Patterico's Pontifications

6/11/2006

Judge Unseated by Bagel-Lady to Get Judicial Appointment

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General,Judiciary — Patterico @ 10:41 am



The more-qualified judge who was unseated by the less-qualified bagel-lady judge will be appointed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. So she gets to remain as a judge.

I reported on this election the other day, in a post that people didn’t seem to understand for some reason. My point was, I thought, pretty simple — but I said it poorly. (Hey, it happens.)

Let me try again.

When the L.A. Times editors have a reaction to a story, they like to highlight that segment of the public that agrees with their reaction. Case in point: their story on the Guantanamo suicides, which leads with the fact that the suicides are “prompting new calls for an immediate shutdown.” Any bets on whether the reporter and editors involved in the piece agree with those “new calls”?

This also happened in the story about the unseating of the judge, in which the editors said:

The rare defeat of a highly regarded sitting judge ousted from the bench Tuesday by a bagel store owner who’d barely practiced law in the last decade sent a jolt through Los Angeles County legal circles, leading some to question whether the system to select judges needs overhauling.

Why? Why does a bad result in an election mean we need to change the whole system? Why are we shocked when uneducated and ill-informed voters choose a poorly qualified candidate for anything, be it a judgeship, a Senate spot, or the presidency?

And when we change the system, who will be in charge? The newspaper? The American Bar Association? Both?

I just find it a bit bizarre that the reaction to a bad result in a local election is, essentially: well, we need to stop having elections, then.

That’s a nice position to take if you’re a part of the elite. But I’m not sure voters should go for it.

I’m not saying that it’s a good thing that the bagel lady unseated a solid judge. I’m saying that, when such a thing happens, the solution is to find ways to educate the voting public, rather than to whine about the result and call for elections to be scrapped entirely.

That’s what I was trying to say.

Plus, the system apparently doesn’t need overhauling anyway, as evidenced by the fact that it contains an appointments process that is going to get the more-qualified judge her seat back.

And no, I don’t like the fact that less-qualified people are able to buy their way into office — and yes, I have appeared in front of such judges, as I said in my original post. That’s the nature of the beast in democratic societies with free speech. As we have seen with McCain’s Incumbent Protection and Free Speech Suppression Act (aka the BCRA), any “cure” is bound to be worse than the disease.

37 Responses to “Judge Unseated by Bagel-Lady to Get Judicial Appointment”

  1. “Why does a bad result in an election mean we need to change the whole system?”

    That sounds just like the Liberals that call for the removal of the Electoral Collage system that we use to elect (or “select” as they insisted after the 2000 election) our president. When the system works in their favor it’s a-ok, but when it doesn’t it needs to be changed. It’s just like the kids screaming “It’s not Fair” when they lose a game or someone beats them in a race.

    Ray (be81f9)

  2. Commenter David Pittelli in your earlier post on this subject made the most constructive observation. Given the extreme restrictions placed on judges when it comes to fundraising and political activity, not just the fairer but the sensible system is the one which calls for a retention vote and not a contested election. (BTW: If you want to resurrect the Garcetti v. Ceballos First Amendment discussions, these restrictions placed on judges seem to me to be a sacrifice of First Amendments rights which judges take pride in but in my opinion are definitely unconstitutional.)

    nk (956ea1)

  3. I just find it a bit bizarre that the reaction to a bad result in a local election is, essentially: well, we need to stop having elections, then.

    If we were talking about uncontroversial elections, I’d agree. But the question of whether or not electing judges is a good idea is a not uncontroversial one. When was the last time you voted for a federal judge? Don’t bother answering that, as it was a rhetorical question, but do answer this: what evidence do you have, if any, that the state system of electing judges produces a better judiciary than the federal system, which doesn’t allow elections precisely because we don’t want bagel ladies serving as judges (unless, of course, the people are stupid enough to elect a President stupid enough to appoint bagel ladies, and Senate majority stupid enough to confirm them, a not untall order)?

