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.
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...."
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.
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'm pretty willing to do ranked choice voting. But multi member districts I'm not so sure about. I like a representative being responsible to a district.
As for redistricting, I'm fine with states looking at other options, but will oppose all federal efforts. It's not a federal issue it's a state issue.
Milan, great addition SlowBorings' insistence on highlighting systemic issues with State & Local Government! Pieces like this are important in focusing the larger Great Dem Debate where there seems to be consensus on doom Nationally until 2028, and where there also seems to be a critical lack of attention to other levels of government.
The best thing we can say about Mike Madigan is he's now and finally the *former* speaker of the House. I'm not - at all - well connected in IL politics and even I've heard credible stories of the corruption (e.g., highway construction contracts seem bid-rigged based on "exclusive" territory, zoning exceptions seem to come with hiring expectations of certain security firms and /or contractors, building approvals still seem to process cash bribes - so much so that cash is still written into the budget estimates). I can't even imagine how deep all this goes.
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?
Except that unlike the federal government, states are unitary political entities. In state legislatures rural votes don't count for any more than urban votes. It's one person, one vote.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the US works. No one in any rural area has anything to say about how, for example, New York City governs itself.
Don't think this is true. A lot of NYC self-governance was stripped from NYC back in Tammany days and handed to Albany. People in rural New York do in fact have a say in Albany and by extension in NYC.
Certainly they do; states are sovereign. But no one in any rural area (or urban area) in any other state can tell NYC how to govern itself. More to the point, a rural voter in NY has much, much less influence over NYC than a vote in NYC does.
Depends on what you mean by 'govern itself': Among the things Albany does control, which in most cities you would consider local governance issues are:
-All City taxation
-All mass transit
-All bridges and tunnels
-The schools and the City University of New York
-Public sector union negotiations
-Rent control
-All social service requirements
-All utility rates
-Gun control laws
-etc, etc.
On every one of these issues the vote of a rural voter counts just as much as the vote of a City voter.
I would argue that the city voter’s vote is worth more than the rural voter’s vote. The city voter, after all, will choose the mayor, city council, etc., and governing is about more than statutes.
More to the point, however, the original comment said, “…rural people having a kind of sovereignty, no matter how big the cities are or what they think.” That’s clearly nonsense.
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?
People always try to fix design problems with education initiatives. If there’s a road where people speed too often, everyone wants to fix that by making better drivers ed or requiring speeders to take a driving class, where they get told extra times to pay attention to the speed limit. No one wants to look at how the road is designed and understand why everyone assumes a higher speed than the speed limit is reasonable. So you have dozens of hours of labor every week to not fix something that could be fixed by adjusting some paint on the road and maybe adding a tree or two.
If Microsoft says the way to make their products more usable is to educate your workers on which options are buried under what menus, then it’s clear the real problem is their menu design.
I think the point is mainly that the evidence that civic education improves citizen engagement is limited at best. Also, it’s not clear that increased levels of citizen engagement would actually have strong benefits, at least not in a representative system like ours.
Okay, I agree that civics alone is not an answer, but I don't think it's useless. Maybe this is a trite point to make, but do we really not care if people know the basic workings of their government? Its foundational principles? That seems so depressing.
Fair enough, and I'm not claiming that something has changed and our current problems stem from a lack of civics. I have no dog in this fight so to speak, which is maybe my problem here: I'm jumping into the middle of a bigger debate I apparently didn't even know existed. I just liked my civics classes a lot and see some value in them continuing to exist. That's my only stake in this.
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.
The Texas legislature is what worries me. Someone treating their legislative work as pro bono side work that gives them a chance to impose their hobby on others seems dangerous. Especially this year, when their work schedules were suddenly thrown into disarray because they needed to add several unexpected months of legislative volunteering on top of the six months they had planned for their day job to be lower impact.
Counterpoint - the TX leg is set up to avoid these folks messing with the state for too long. I can't imagine if they were at this nonsense full time. Would love for them to not have any emergency sessions at all.
