Tom Golisano is a Rochester, NY billionaire who got rich from his payroll processing company and now dabbles in politics and sports teams. His new hobby is the National Popular Vote, an effort to get state legislatures to pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in the case of another Bush v Gore situation. Dylan Matthews at Ezra Klein’s joint wonders if this is the start of a new trend where rich people leverage Citizens United to elect legislators who support their pet good government projects.
If Golisano is your prime example of this “trend”, the answer is probably “no”. The only trend that Golisano represents is the tendency of rich, successful businessmen fuck up when it comes to politics. Golisano ran for governor three times, getting at most 14% of the vote even though he spent a total of $93 million on his governorship vehicle, the Independence Party. Though his spending record doesn’t quite match Meg Whitman’s recent California disaster, Golisano got essentially nothing for the money he spent to run for governor, and he left nothing behind: the Independence party is in ruins. Golisano followed up with $5 million poured into a group called Responsible New York, which started with a bang by bankrolling a few legislature candidates, but ended with a whimper about the property tax assessment of Golisano’s mansion. Golisano finally gave up on home state politics and moved to Florida in protest over a New York tax on millionaires.
If Golisano’s random walk through New York politics shows anything, it’s probably the propensity of the rich to believe that a wad of cash can serve as a substitute for hard work and compromise. The National Popular Vote probably wasn’t going anywhere in the first place, but the participation of Tom Golisano will almost certainly put a few more nails in its coffin, and his participation tells us nothing useful about what rich people will do with Citizens United.
Rook
That’s absolutely right. In fact, Mark Dayton proved that point by winning the Minnesota Governor’s seat by working hard, being smart, and using his wealth wisely.
Roger Moore
There’s also a tendency for people who are very successful in one area to believe that it’s all because of their brilliance, so they’re going to be similarly successful in whatever other field they choose to go into. Businessmen are only the most obvious example because their money buys them publicity. Whatever field you’re in, though, you’ve probably seen somebody who thinks they can jump right in at the top because they were a genius in their former field.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Whenever anybody mentions Rochester NY, I only think of one thing:
Garbage Plates
Damn I miss me a good breakfast plate.
Steve
The NPV thing is pretty obviously unconstitutional under Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution, although it’s cute that they’ve gotten state legislatures to actually pass the thing. If you want to get rid of the Electoral College system, you have to amend the Constitution, not just have all the big states form a cartel.
Derek
I’ll cut him a little slack if he’s getting behind the Nat’l Popular Vote. See Rick Hertzberg on the NPV:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/national-popula/
artem1s
Interesting. I’ve been wondering if Citizen’s United might not benefit the GOP in the way that they hoped. This is a perfect example of money that would otherwise might be going to the state party or an established candidate. But instead he’s blowing it on some special interest pipe dream that could be remedied within the existing legislative system. It would unfortunately, take time and well, convincing other people to work with him. It’s so much easier to run a country if you are a dictator, isn’t it?
Derek
@4. Steve: The NPV does not eliminate the Electoral College — it simply commits a state’s electors to voting for the popular vote winner. The constitution does not state the mechanism of *how* electors vote.
Superluminar
Slightly OT, but this reminded me of a story i read in the Guardian this morning about how NYC council just voted to ban smoking in parks etc. I felt (as a smoker) WTF?! I can understand an indoor ban (same as over here), but how could you justify banning smoking in the open fucking air? I’ve visited NYC twice and wanted to go back but now, not so much.
mistermix
@Derek: Rah-rah, a few blue states voted for the thing. Call me back if a red state ever votes for it, because Republicans have decided that Bush V Gore was divine writ and that somehow the Electoral College cuts their way.
It’s really an index of our dysfunction that the NPV even came about. Bush V Gore should have sparked a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Electoral College and it should have also led to real voting reform. Instead we got NPV and shitty electronic voting machines.
Comrade Javamanphil
Shhhh. This is resdistributionism we can believe in. Maybe we can encourage a whole bunch of the wall street wonderkids that they are so special and smart and hard working they too can be elected to office if they spend a lot of money.
Buffalopundit
In the pantheon of disgustingly transactional political excreta, the Independence Party is the worst. In western New York it takes advantage of our anachronistic and idiotic electoral fusion to have a pointless impact on elections through simple salesmanship. You get the IP line if you agree to get some IP stalwarts cush state jobs.
The very fact that Golisano was a user/abuser of fusion through the IP is bad enough, but when Responsible NY came about and it was being run by the most transparently awful human being to carry a (D) next to his name, Steve Pigeon, it became a laughable joke.