    That’s a nice position to take if you’re a part of the elite. But I’m not sure voters should go for it.

    My point exactly: since we have a “democratic” and “elite” system performing side-by-side, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out which one works better. Unless, of course, your position is that all government offices should be elective as an end in itself.

    I’m not saying that it’s a good thing that the bagel lady unseated a solid judge. I’m saying that, when such a thing happens, the solution is to find ways to educate the voting public, rather than to whine about the result and call for elections to be scrapped entirely.

    You’re assuming the public will allow itself to be educated on this matter. What makes you think they will be? Perhaps the public relies on their governor and legislature to concern themselves with this stuff.

    Similar arguments could be made about statewide offices other than the governor, which is the only one most voters care enough to follow. Do you really think the federal government would work better if we elected the Vice-President, the Secretary of State and the Attorney General separately from the President?

    Xrlq (f6cf51)

  4. “But the question of whether or not electing judges is a good idea is a not uncontroversial one.”

    It is my understanding that election of Judges was enacted to avoid the long process of appointing Judges like we see with the nomination and appointment of Federal Judges. I also understand it was enacted to prevent the appointment of Judges for political idolizes as opposed to judicial idolizes. If so, then we’ve come full circle in this debate and should combine the two by having the state legislature nominate two judges from ether party and have the public vote for one of the two. I wonder if that would make a difference?

    Ray (be81f9)

  5. Ray: some of us on the left have a long-standing dislike for the electoral college, and tolerate it mostly because it is largely irrelevant. The difference in 2000 was that, for once, it wasn’t irrelevant … and something which is tolerated because it is irrelevant automatically becomes less tolerable when it becomes less irrelevant.

    aphrael (e7c761)

  6. “some of us on the left have a long-standing dislike for the electoral college, and tolerate it mostly because it is largely irrelevant.”

    The electoral collage is largely irrelevant? I don’t see how? After all it IS the only legal means of electing out President allowed by the Constitution. Are there any other parts of the Constitution you find irrelevant?

    “The difference in 2000 was that, for once, it wasn’t irrelevant”

    What suddenly made it so relevant? The closeness of the general vote in a single state? Do you think that was the first time there was a close presidential race? Or was it the fact that your preferred candidate lost?

    “and something which is tolerated because it is irrelevant automatically becomes less tolerable when it becomes less irrelevant.”

    Humm, so what other parts of the Constitution do you tolerate simply because you feel they are irrelevant? How about “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?” How about “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” I guess those are irrelevant as well.

    I mean, why else would some of you on the left have a long-standing dislike for both guns and religious expression unless you think they are irrelevant?

    Ray (be81f9)

  7. Here in Cleveland, the magic name is “Russo”, which has overtaken “Corrigan” as most solid way to electoral victory.

    It doesn’t always serve us poorly.

    Ed C:\> (d72d01)

  8. Ray, come on now, that’s an unfair fight.
    You are attempting to use LOGIC, FACTS, and the CONSTITUTION in support of your positions.
    No lefty is going to debate you if you do THAT !
    (ha, ha, ha)

    What “aphrael” admits is that, when it benefits them, it is relevant, and when it does not benefit them, it is irrelevant.
    It’s like, “heads I win, tails you lose !”

    What “aphrael” fails to grasp is that the electoral college protects the interests of the smaller states from the imposition of the interests of the larger states.
    The electoral college is essentially a popular vote WITHIN EACH OF THE 50 STATES. The EC elicits presidential candidates to actually campaign in smaller states—or at the very least, address their issues—otherwise, if the presidential race were merely determined by a straight popular vote throughout the country, the candidates would completely ignore about 20 states, and possibly only make campaign stops in the 10 most populous ones where they could get the most mileage (and votes) out of their media & travel expenditures.

    Desert Rat (d8da01)

  9. I’m not certain that you can say that either the elections process or the appointment process is always/invariably superior to the other. [Although both are better than appointment on the recommendation of a Bar Association panel.]

