I like the subtle but practical suggestion that local media should learn to cover state legislative leaders as personalities on par with governors. Putting a face to things will help make for more compelling political storytelling for sure, and increase its salience to people (like me) who have trouble keeping track of what's going on.
Whenever I hear people advocate for more local control - I wonder how much of that is "we like our corrupt regime we've built for ourselves here, hands off".
The more downballot the election where you could elect a wet noodle and get them into office due to straight ticket voting, the more opportunity for corruption because, well, nobody really cares who the 5th person is on the school board ballot until they do something particularly egregious, like in SF how we didn't notice until they started renaming schools named after Abraham Lincoln.
Great article, I love the focus on state and local political issues.
Here's another change that I think would help move state legislatures in a better direction: better polling at the state and local level. Most state-level polling is focused on candidates / job approval, or perhaps a one-off issue poll regarding a particular issue. The polling that is conducted is often too sporadic to be meaningful. Each state would benefit from an in-state non-partisan polling center that focused on taking a regular pulse of priorities, issues, and approval.
I'm not saying it would bring about an earth-shattering improvement in governance, but it doesn't help that in most cases, state governments are flying relatively blind when it comes to knowing how the public actually feels about the issues.
I have seen arguments that more democracy (though in theory good) can create bad effects. For example, if party bosses picked presidential candidates, we might have not had Trump.
Similarly, I have heard that, while we’ll-intentioned, eliminating earmarks (arguably due to transparency) has made Congress more likely to feature Cruz-like attention-hogging and grandstanding, since leaders have fewer incentives to give them.
Why do we think more spotlight to state legislatures improves outcomes?
1. You talked about candidate quality. Think about who is a higher caliber individual - someone making 70K full time as a state legislator, or a law partner/exec/doctor who does state legislator work part time. I’d check out some of the bios of the TX state reps in the Dallas area, for example.
2. Is it better for the state leg to be highly publicized? I’d argue that the quality of legislation is often inversely related to its level of exposure in the press. The Intel committees, defense committees, and various “secret congress” items are much more productive and less performative.
3. I’m probably also inclined towards some sort of multi-member district or proportional representation idea, but it’s not a silver bullet. Israel and Italy manage to be very dysfunctional with that system, and it tends to produce a bunch of single issue parties that could be very unproductive.
Most people don't really know who their state level (or lower) elected officials are unless they...you know, actually KNOW them. I used to see my state rep and my state senator at the grocery store like once a week. When I was collecting signatures to get on the ballot for an extremely small, local office, I basically had to explain to each person what the position was. Like Milan pointed out, most people just aren't paying that much attention.
I think there's a couple of ways to improve state politics.
(1) Make the legislative process simpler. There's no need to have two state houses after the Supreme Court decision Reynolds v Sims which said all state chambers need to apportioned by population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims Abolish the Senate.
(2) Best way to make sure corrupt leaders can't have their fiefdoms, limit state legislative offices to no more than 8-12 years.
(3) Increase the salaries and make sure each member has a professional staff so they don't need lobbyists to draft legislation for them.
(4) Subject all legislation to a referendum that allows voters to repeal it with a 50 percent majority.
It may make sense to have more elected regional governments. Today, the U.S. only has one:
"Metro is the regional government for the Oregon portion of the Portland metropolitan area, covering portions of Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington Counties. It is the only directly elected regional government and metropolitan planning organization in the United States. Metro is responsible for managing the Portland region's solid waste system, coordinating the growth of the cities in the region, managing a regional parks and natural areas system, and overseeing the Oregon Zoo, Oregon Convention Center, Portland's Centers for the Arts, and the Portland Expo Center...."
The American system of government is very intentional about rural people having a kind of sovereignty, no matter how big the cities are or what they think. Rule by majority of the land is at least as privileged in its institutional design as rule by majority of the people. Do you have a genius political stratagem that will entice this co-sovereign to abdicate? Do you like your chances in civil war? What is the point of even bringing it up?
Great post, Milan, thanks for bringing attention to this very misunderstood and underreported topic. From 30k feet though, I wonder if this all doesn't just mean we should scrap federalism, especially in light of all the stuff about voters mirroring their national party preferences?
Wisconsin's gerrymander doesn't deserve the level of criticism it receives.
It’s true that in 2012 and 2018 the Democrats were the authentic majority, although a mitigating contextual factor is that Republicans did not compete in as many districts as the Democrats, leaving 21 uncontested districts versus four for the Democrats 2012 and 27 uncontested versus six for the Democrats in 2018. The Democrats really did have a majority of voters in 2012 and 2018, but not at the landslide level that the raw legislatively popular votes indicate.
In 2014, 2016, 2020, and 2022 the Republicans indeed won more votes than the Democrats, although their seatshare was about ten points (ie, six Assemblymembers) larger than their share of the popular vote.
New Jersey and Nevada are also examples of artificial Democratic majorities, where the Republicans actually decisively won the pop vote, but were kept in small majorities.
Illinois' gerrymander is significantly worse than WI's. In 2014 (Rauner's victory year) the Democrats barely won the legislative popular vote by one point, but the Republicans had fewer candidates, so the Republicans really were the majority that year.
Good writeup, Milan!
I like the subtle but practical suggestion that local media should learn to cover state legislative leaders as personalities on par with governors. Putting a face to things will help make for more compelling political storytelling for sure, and increase its salience to people (like me) who have trouble keeping track of what's going on.