After all, when RNY disbanded and Golisano took his balls & went home to Florida, Pigeon became counsel to, of all people, Pedro Espada.
When you can put “Pedro Espada’s patronage hire” on your resume, you’ve pretty much failed at life.
Nice of Tom to keep the Sabres in Buffalo, though. We can pretend like we still matter.
debit
@Superluminar: I’m an ex-smoker and I think it’s a great idea. Yes, being outside dissipates the smell somewhat, but not entirely. Non smokers still have to walk through a cloud of stinky smoke as they go by. And then there are the butts everywhere. You might use the outside ashtrays, but you’d be the exception.
mistermix
@Buffalopundit: Yeah, another reader wrote to remind me about that scumbag Pigeon.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Pedro Espada, he’s this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Espada#Federal_indictment
By the way, if you live in WNY and aren’t reading Buffalo Pundit, you aren’t informed.
kindness
Sadly, you have the other end of the Galtian spectrum where the Koch brothers have been quite successful.
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Genesee Cream Ale (OK so I can’t spell)
PeakVT
OT: The employment report is out, and massive revisions seem to be the order of the day. CR is complaining because they revised some numbers back to 2006. It will take a day for the data nerds to sort everything out, so ignore the headlines for now.
Superluminar
@debit
i guess i see your point (and yes i do actually dispose of butts properly) but i think it’s going too far to ban such activity. Where are you meant to go in NYC if you want a drag on a cigarette?
Steve
@Derek: Of course it eliminates the Electoral College system, let’s not be sophists about it. More importantly, the Constitution forbids interstate compacts without the consent of Congress, so that’s really the end of the analysis.
jcricket
@PeakVT: One of the worst things about our patchwork of an unemployment system is it really is hard to tell how many people got another job v. stopped applying for unemployment v. ran out of benefits.
And obviously, even those that get jobs, if they end up under-employed (making 1/2 what they used to, or working part time) count as “employed” even though there’s been both a personal and economic loss.
I’m not necessarily in favor of the “unlimited dole” system of unemployment some countries have, but I wish we had a system where you got some benefit for continuing to apply or verifying you had a new job and what the new job paid compared to your old one. Would be illustrative.
fanshawe
@Superluminar:
A place outside that isn’t a park. Your apartment.
Glenn
@Steve:
I don’t think this counts as an interstate compact because there is, in fact, no way to enforce the commitment made by any state that signs up for the NPV. Nothing prevents any state that signs on from later changing its mind and opting back out. Which is, you know, one reason why the NPV thing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense anyway.
Derek
@Steve:
At the risk of undercutting everything I’m saying about the electoral college, I don’t know the constitution well enough to rebut your interstate-compact point. So, ya, that could be a problem!
Originally electors cast *independent* votes. Now a state’s popular vote determines electoral votes, either proportionally (e.g. Nebraska) or majority-take-all. The NPV is just further evolution of the system.
Glenn
What does Citizens United have to do with any of this? It said corporations could not be limited from independent expenditures, but wealthy assholes like Golisano always had that right, didn’t they?
Buffalopundit
@mistermix: Why thank you, Mister Mix!
Chris G
Golisano donated a very, very nice building to Hartwick College.
jayjaybear
“Scrapbooking for Billionaires” aka “The Three-Month Hobby For People With Too Much Money”
When a regular person feels bored and wants to feel like s/he can create something meaningful, s/he starts scrapbooking, or making balsawood model planes, or knitting. And in three months, most of the time, s/he gets bored and stops, usually leaving the shreds of whatever s/he was working on littering the worktable in the back room.
When a billionaire gets that feeling s/he starts to dabble in politics, and when s/he gets bored with it, or realizes it takes actual work and effort to be good at it, s/he quits, leaving the shreds of political parties and the broken hearts of their followers littering the landscape. See: Reform Party, Ross Perot.
ThresherK
Linda McMahon? Anybody?
I don’t know how she’d get better: CT is a physically small state with just a few TV stations, so that aided her ability to suck all the oxygen out of the room. There is also a rather lopsided distribution of income and many of the “Columbus Ohio-ey” districts can be ignored at, sadly, litte or no peril. There are comparably lots of high earners who might fall for the CEO schtick or just nod and understand that she’s not interested on taxing the well-off.
In the end she had all the charm of Phil Gramm and all the ideas of Newt Gingrich.
Too bad she didn’t have some GOP hacks counting votes and assuring poll access, like in other states. (And save me the “Bridgeport is like Florida 2000” stuff. We didn’t have any Brooks Brothers Riots.)
Zifnab
@mistermix:
Voting reform is difficult, because the people who are in a position to change the system are the winners under the current system. If I just won under the current system, why spend political capital, time, and energy trying to change it? Legislators aren’t going to champion changes unless their constituencies push on them hard.