    The first judge I ever argued before was one Hugo Fisher in San Diego County. In 1964 or so Hugo was a State Senator; Governor Pat Brown needed one more vote for his California Water Project. Fisher gave Brown the vote; Brown gave Fisher a Superior Court judgeship in a straight quid pro qou exchange. It worked out okay for both the State and for the San Diego County bench–although Fisher had been a practicing legislator and not a practicing lawyer for many years before his appointment. He was an okay judge who wasn’t going to let a rookie lawyer’s inexperience get in the way of obtaining a fair result (I still lost the motion–and should have. But he gave me an extra bite or two at the apple.) And we’re drinking water from the Feather River here in Los Angeles as a result of the California Water Project.

    And while voters are almost always uninformed about Superior Court judges, they are sometimes remarkably well informed about the California Supreme Court Justices when they come up for their 12 year approval election. Just ask (former Chief Justice) Rose Bird. Pat’s son Jerry never should have appointed her, and when she came up for election, the voters turned her out.

    Mike Myers (3a4363)

  10. The electoral college is largely irrelevant because we can count on one hand the number of times that it did not reflect the popular vote. If you believe that the popular vote is what should matter, than the fact that they’re almost always aligned renders the electoral college as the vermiform appendix of the constitution.

    Of course, in 2000 they were not aligned; and those of us who believe the popular vote should be the determining factor were suddenly very upset.

    [Speaking for myself, no it was not the fact that my preferred candidate lost which made me upset; it was the fact that for the second time in history the electoral vote result didn’t go the same way as the popular vote result.]

    As for guns and religion: how do you derive anything whatsoever about religion or guns from my observation that many of us have a long-standing dislike for the electoral college, but don’t bother fighting to get it removed from the constitution because most of the time it doesn’t matter?

    aphrael (e7c761)

  11. Desert Rat: can you explain to me what the logical connection between the electoral college and guns and religion are, please? 🙂

    Also, please refrain from putting words in my mouth. 🙂 My objection is not that the electoral college is relevant when it benefits liberals and irrelevant when it benefits conservatives, as you would have me say; it is that the electoral college is irrelevant most of the time (when it reflects the popular vote), and undemocratic when it isn’t irrelevant. I find it perplexing and amusing that so many conservatives instantly assume i’m making a partisan point; in reality I don’t give a rat’s *** which party is helped by an undemocratic result, I want the undemocratic feature abolished.

    I understand the argument that the electoral college protects the interests of the smaller states; I’m just not convinced it’s a compelling reason to retain an undemocratic misfeature. 🙂 Moreover, I find it ironic that you complain that in a straight popular vote, the small states would be ignored, when (under the current system) large states with predictable voter outcomes are ignored.

    aphrael (e7c761)

  12. aphrael,

    How is the electoral vote process undemocratic? Each state shall appoint it’s own electors, according to the Constitution, and those electors are selected by general elections in their respective states as per the constitution of each state, then a majority of electoral votes determine the winner of the presidential election followed by a conformation by the US Senate. That’s democratic, isn’t it?

    It also reduce the chance of massive voter fraud as the election results for any state can be contested and overturned at each step in the process if voter fraud is found to counter the “will of the people,” so to speak. So, not only is it democratic, it reduces the chance of massive fraud. That seems like a good system to me.

    Ray (be81f9)

  13. “electoral college is irrelevant most of the time (when it reflects the popular vote)”

    Using that logic, I guess any portion of the Constitution, like freedom of speech, is irrelevant most of the time as most people do not violate the Constitution. Only when there is a violation of the Constitution does it become relevant.

    Unlike you, I think the Constitution and all it contains, including the electoral collage vote, is very relevant to this country and the people that Constitution covers in it’s laws and protections. It is the Constitution that guarantees our rights, including the right to vote. You may not like the electoral collage vote, but it is never irrelevant!

    Ray (be81f9)

  14. Patterico:

    I understand that the point you’re making doesn’t hinge on whether it’s actually true that the bagel lady was a worse candidate than the sitting judge. But my curiosity is aroused: why exactly did the baker win over the judge?