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?
"Zero-sum democracy - defined by FPTP elections and single-member districts - absolutely sucks"
The US was politically stable for over 200 years using FPTP & single-member districts. Whatever's changed in the 21st century, it isn't those two things, which are..... exactly as they've always worked. Canada uses both and is highly politically stable. The UK, same.
Meanwhile, many PR countries have collapsed- Weimar Germany used PR, Argentina was using PR when Peron won, Rwanda was using PR in the 90s.....
Saying a voting system causes this or that social condition is just phrenology- it's like a pseudo-sociology. If you're a stable, healthy society, then you can use FPTP or PR and continue to be functional- if you're not stable, then any voting system will lead to collapse. But the voting system itself does not tip an otherwise healthy society over the edge, that's just astrology
You're kind of still not really getting what I'm saying. Of course PR didn't cause the collapse of those countries, that's silly. My point is that the voting method used just doesn't have any relation to how stable a society is. Again the US was stable for the whole 20th century, Canada, the UK....
The voting method affects a society's stability in the same way that the number of men who wear brown shoes does. If you're stable you can use any method- if you're unstable, no method will save you. QED
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.
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)
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.
This is perhaps even more important than fixing Congress
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'm pretty willing to do ranked choice voting. But multi member districts I'm not so sure about. I like a representative being responsible to a district.
As for redistricting, I'm fine with states looking at other options, but will oppose all federal efforts. It's not a federal issue it's a state issue.
Milan, great addition SlowBorings' insistence on highlighting systemic issues with State & Local Government! Pieces like this are important in focusing the larger Great Dem Debate where there seems to be consensus on doom Nationally until 2028, and where there also seems to be a critical lack of attention to other levels of government.
One sign of how undercovered state legislatures are is that it's not actually Robin DeVos, as you said, but Robin Vos!
Also: Andrea Stewart-Cousins, not Angela
Oops, that should be fixed now.
I don't know which one would be worse, honestly, the real one or the made-up one.
The best thing we can say about Mike Madigan is he's now and finally the *former* speaker of the House. I'm not - at all - well connected in IL politics and even I've heard credible stories of the corruption (e.g., highway construction contracts seem bid-rigged based on "exclusive" territory, zoning exceptions seem to come with hiring expectations of certain security firms and /or contractors, building approvals still seem to process cash bribes - so much so that cash is still written into the budget estimates). I can't even imagine how deep all this goes.
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?
Except that unlike the federal government, states are unitary political entities. In state legislatures rural votes don't count for any more than urban votes. It's one person, one vote.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the US works. No one in any rural area has anything to say about how, for example, New York City governs itself.
Don't think this is true. A lot of NYC self-governance was stripped from NYC back in Tammany days and handed to Albany. People in rural New York do in fact have a say in Albany and by extension in NYC.
Certainly they do; states are sovereign. But no one in any rural area (or urban area) in any other state can tell NYC how to govern itself. More to the point, a rural voter in NY has much, much less influence over NYC than a vote in NYC does.
Depends on what you mean by 'govern itself': Among the things Albany does control, which in most cities you would consider local governance issues are:
-All City taxation
-All mass transit
-All bridges and tunnels
-The schools and the City University of New York
-Public sector union negotiations
-Rent control
-All social service requirements
-All utility rates
-Gun control laws
-etc, etc.
On every one of these issues the vote of a rural voter counts just as much as the vote of a City voter.
I would argue that the city voter’s vote is worth more than the rural voter’s vote. The city voter, after all, will choose the mayor, city council, etc., and governing is about more than statutes.
More to the point, however, the original comment said, “…rural people having a kind of sovereignty, no matter how big the cities are or what they think.” That’s clearly nonsense.
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?
“…scrap federalism…”
Not going to happen.
Well done piece on important topic. State legislatures deal with issues that affect people’s day-to-day lives.
