We should definite improve civics education in country. But it’s the elected officials with Harvard, Stanford, & Yale law degrees who are accelerating the system’s backsliding.
In other Wisconsin news today, the state posted the official 2018 Assembly election results. It's a beautiful gerrymander. Dems got 190,000 more votes but Reps got 63/99 seats. Key is assuring many GOP districts get just over 50% of vote even in a bad year for the party.
SCOTUS majority says Wisconsin voters must either vote in person tomorrow or get their absentee ballots postmarked tomorrow to count. There are no other options now. There is still a backlog of absentee requests to process. Those ballots will presumably all be wasted.
Can we stop requiring that citations for books include the city where the publisher is located? I’ve been hunting on a publisher site for 10 minutes now. Can I just write Stars Hollow, CT or Pawnee, IN?
Positive test rate among UW students has gone from 1% to 7.8% in just 7 days.
No evidence of spread among faculty & staff or through on-campus activity.
Chancellor calls for "severe limits" on in-person undergrad interactions for 2 weeks. This is make or break.
The 2020 election is one year from today.
Let’s hope the election is resolved quickly & cleanly on Nov 3 but maintain the patience & sensibility of a mature democratic society if the counting goes into overtime.
The almost-complete-extremely-detailed-election-map from
@nytimes
is live. In terms of *change* from 2016, aside from the northeast, every state is a mishmash of movement in opposing directions. Much of it urban-rural areas moving apart.
The public's ideological tastes usually shift like a "thermostat" away from the part of the president.
Heading into the 2024 election, it doesn't seem to be happening with Biden (yet).
With a couple days to reflect on the opinion, I'm still flabbergasted: the 7th Circuit concluded that essentially any partisan manipulation of election laws is constitutional. Court also believes that the harmed party can overcome the rules and simply change things back.
Bigger gender gap in VA exit polls than we've seen in other states, but the age gap is monstrous. Sanders wins 58% of 17-29 group while Biden wins 71% of 65+. Different worlds.
On an unseasonably warm December Friday afternoon before the Christmas holiday weekend, in a 4-3 vote the Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down state legislative maps as violating the state constitution. New maps must be in place for the 2024 elections. 1/
Wisconsin Dems were in the dumps in 2016. GOP had the governorship, state leg, & Supreme Court from 2011 onward. Walker won a bruising recall. They lost Feingold. Trump sealed their misery when he won the state.
The party has clawed back a great deal in the last 5 years.
.
@SenFitzgerald
releases a statement after the extraordinary session vote. "Citizens from every corner of Wisconsin deserve a strong legislative branch that stands on equal footing with an incoming administration that is based almost solely in Madison."
🧵Being the person that I am (weird), I decided to my time off to dive into George Santos' FEC reports to get a better understanding of how he spent his $$$, especially the $700k that he "loaned the campaigned." Note I don't think he actually did. Here is what I found:
Somehow ALL of the Dems are going down simultaneously.
O'Rourke might be only clear exception
Getting very mixed messages on Sanders & Warren from one poll to the next (ranging from 10-20%!)
Of the 140 pages of lame duck legislation being sent to the governor, the only one Republicans actually campaigned on was protecting pre-existing conditions. It did not pass.
WOW--The guy who orchestrated the GOP power grab in Wisconsin suggested Madison & Milwaukee (& their black residents) are not legitimate parts of the state. “If you took Madison & Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority”
Man who is spending tax dollars without a contract & who regularly speaks at partisan events spent the day criticizing election officials over — yes — contracting & being influenced by partisan actors.
An excellent rundown of what to expect about vote tabulation next week.
Punchline: some states will count faster than you think and the initial counts won't necessarily tilt toward Biden.
How is it possible that deploying 2,400 National Guard did not increase the number of polling places in Milwaukee above 5 (out of 180 they normally have)?
County canvasses and a random audit are happening now. As they do after every election. In full view of the public. I encourage legislators to observe.
Vos: "I would rather guarantee that everyone at the end of the day has certainty that the election was conducted fairly because we do a thorough investigation as opposed to trusting a bunch of bureaucrats in Madison saying, ‘Look, we did it just fine.’ ”
A majority of eligible voters participated in every state in 2020, the first time that happened since at least 1980. It's not a Democratic or Republican thing.
Late arriving ballots would not be a problem in Wisconsin.
A federal court permitted ballots to be received up to 6 days after the spring primary. Nothing happened (besides counting an additional 79,000 ballots).
The state doesn’t even certify the results until Dec 1.