    Did she campaign better? What did she say? Did nobody know anything about either candidate, people flipped a coin, and the bagel broad won? What happened?

    I’m just curious to know whether it’s really true that the better candidate lost. Even though that wasn’t your point.

    I know, it’s a digression; e’en so.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (6e94cd)

  15. What I don’t understand is why have an election process when the Judge will be appointed in a process that can override the voters choice? It looks like a feel good measure that give the citizens a false feeling of control in the judicial appointment process.

    Ray (be81f9)

  16. Aphrael, the electoral college is never irrelevant. Entire campaign strategies are built around it. That the winner of the real prize is usually also the winner of the popular vote is no surprise, just as it will never come as a huge surprise that the team that won a football game may also turn out to have been the team that got the most first downs, intercepted the most passes or fumbled the ball the fewest times. If one team “wins” all of these categories, and even scores more touchdowns to boot, but ends up with fewer points, that team loses. It doesn’t win a moral victory for getting the most first downs, because the teams weren’t playing for first downs – and if they were, the other team likely would have obtained more.

    This is the problem with the “Gore won the popular vote” crowd. What they are really saying is “Gore exceeded in an area that doesn’t count, that both sides knew didn’t count, and neither side actively courted.” Had both campaigns been designed to maximize the popular vote, both would have been conducted very differently than they were, and there’s no telling which candidate would have won that popular vote.

    Xrlq (f6cf51)

  17. The only interesting part of this story, at least to me, is that at the same the LAT was vaporising about the defeat of Judge Janav, they were running a series on the shady dealings of appointed judges in Las Vegas. So in essence the problem, according the LAT, is too much democracy in the South Bay and not enough in Las Vegas.

    Pat Patterson (5b3946)

  18. My problem with this particular issue involving Judge Janav and Olson is that Olson was not and is not a “practicing attorney.” She activated her Bar membership for the sole purpose of running for this election … and with the intent to run against a candidate with a “different” name. Although it wouldn’t be much better if she was still making bagels while at the same time paying her bar dues. This is someone who has no clue about how to be a Judge. And even though she may have passed the bar and worked for a few years as a lawyer, that doesn’t mean that she has ever set foot in a courtroom … nevermind actually handled a case in a court.

    Although, I would agree that the solution might be worse than the problem we face here, there should be some minimum standard that should be met in order for one to declare their candidacy for a judicial position … other that a simple 10 years as a lawyer … six of which was spent making bagels.

    MOG (59bfb8)

  19. Dafydd
    “why exactly did the baker win over the judge?”

    Seem to be a combination of things. The challenger (bagel lady judge) outspent the incumbent by 2 to 1. Much of the challengers spending went to getting her name on Democratic slate mailers. The election drew more Dems because of the Democratic primary elections for governor etc that were being held on the same ballot. Additionally there is some speculation (reported by the LAT prior to the election – though I don’t know if there is independent verification) that the incumbent lost votes because she has an unusual name and people tend to vote for more familiar names. In my experience people tend to vote for the incumbent so I don’t know how much the judge’s name played a role, but the combination of things probably made the difference.

    CStudent (59bfb8)

  20. My apologies for hijacking the thread: I was not attempting to turn the conversation into a discussion of the merits of the electoral college, but rather to dispel the myth that liberal opposition to the electoral college in 2000 was completely opportunistic.

    XRLQ: you have a good point with respect to campaigns being built around the electoral college, and the problem with the “Gore won the popular vote” argument; you are certainly right that we don’t know what would have happened had the campaign revolved around the popular vote.

    That said, many of us who were upset about it have always been of the opinion that the popular vote should be the deciding factor — but given that it had been more than 100 years since a popular vote plurality and an electoral vote majority had failed to align, nobody could get themselves particularly worked up about it, until they weren’t aligned.

