at any other time in living memory—certainly more than in December 2000, when this Court last decided a case with a direct impact on the outcome of a presidential election. Controversy over the 2020 election led millions of Americans to doubt the integrity of the electoral system and ultimately culminated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Political tensions have not eased in the time since. Quite the opposite: political discourse has stoked further public skepticism of the electoral system since January 2021. Amici thus file this brief, not only to demonstrate that the Court can reach the merits of Mr. Trump’s qualification under Section 3, but that it should do so, or else risk political instability not seen since the Civil War. 

The possible scenarios if the Court fails to resolve the Section 3 question once and for all are alarming. If Mr. Trump wins an electoral-vote majority, it is a virtual certainty that some Members of Congress will assert his disqualification under Section 3. That prospect alone will fan the flames of public conflict. But even worse for the political stability of the Nation is the prospect that Congress may actually vote in favor of his disqualification after he has apparently won election in the Electoral College. Neither Mr. Trump nor his supporters, whose votes effectively will have been discarded as void, are likely to take such a declaration lying down. 

Even if Mr. Trump did willingly stand aside, it is wholly unclear who would be inaugurated as President on January 20, 2025—would it be Mr. Trump’s running mate, pursuant to the Twentieth Amendment? Would it be Mr. Biden, pursuant to a Twelfth Amendment election in the House? Or would it be some alternate candidate thrown into the mix in the heat of the political battle? The chance that there would be no clear answer come Inauguration Day 2025—and that the country thereby would be thrown into a possibly catastrophic constitutional crisis—is disturbingly high. 

Amici have devoted their careers to the study and practice of election law, earning independent reputations as preeminent experts in the field. Although they often disagree on matters of policy and ideology, amici share a deep-seated conviction that free and fair elections bolster voter confidence and trust in the political process. Amici also share an expert understanding of the constitutional system for elections, which not only places responsibility for administering federal electoral contests first in the hands of the States, but also leaves an essential role for this Court “to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 177 (1803). …

Finally, it is worth contrasting the current situation with the aftermath of the 2000 election. As Florida conducted its recounts and litigation swirled, this Court initially returned the case to the Florida Supreme Court with the suggestion that it consider the question of whether Florida’s procedures were constitutional. Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000). This unanimous punt kept the Court temporarily on the sidelines as the recount process and litigation continued; depending upon how the recount went, it was conceivable that this Court would avoid weighing in. Alas that was not to be. Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). 

This time, however, kicking the can down the road would be far more fraught for the country. There is every reason to believe that disqualification challenges will continue to proliferate if this Court fails to give guidance. In the meantime, voters who cast their votes for Mr. Trump risk disenfranchisement for supporting a candidate who may later be held ineligible for office. Because they won’t get a do-over, these voters deserve to know now whether their ballots for Mr. Trump will be counted. 

Further, requiring Congress to take up the issue in an inherently political process, on the fourth anniversary of the U.S. Capitol riot, would be a tailor-made moment for chaos and instability. The pressure on Congress from all sides would be enormous, as would be the temptation to resolve the disqualification question not as a matter of the legal or factual merit, but as an exercise of political power. This Court stands between the potentially disastrous turmoil that would result and a comparatively peaceful election administered consistent with the Constitution and the rule of law. It should not let this opportunity to stave off political instability pass. 

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“Democracy Hypocrisy: Examining America’s Fragile Democratic Convictions”

political polarization

New report via the Democracy Fund by Joe Goldman, Lee Drutman, and Oscar Pocasangre:

Key Findings

  • While the vast majority of Americans claim to support democracy (more than 80 percent say democracy is a fairly or very good political system in surveys from 2017 to 2022), fewer than half consistently and uniformly support democratic norms across multiple surveys over the past seven years.
  • Support for democratic norms softens considerably when they conflict with partisanship. For example, a solid majority of Trump and Biden supporters who reject the idea of a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections” nonetheless believe their preferred U.S. president would be justified to take unilateral action without explicit constitutional authority under several different scenarios.
  • Only about 27 percent of Americans consistently and uniformly support democratic norms in a battery of questions across multiple survey waves, including 45% of Democrats, 13% of Republicans, and 18% of Independents. When adding responses to hypothetical scenarios about unilateral action by the president, the share of Americans who consistently supports democratic norms over this time period drops to just 8 percent, including 10% of Democrats, 5% of Republicans, and 11% of Independents.
  • On the other hand, the portion of the public who are consistently authoritarian — Americans who consistently justify political violence or support alternatives to democracy over multiple survey waves — is also relatively small (8 percent). This leaves most Americans somewhere between consistent democratic and authoritarian leanings, a position often heavily shaped by partisanship.
  • When looking at the exact same respondents over time, Republicans have the highest levels of inconsistency. While 92 percent of Republicans supported congressional oversight during the Biden administration in 2022, only 65 percent supported oversight during the Trump administration in 2019 (a 27-point swing). While 85 percent are supportive of media scrutiny during the Biden administration, only 63 percent were supportive during the Trump administration (a 22-point swing). This contrasts with a 6 percentage point difference for Democrats in their views between the Biden and Trump administrations on these questions.
  • Among the 81 percent of Republicans who believed in September 2020 that it is important for the winner to acknowledge the election, 62 percent rejected Biden as the legitimate president after the election, 53 percent said it was appropriate for Trump to never concede the election, 87 percent thought it is appropriate for Trump to challenge the results of the election with lawsuits, and 43 percent approved of Republican legislators reassigning votes to Trump. Republicans who exhibit higher levels of affective polarization were the most resistant to accepting an electoral loss.
  • In contrast to an overwhelming and consistent rejection of political violence across four survey waves, the violent events of January 6, 2021, were viewed favorably by Republicans. Almost half of Republicans (46%) described these events as acts of patriotism and 72 percent disapproved of the House Select Committee that was formed to investigate them.
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“MAGA-dominated state Republican parties plagued by infighting, money woes”

political parties, political polarization

WaPo:

In Arizona, the state GOP chairman has been begging the Republican National Committee for a financial bailout. Michigan party officials have gotten into physical fights as their finances have dipped into the red. And in Georgia, the state party is in a standoff with the Republican governor and saddled with legal fees for alternate electors put forward in 2020.