The pro-Republican bias is due to both clustering of Dem voters in urban areas & intentional efforts by Republicans to gerrymander. The 2016 presidential vote (where uncontested races are not an issue) shows Trump carried 63/99 districts despite barely winning popular vote.
This is a sad development for UW but an understandable move by Becky Blank that will allow her to lead a world class university without a state legislature getting in the way:
Can we just agree that…
* APSA has not handled this well — esp comms
* people with good (even the same) values can reach different decisions about attending the mtg
* the mtg is valuable for many people of different ranks but also a mixed bag or unhelpful to many others
In my survey of Wisconsin election officials, almost 80% wanted to allow -- if not require -- drop boxes to collect ballots. When the data are weighted to reflect the population, 94% of clerks supported drop boxes.
The last time midterm election turnout was this high, US senators had just become directly elected & women did not have a universal right to vote.
@ElectProject
This is really dumb. Same day registration ought to be embraced by both parties. SDR facilitates voter participation, keeps voter rolls up to date, & may be the most public and secure method of registration there is.
Montana's Senate is supporting a bill that would end same-day voter registration. The bill to end voter registration at noon on the Monday prior to Election Day was endorsed 32-18 on second reading Tuesday.
A proper example of election uniformity is having identical voter registration rules across the state.
A misguided & disingenuous form of “uniformity” is allowing only 1 ballot dropbox per community even though they have vastly different populations. That’s discrimination.
Which states join the voter turnout hall of fame this year?
Since 1980 there have been 510 pres elections in the states & DC. Only 21 of those had turnout of 70% or more.
State leaders in the 70% club are MN (6x), ME (4x), NH (4x), & WI (3x).
(h/t
@ElectProject
)
Chef’s kiss to one AP writer:
“A streaker wearing a hot pink onesie eluded security and slid into the end zone with 5:03 left in the game. Kansas City’s high-powered offense never got that far against Tampa’s ferocious defense.”
High quality discussant comments don’t get the recognition they deserve. We give out quite a few “best paper” awards each year. How about an award or two for “best discussant?”
Cheers to these two and to all
#MPSA19
discussants! Your thoughtful feedback helps individual scholars improve and supports the advancement of the research for the entire discipline.
A thread on the challenges to the democratic elections in Wisconsin, which have spanned from skeptical to kooky to dangerous, as reported in today's NYT 1/6
Looking forward to serving on the brand new Dane County Redistricting Commission, a potential model for how to draw legislative districts using a nonpartisan, citizen-driven process.
Former state supreme court justice being paid by state to investigate the 2020 election does not know "how elections work."
He's also issuing subpoenas w errors, falsely offering immunity, & leaking his work to a conservative radio talk show host.
“In Wisconsin, somebody has to be indefinitely confined in order to vote absentee. In the past there were 20,000 people. This past election there were 120,000...and Republicans were locked out of the vote counting process.”
@VicToensing
@newsmax
The madness continues.
The election was 9 months ago.
The 2 biggest counties in the state went through full recounts.
There is another audit & an “investigation” underway.
Sowing distrust in a settled election is dangerous and was one of the steps toward the insurrection.
Among the surprises for me tonight are how much Trump’s endorsements mattered & how willing GOP voters were to walk away from the Scott Walker version of their party
If college campuses abandon in-person learning this fall, it’s going to really complicate voting for students just as deadlines are hitting for registering to vote & requesting absentee ballots.
#BadgersVote
OK, team, let's do the big campaign announcement speech outside in Minnesota in February. What could go wrong?
(Actually all of the speakers handled the weather pretty well.)
Until a few years ago Wisconsin law actually allowed absentee ballots to arrive as late as the Friday after the election.
SCOTUS is not allowing the state to offer an extension again during a *pandemic.*
Kudos to
@MULawPoll
for nailing the Biden-Sanders split at 62-34 (currently sitting at 64-31 with 85% reporting) despite a totally unprecedented and unsettled situation.
It's illegal to return a ballot using a drop box in Wisconsin, but this weekend I used one to submit state employee benefits forms. There's another box right next to it to receive state tax documents. Both are secure & available 24/7.
The transformation is more remarkable than it initially seems. The vast majority of absentee ballots this time around were cast by mail. In previous elections, most "absentees" were actually cast in person.
Agree that this should be covered nationwide: *partisan* legislators are planning to remove *nonpartisan* election official who are supported by *bipartisan* commissions...without a single hearing.
Regarding the possible
#Schultz2020
bid, remember that minor party candidates of all stripes tend to do best among young people. Given the strong tilt of young people today, almost any 3rd option would hurt Dems more than GOP.