    Ray: are you claiming that the constitution is infallabile and can never be wrong? While I think we have an unusually good constitution which has largely withstood the test of time, I also think the amendment process exists entirely because the framers of the constitution believed that they were not infallible. The fact that the constitution can be amended when it is necessary to do so, and the fact that it is sufficiently difficult to amend that the amendments will only happen when there is a clear need for them, are part of its strength.
    I think the electoral college should be abolished, and i’ve thought so for almost two decades; but prior to 2000, it was an idle thought, unrelated to any form of political action, because it had been more than a century since the last time the popular vote and the electoral vote had failed to align. What changed in 2000 was that the theoretical *possibility* that they might not align became a practical reality.

    As for being undemocratic: Federalist #68 explicitly spells out that the electoral college was intended to be undemocratic:

    “It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”

    The fact is that the electoral college has largely never functioned the way it was intended, and has almost always been used to reflect the popular vote of the states (rather than being a system in which one-issue legislators select an executive). But the way the electoral college works now is also undemocratic: the entire point is to ensure that a geographically concentrated numeric majority can be outvoted by a geographically dispersed numeric minority. There may be good reasons for doing such a thing; and such a system may be an important part of liberal protection of minority rights — but it is at the very least antimajoritarian in principle and in practice.

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  21. CStudent:

    The challenger (bagel lady judge) outspent the incumbent by 2 to 1.Much of the challengers spending went to getting her name on Democratic slate mailers. The election drew more Dems because of the Democratic primary elections for governor etc that were being held on the same ballot.

    Is Janavs a Republican? Nothing seems to be said about that. If not, then why would “Democratic slate mailers” prefer an inexperienced bagel lady to a sitting judge? She must have persuaded them somehow… how did she do it?

    Isn’t it equally possible that Olson, well-known to the large number of people who frequent Manhattan Bread and Bagel, simply persuaded people that she could do a better job judging? And do we know for sure that she won’t?

    As it happens, I did not vote on that particular contest, because I knew absolutely nothing about Janavs or Olson. How could I vote? There seems to be no place I can go to find out a judge’s judicial philosophy, how she has ruled in particular cases, or any other information to inform my vote.

    I e-mailed Patterico and asked him for any suggestions, and he responded with some… but not about that race. So I left it blank.

    Was there some reason that Janavs couldn’t have campaigned? It could be done without jeopardizing her judicial independence: she simply has to talk about her years of experience on the bench.

    I suspect that Janavs never took Olson’s challenge seriously, never campaigned, never bothered to respond to anything Olson said. That she simply dismissed Olson out of hand.

    In the article Patterico links atop this post, Janavs says two odd things in response to her electoral loss:

    • “For 20 years no one ran against me,” she said. “I doubt very much anyone will run against me in six years after this.”

    Maybe that’s just an unfortunate turn of phrase; but it does sound an awful lot like she has a sense of entitlement about her judgeship — and perhaps a bit of contempt for the idea of judicial elections.

    The other is more worrisome to me:

    • She said she hoped that her experience leads to some kind of election reform.

    So Janavs is one of those people who “question whether the system to select judges needs overhauling.” Rather than examine her campaign (or non-campaign) for her seat on the bench, her response is to blame the entire system for allowing mere voters to decide who gets to judge them.

    At this point, knowing nothing else about the two of them, if the election were re-held today — I would vote for Olson over Janavs.

    I’m not adamant; my mind could be changed by subsequent information. But I find Janav’s response to her loss disturbing, to say the least.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (6e94cd)

  22. Slow down a bit Dafydd =

    I wasn’t advocating any position at all regarding the election or who should have won it . . . so no need to come after me.

    I was merely repeating some of the reported conventional wisdom about why Olson was able to unseat an incumbent – an event that is very unusual in LA judicial elections. I assumed (mistakenly) that maybe you were posting from out of town.

    Janavs spent approximately $40,000 on the election according to the newspapers, while Olson spent around $100,000. The election did have a heavy Democratic Party turn out because there were Dem primaries on the ballot. Olson did get her name on the Democratic slate mailers. None of this is particularly controversial.