Perhaps part of the solution is for schools to teach civic education, which I hear everyone is in favor of :P
If you're going to have a democracy, having informed and involved citizens seems like a must to me.
I would very much be in favor of making people take a basic test on constitutional law and economics before they can vote.
Voting is a responsibility. If you can't put in the time and effort, then stay home
“…basic test on constitutional law and economics…”
Whose economics?
Mine of course. Neo liberal school of economics
And which constitutional law?
There has only ever been one correct reading.
one *established* reading
The meaning was laid down by the writing.
Honest question - why is that such a bad idea? And what other/better ways are there to create engaged citizens?
People always try to fix design problems with education initiatives. If there’s a road where people speed too often, everyone wants to fix that by making better drivers ed or requiring speeders to take a driving class, where they get told extra times to pay attention to the speed limit. No one wants to look at how the road is designed and understand why everyone assumes a higher speed than the speed limit is reasonable. So you have dozens of hours of labor every week to not fix something that could be fixed by adjusting some paint on the road and maybe adding a tree or two.
If Microsoft says the way to make their products more usable is to educate your workers on which options are buried under what menus, then it’s clear the real problem is their menu design.
The Microsoft comparison is great -- working in IT has gotten me very skeptical about "educating the user" as a solution to, well, anything.
(This also makes me extremely skeptical of activism designed to "raise awareness" of anything.)
I think the point is mainly that the evidence that civic education improves citizen engagement is limited at best. Also, it’s not clear that increased levels of citizen engagement would actually have strong benefits, at least not in a representative system like ours.
Okay, I agree that civics alone is not an answer, but I don't think it's useless. Maybe this is a trite point to make, but do we really not care if people know the basic workings of their government? Its foundational principles? That seems so depressing.
1066!
Fair enough, and I'm not claiming that something has changed and our current problems stem from a lack of civics. I have no dog in this fight so to speak, which is maybe my problem here: I'm jumping into the middle of a bigger debate I apparently didn't even know existed. I just liked my civics classes a lot and see some value in them continuing to exist. That's my only stake in this.
Good post Milan. I learned a lot.
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.
The Texas legislature is what worries me. Someone treating their legislative work as pro bono side work that gives them a chance to impose their hobby on others seems dangerous. Especially this year, when their work schedules were suddenly thrown into disarray because they needed to add several unexpected months of legislative volunteering on top of the six months they had planned for their day job to be lower impact.
Counterpoint - the TX leg is set up to avoid these folks messing with the state for too long. I can't imagine if they were at this nonsense full time. Would love for them to not have any emergency sessions at all.
If you paid the legislature as a full time job, you wouldn't have these hobbyists in charge.
I would honestly rather have the part-time attention of a high caliber individual than the full-time attention of a mediocrity.
That's why you pay them at the level of a white collar professional.
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?
"Zero-sum democracy - defined by FPTP elections and single-member districts - absolutely sucks"
The US was politically stable for over 200 years using FPTP & single-member districts. Whatever's changed in the 21st century, it isn't those two things, which are..... exactly as they've always worked. Canada uses both and is highly politically stable. The UK, same.
Meanwhile, many PR countries have collapsed- Weimar Germany used PR, Argentina was using PR when Peron won, Rwanda was using PR in the 90s.....
Saying a voting system causes this or that social condition is just phrenology- it's like a pseudo-sociology. If you're a stable, healthy society, then you can use FPTP or PR and continue to be functional- if you're not stable, then any voting system will lead to collapse. But the voting system itself does not tip an otherwise healthy society over the edge, that's just astrology
You're kind of still not really getting what I'm saying. Of course PR didn't cause the collapse of those countries, that's silly. My point is that the voting method used just doesn't have any relation to how stable a society is. Again the US was stable for the whole 20th century, Canada, the UK....
The voting method affects a society's stability in the same way that the number of men who wear brown shoes does. If you're stable you can use any method- if you're unstable, no method will save you. QED