As for the voting machines, they suck for a reason. Voter disenfranchisement is a great way to influence elections.
Joey Maloney
@Roger Moore: In academia we call it “Ph.D. disease” – people think that because they know everything about one thing, they know everything about everything.
ThresherK
As for the voting machines, they suck for a reason.
We got rid of the mechanical ones in CT because, as it was told, companies stopped making parts for them and, like carburetors, they weren’t training people to fix them any more.
Love to know the last time the Pentagon said “Weapon system X is perfect but our contractor stopped making parts, and nobody else put in a bid, so we can’t use it.”
burnspbesq
@ThresherK:
That’s not quite fair to Newt. He has lots of ideas. That fact that any sane person finds most of them crazy doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Scott P.
Yes, particularly the clap-on/clap-off trigger clause. Imagine if NPV had been in effect in 2000. There would have been a stampede among Republican-controlled states to withdraw from NPV in order to give Bush the election. Even if withdrawal isn’t possible ex post facto, California is so large that it could more or less decide on a year-by-year basis whether to have NPV or not simply by joining or leaving the compact.
Zifnab
What really kills me is that electronic voting machines are a GOOD THING. You don’t need to worry about running out of ballots. You can quickly count votes and the choices are much clearer – no hanging chads, no butterfly ballots. The devices are (theoretically) much more secure than tons of paper.
You need safeguards built in around the devices – paper receipts to offer an audit trail, for example. But they are a vast improvement over the traditional voting systems.
But implementation was so shitty and haphazard and god-awful expensive that people got scared off of a very beneficial and progressive reform.
Steve
@Glenn: Well, if a state passes a statute joining the NPV, I guess yeah, nothing forces them to keep that statute, but that’s true of any statute. I’d note that the NPV webpage itself refers to it as an interstate compact, so it’s kinda hard to argue that it’s something else.
I don’t think enforceability is particularly important. If two corporations make an agreement in restraint of trade, they can be punished even though neither of them actually had the power to enforce the “agreement” against the other. I also think there’s case law under this clause of the Constitution indicating that it’s interpreted fairly broadly.
timb
@Steve: no, it’s not. States are responsible for choosing their electors and electors can vote for whomever they wish
catclub
@Zifnab: The canadian system someone described is: paper ballots, counted by representatives from both sides, at the tiniest local level. They then call in the results to the next level up. It is all done quite rapidly and efficiently. How would you go about committing massive voter fraud?
Now ask the same question of the electronic voting systems.
And people have demonstrated lots of ways in which MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD is facilitated by having electronic systems.
Electronic systems have to be both transparent, in order to be judged reliable, and anonymous, in order to allow a secret ballot. That has been demonstrated by all the failures so far, to actually be pretty hard to accomplish.
kohler
@Steve: State-by-state winner-take-all laws to award electoral college votes were eventually enacted by 48 states AFTER the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution.
The Founding Fathers only said in the U.S. Constitution about presidential elections (only after debating among 30 ballots for choosing a method): “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, Only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote.
In 1789 only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The winner-take-all method is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state’s electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. Maine and Nebraska currently award electoral votes by congressional district — a reminder that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not required to change the way the President is elected.
The normal process of effecting change in the method of electing the President is specified in the U.S. Constitution, namely action by the state legislatures. This is how the current system was created, and this is the built-in method that the Constitution provides for making changes.
kohler
@artem1s: The current system of electing the president ensures that the candidates, after the primaries, do not reach out to all of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. The reason for this is the state-by-state winner-take-all method (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but since enacted by 48 states), under which all of a state’s electoral votes are awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes in each separate state.
Presidential candidates concentrate their attention on only a handful of closely divided “battleground” states and their voters. In the 2012 election, pundits and campaign operatives agree already, that only 14 states and their voters will matter. Almost 75% of the country will be ignored –including 19 of the 22 lowest population and medium-small states, and big states like California, Georgia, New York, and Texas. This will be more obscene than the already outrageous facts that in 2008,, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their campaign events and ad money in just 6 states, and 98% in just 15 states (CO, FL, IN, IA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, VA, and WI). Over half (57%) of the events were in just 4 states (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia). In 2004, candidates concentrated over 2/3rds of their money and campaign visits in 5 states; over 80% in 9 states; and over 99% of their money in 16 states.
2/3rds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential elections.
Voter turnout in the “battleground” states has been 67%, while turnout in the “spectator” states was 61%.
Policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
Because of the state-by-state winner-take-all electoral votes laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) in 48 states, a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. This has occurred in 4 of the nation’s 56 (1 in 14) presidential elections. The precariousness of the current state-by-state winner-take-all system is highlighted by the fact that a shift of a handful of votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in 4 of the 13 presidential elections since World War II. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 6 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008). 537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore’s lead of 537,179 popular votes nationwide. A shift of 60,000 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of 3,000,000 votes.
kohler
@mistermix: In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado– 68%, Iowa –75%, Michigan– 73%, Missouri– 70%, New Hampshire– 69%, Nevada– 72%, New Mexico– 76%, North Carolina– 74%, Ohio– 70%, Pennsylvania — 78%, Virginia — 74%, and Wisconsin — 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska — 70%, DC — 76%, Delaware –75%, Maine — 77%, Nebraska — 74%, New Hampshire –69%, Nevada — 72%, New Mexico — 76%, Rhode Island — 74%, Vermont — 75%, and Wyoming – 69%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas –80%, Kentucky — 80%, Mississippi –77%, Missouri — 70%, North Carolina — 74%, and Virginia — 74%; and in other states polled: California — 70%, Connecticut — 74% , Massachusetts — 73%, Minnesota — 75%, New York — 79%, Washington — 77%, and West Virginia- 81%.
Most voters don’t care whether their presidential candidate wins or loses in their state . . . they care whether he/she wins the White House. Voters want to know, that even if they were on the losing side, their vote actually was counted and mattered to their candidate.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers, in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large population states, including one house in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, The District of Columbia, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, and Oregon, and both houses in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The bill has been enacted by the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington. These seven states possess 74 electoral votes — 27% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
kohler
@Steve: The National Popular Vote bill preserves the Electoral College, while assuring that every vote is equal and that every voter will matter in every state in every presidential election.
When the bill comes into effect, all the ELECTORAL VOTES from the enacting states (with at least 270 electoral college votes) would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The Electoral College that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. It does not abolish the Electoral College. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action, without federal constitutional amendments.
kohler
@Steve: Congressional consent is not required for the National Popular Vote compact under prevailing U.S. Supreme Court rulings. However, because there would undoubtedly be time-consuming litigation about this aspect of the compact, National Popular Vote is working to introduce a bill in Congress for congressional consent.
The U.S. Constitution provides:
“No state shall, without the consent of Congress,… enter into any agreement or compact with another state….”
Although this language may seem straight forward, the U.S. Supreme Court has method, in 1893 and again in 1978, that the Compacts Clause can “not be read literally.” In deciding the 1978 case of U.S. Steel Corporation v. Multistate Tax Commission, the Court wrote:
“Read literally, the Compact Clause would require the States to obtain congressional approval before entering into any agreement among themselves, irrespective of form, subject, duration, or interest to the United States.
“The difficulties with such an interpretation were identified by Mr. Justice Field in his opinion for the Court in [the 1893 case] Virginia v. Tennessee. His conclusion [was] that the Clause could not be read literally [and this 1893 conclusion has been] approved in subsequent dicta.”
Specifically, the Court’s 1893 ruling in Virginia v. Tennessee stated:
“Looking at the clause in which the terms ‘compact’ or ‘agreement’ appear, it is evident that the prohibition is directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the states, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States.”
The state power involved in the National Popular Vote compact is specified in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 the U.S. Constitution:
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
In the 1892 case of McPherson v. Blacker (146 U.S. 1), the Court wrote:
“The appointment and mode of appointment of electors belong exclusively to the states under the constitution of the United States”
The National Popular Vote compact would not “encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States” because there is simply no federal power—much less federal supremacy—in the area of awarding of electoral votes in the first place.
kohler
@Glenn: “Any member state may withdraw from this agreement, except that a withdrawal occurring six months or less before the end of a President’s term shall not become effective until a President or Vice President shall have been qualified to serve the next term.”
Any attempt by a state to pull out of the compact in violation of its terms would violate the Impairments Clause of the U.S. Constitution and would be void. Such an attempt would also violate existing federal law. Compliance would be enforced by Federal court action
The National Popular Vote compact is, first of all, a state law. It is a state law that would govern the manner of choosing presidential electors. A Secretary of State may not ignore or override the National Popular Vote law any more than he or she may ignore or override the winner-take-all method that is currently the law in 48 states.
There has never been a court decision allowing a state to withdraw from an interstate compact without following the procedure for withdrawal specified by the compact. Indeed, courts have consistently rebuffed the occasional (sometimes creative) attempts by states to evade their obligations under interstate compacts.
kohler
@Zifnab: 1,922 state legislators (in 50 states) have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.