    I think those were all things that contributed to the unusual victory over an incumbent. Could it be she outcampaigned Janavs – sure. She certainly outspent her.

    The more controversial issue is whether Olson targeted Janavs for challenge because she believed that voters who knew nothing else about the candidates would favor her name over Janavs more unusual one. But as you can see from my original post I purposely downplayed that.

    Since your determined to go there, a very small amount of research would have revealed that in fact Janavs is a Republican. How did Olson convince voters? Certainly not because they were informed (just as you weren’t). Probably because they voted straight party ticket based on the slate mailers – as the LA Times reported Olson mailed “thousands of campaign mailers . . . as well as about 50,000 e-mails directed at registered Democrats, emphasized the candidate’s endorsement by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party.” Its also possible people voted for her just because they liked the name better.

    How do we know she wouldn’t be a better judge? You’re kidding right? She hadn’t practiced law in years. She reactivated her bar card in December just so she could run in this race. She was rated not qualified by the LA County Bar. Janavs on the other hand was a former US Attorney, then a judge for 20 years, was one of only 2 judicial candidates rated “exceptionally well qualified” was endorsed by 18 sitting Superior Court judges, the DA and Sheriff of LA County, and 4 of the 5 LA County Supervisors. Not to mention she got the endorsement from the Dog Trainer who said of Janavs: “This experienced judge, rated “exceptionally well qualified” by the L.A. County Bar Assn., deserves another term.”

    Save the bile for someone else plz. I was just trying to be helpful.

    CStudent (59bfb8)

  23. If only qualified people were elected the left wing wouldn’t have 5 representatives in the entire country. Dirty Harry Reid (criminal), Drunken Ted (adicted and a murderer), Peloshi ( i was a high priced hooker but married a millionaire), Ditto Boxer, The weasel Hellary (career criminal), Slick Willie (assisted the weasel with many crimes, not smart enough to function on his own). This is just an list of those that have absolutely no qualification and would be removed from office and get a short ride to the nearest prison. Got to the NoAgenda site and read about many more of them.

    Scrapiron (71415b)

  24. Dayfdd, Janavs was a Republican, however it seems many slate mailers choose their candidates based on who pays them the most. See this comment on the Volokh conspiracy.

    Patterico, saying any cure is bound to be worse than the disease seems unduly pessimistic.

    James B. Shearer (fc887e)

  25. “Ray: are you claiming that the constitution is infallabile and can never be wrong? ”

    You didn’t say infallible, you said irrelevant, don’t try t spin your way out of that!

    The Constitution can never be irrelevant as it is the bases of all our laws and the United States of America’s form of government as well as the form of government within each member state.

    If there is something you feel is wrong in the Constitution, then that can be corrected. You yourself pointed out how the Constitution and be amended to correct any apparent deficiencies. Just because you disagree with that part of the Constitution doesn’t make it wrong.

    I think your problem is that you would have to convince a majority of the people that the electoral collage requirement is wrong and you have little chance of doing that. The majority of the people doesn’t think we need to remove that requirement, that’s why it has lasted so long. How does that fit in with your majority rule doctrine?

    As for the rest of your objections, object all you want, it won’t change a thing. But it may make you feel better.

    BTW, The United States is not a democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic expressly for the protection of the minority. The Framers wanted it that way to protect us from majority rule becoming the bases for all laws. History has shown that majority rule leads to things like slavery, religious conscription, and other unsavory actions. The Framers were right in this. Thank God for their intelligent insight!

    Ray (be81f9)

  26. Good work, once again, Ray.
    But as I pointed out to you before, you’re using FACTS, LOGIC, and the CONSTITUTION to support your positions, and that is unfair to the lefties in a debate.
    Ha, ha, ha.

    What our well-intentioned, nice, friend “aphrael” is not understanding, is that the Presidential race is NOT a straight popular vote among ‘all the people in the nation.’
    Therefore, for him to argue that the electoral college does not always coincide with the ‘national popular vote’, is nothing more than a straw man argument.
    After all, a ‘national popular vote’ is nothing more than an interesting statistic—it is NOT the way we elect the President.