Good post Milan. I learned a lot.
Whenever I hear people advocate for more local control - I wonder how much of that is "we like our corrupt regime we've built for ourselves here, hands off".
The more downballot the election where you could elect a wet noodle and get them into office due to straight ticket voting, the more opportunity for corruption because, well, nobody really cares who the 5th person is on the school board ballot until they do something particularly egregious, like in SF how we didn't notice until they started renaming schools named after Abraham Lincoln.
One sign of how undercovered state legislatures are is that it's not actually Robin DeVos, as you said, but Robin Vos!
Great article, I love the focus on state and local political issues.
Here's another change that I think would help move state legislatures in a better direction: better polling at the state and local level. Most state-level polling is focused on candidates / job approval, or perhaps a one-off issue poll regarding a particular issue. The polling that is conducted is often too sporadic to be meaningful. Each state would benefit from an in-state non-partisan polling center that focused on taking a regular pulse of priorities, issues, and approval.
I'm not saying it would bring about an earth-shattering improvement in governance, but it doesn't help that in most cases, state governments are flying relatively blind when it comes to knowing how the public actually feels about the issues.
I have seen arguments that more democracy (though in theory good) can create bad effects. For example, if party bosses picked presidential candidates, we might have not had Trump.
Similarly, I have heard that, while we’ll-intentioned, eliminating earmarks (arguably due to transparency) has made Congress more likely to feature Cruz-like attention-hogging and grandstanding, since leaders have fewer incentives to give them.
Why do we think more spotlight to state legislatures improves outcomes?
Perhaps part of the solution is for schools to teach civic education, which I hear everyone is in favor of :P
A few thoughts to consider:
1. You talked about candidate quality. Think about who is a higher caliber individual - someone making 70K full time as a state legislator, or a law partner/exec/doctor who does state legislator work part time. I’d check out some of the bios of the TX state reps in the Dallas area, for example.
2. Is it better for the state leg to be highly publicized? I’d argue that the quality of legislation is often inversely related to its level of exposure in the press. The Intel committees, defense committees, and various “secret congress” items are much more productive and less performative.
3. I’m probably also inclined towards some sort of multi-member district or proportional representation idea, but it’s not a silver bullet. Israel and Italy manage to be very dysfunctional with that system, and it tends to produce a bunch of single issue parties that could be very unproductive.
Most people don't really know who their state level (or lower) elected officials are unless they...you know, actually KNOW them. I used to see my state rep and my state senator at the grocery store like once a week. When I was collecting signatures to get on the ballot for an extremely small, local office, I basically had to explain to each person what the position was. Like Milan pointed out, most people just aren't paying that much attention.
I think there's a couple of ways to improve state politics.
(1) Make the legislative process simpler. There's no need to have two state houses after the Supreme Court decision Reynolds v Sims which said all state chambers need to apportioned by population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims Abolish the Senate.
(2) Best way to make sure corrupt leaders can't have their fiefdoms, limit state legislative offices to no more than 8-12 years.
(3) Increase the salaries and make sure each member has a professional staff so they don't need lobbyists to draft legislation for them.
(4) Subject all legislation to a referendum that allows voters to repeal it with a 50 percent majority.
--
That's my wish list for today.
It may make sense to have more elected regional governments. Today, the U.S. only has one:
"Metro is the regional government for the Oregon portion of the Portland metropolitan area, covering portions of Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington Counties. It is the only directly elected regional government and metropolitan planning organization in the United States. Metro is responsible for managing the Portland region's solid waste system, coordinating the growth of the cities in the region, managing a regional parks and natural areas system, and overseeing the Oregon Zoo, Oregon Convention Center, Portland's Centers for the Arts, and the Portland Expo Center...."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(Oregon_regional_government)
This is perhaps even more important than fixing Congress
The American system of government is very intentional about rural people having a kind of sovereignty, no matter how big the cities are or what they think. Rule by majority of the land is at least as privileged in its institutional design as rule by majority of the people. Do you have a genius political stratagem that will entice this co-sovereign to abdicate? Do you like your chances in civil war? What is the point of even bringing it up?
Great post, Milan, thanks for bringing attention to this very misunderstood and underreported topic. From 30k feet though, I wonder if this all doesn't just mean we should scrap federalism, especially in light of all the stuff about voters mirroring their national party preferences?
Well done piece on important topic. State legislatures deal with issues that affect people’s day-to-day lives.
Wisconsin's gerrymander doesn't deserve the level of criticism it receives.
It’s true that in 2012 and 2018 the Democrats were the authentic majority, although a mitigating contextual factor is that Republicans did not compete in as many districts as the Democrats, leaving 21 uncontested districts versus four for the Democrats 2012 and 27 uncontested versus six for the Democrats in 2018. The Democrats really did have a majority of voters in 2012 and 2018, but not at the landslide level that the raw legislatively popular votes indicate.
In 2014, 2016, 2020, and 2022 the Republicans indeed won more votes than the Democrats, although their seatshare was about ten points (ie, six Assemblymembers) larger than their share of the popular vote.
New Jersey and Nevada are also examples of artificial Democratic majorities, where the Republicans actually decisively won the pop vote, but were kept in small majorities.
Illinois' gerrymander is significantly worse than WI's. In 2014 (Rauner's victory year) the Democrats barely won the legislative popular vote by one point, but the Republicans had fewer candidates, so the Republicans really were the majority that year.