In each of these 2024 battlegrounds, election denial and grassroots fervor for former president Donald Trump have rocked the Republican apparatus.Now, the state parties are plagued by infighting, struggling to raise money and sometimes to cover legal costs stemming from Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat — threatening to hamper GOP organizing capabilities in next year’s presidential election.

“There has been an emphasis on ideological cleansing instead of electioneering,” said John Watson, the Georgia GOP chairman from 2017 to 2019. “If those new entrants to the party want to argue the earth is flat and the election is stolen, those are counterproductive to winning elections.”

State parties are typically critical in election years for mobilizing volunteers and running get-out-the-vote efforts, and they can collect larger checks or buy cheaper airtime than other groups. Those functions are now in doubt as the fissures fuel finger-pointing and competition for donor dollars. Even as more experienced leaders have taken the reins in some cases, they are struggling to undo some of the damage from MAGA-aligned predecessors and deal with continued pressure from the movement.

The transformation in these key states is the result of a coordinated movement, sometimes called the “Precinct Strategy.” Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and other MAGA influencers have promoted the effort in the past three years to slot election deniers into local party positions and demand new leadership. In local and state parties across the country, operatives and local officials say the makeup of state party leadership has changed.

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House hobbled. Can we call it a crisis of governance yet? And is the Republican Party really a party anymore?

political parties, political polarization

“House Republicans vote to drop Jim Jordan as speaker nominee.” And to be frank, we should be glad of that. As Representative Pete Aguilar said on Tuesday, elevating Jim Jordan, “a vocal election denier and an insurrection insider to the Speaker of this house” would have been “a terrible message to the country and our allies.” It would have sent a “troubling message . . . that the very people who would seek to undermine democracy are rewarded with positions of immense power.” That said, three weeks into the speakership crisis, I am left wondering: Is a party that can win office but is unable to mediate conflicting personalities, goals, and priorities when they hold a legislative majority, really a party at all?

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Republicans in Competive Districts Fear Speaker Fight Could Cost Them House (and Office?)

political polarization,

N.Y. TImes reports on the rising fears that a Jim Jordan speakership could cost Republicans the House. Even the fight is causing worry. Those most concerned are representatives from districts that voted for Biden in 2022.

“The latest round of House Republican infighting has badly damaged the G.O.P. brand. It has left the party leaderless and one chamber of Congress paralyzed for more than two weeks. The chaos is raising the chances that Democrats could win back the majority next year, and it has given them ample ammunition for their campaign narrative, which casts Republicans as right-wing extremists who are unfit to govern.

‘It hurts the country; it hurts the Congress; it’s hurting our party,’ said Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, one of 18 Republicans who represent districts won by Mr. Biden in 2020. ‘It’s putting us in a bad hole for next November.’”

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“Jordan Loses 2nd Vote for Speaker as House Scrambles for Path Forward”

political polarization

N.Y. Times and others reporting that Jim Jordan has lost a second bid for Speaker of the House on Wednesday. The House will probably pick a Speaker this week, even as how and whom still remains unclear. And I wouldn’t count Jordan out yet. The question is whether this will be a turning point for the party. If not country over party, will the crisis in the Middle East push some Republicans to prioritize governance, over party? Given his track record, Jordan would have to remain a no in that case.

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“The New Republican Establishment; An alternative Trumpist governing elite gets closer to ruling the party.”

political polarization

Nate Cohn for the NYT:

In the final account, the rise and fall of Kevin McCarthy might read like the familiar tale of a Republican congressional leader toppled by a small but uncompromising right-wing faction.

But even if the story ultimately ends like any other Republican congressional drama in Washington over the last decade, something different and important has already happened: The right wing didn’t just bring down a House speaker — its members also made a credible bid at claiming the gavel for themselves.

A founder of the House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan, won 99 votes in the House Republican conference vote Wednesday, good for about 45 percent of congressional Republicans. It wasn’t enough to defeat Steve Scalise, the conservative congressman from Louisiana who still faces a daunting path to the post, but it’s a serious showing — especially for someone whom John Boehner once called a “legislative terrorist.”

For all of the quotes about “inmates running the asylum” in the press over the last decade, the ultraconservative wing of the Republican Party has never won anything like actual power. In January, Andy Biggs won a mere 14 percent of Republicans against Mr. McCarthy in the House Republican conference vote. That’s enough to make life miserable for a speaker with a five-vote majority, but it’s nowhere near leading the caucus. Getting up to 45 percent, on the other hand, starts to make the gavel appear tantalizingly close.

The swelling congressional support for Mr. Jordan didn’t make him speaker, but it might nonetheless herald the emergence of a new, alternative Trumpist governing elite — one authentically loyal to Donald J. Trump’s pugilistic brand of politics, and one that would pose a fundamental challenge to what remains of the beleaguered Republican “establishment.”

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