    Aside from voting for electors—whom ‘vote’ for the President in December—the electoral college is essentially a popular vote within each of the 50 states.

    And that is to ensure that the President is popular among a cross-section of the varying regions and interests in the nation.

    The founders were very concerned about regionalism, populism, mob rule, and the imbalance of population centers.

    They didn’t want the sparsely populated southern colonies to be underrepresented or subject to the regional interests of the northern colonies, which is where the population centers were.

    So, not only did they devise the electoral college to protect the interests of the smaller states, they also devised the premise of the Senate.

    So, Rhode Island and North Dakota have the same number of votes in the Senate as do New York and California—all in the name of protecting the interests of Rhode Island and North Dakota against the imposition of the densely populated states of NY and CALIF.

    For example, Tom Daschle of South Dakota,was Majority Leader of the Senate until several years ago.
    He usually won his Senate races with around 150,000 votes.

    Yet, in order to win a Senate race in California or New York, you have to come up with several million votes.

    But “aphrael,” doesn’t it seem a bit incongruent for Tom Daschle to be in the Senate with millions of votes fewer than other Senators ?
    Even the ‘loser’ in Senate races in large states such as Calif., NY, and Texas still receive millions more votes than Tom Daschle used to get.
    (Daschle has since lost to John Thune in ’04)

    If the electoral college was abolished, you would have to abolish the Senate under the same premise of seeking a ‘straight majority rule.’
    In such a case, states would not be electing two Senators each, rather, we’d just have a national super-ballot for Senate, and the top 100 vote-getters in the country would be elected to the Senate.

    In that scenario, we’d probably end up with 10 Senators from each California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

    And ZERO Senators representing small states such as the Dakotas, Iowa, Wyoming, Montana, Rhode Island, Mississippi, etc.

    Ultimately, if a Presidential candidate fails to win the electoral college majority, it’s because that candidate lacks the wide appeal among the numerous regions and interests of our diverse country.

    Desert Rat (d8da01)

  27. Patterico, saying any cure is bound to be worse than the disease seems unduly pessimistic.

    When the disease is democracy, then I beg to differ.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  28. aphrael–

    I posted quite some time ago on the electoral college, pointing out it’s clear advantages. To summarize:

    1) It’s a tie-breaker that intentionally resolves close elections towards the candidate with more wide-spread support.

    2) It’s a firewall that prevents local corruption from affecting balloting outside the state.

    3) It limits recounts to states with close elections.

    Consider Florida’w 2000 recount mania spread nationwide. Consider Chicago’s massive and unlikely midnight margin for Kennedy in 1960 (an election JFK won by 100,000 votes) leading to a Consitutional crisis. Consider the next close national vote where, say, Missouri shows up with an extra million votes for the “winner”, or where a the new president wins only in the big cities and is unpopular most everywhere else, amid charges of election fraud.

    You really don’t want to go there.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  29. But, back to the point of Patterico’s post regarding a bad electoral result meaning we should do away with elections:

    I can make a better claim that if the LA Times is the best we can do in newspapers, maybe we should do without newspapers.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  30. Patterico, there is considerable variation among democracies. It is a little hard to believe that our current system is the best possible.

    James B. Shearer (fc887e)

  31. In Washington state, we elect many judges, and the rules make it difficult to learn much about the candidates. Blogs are helping in a small way to fill in that information gap. One of the group blogs I write for, Sound Politics, regularly has endorsements of judicial candidates.

    I prefer voting on judges, but I think that fixed terms are even more important as a check on the judiciary.

    Jim Miller (823043)

  32. CStudent:

    I don’t have a candidate to grind in this contest, and I think you mistake my tone: I certainly didn’t “come after” you! You would know it if I had <g>.

    I am curious what, exactly, she did to achieve this result. “Spending money” is too nebulous… and now you’re starting to give responses that lead to a better understanding:

    Since your determined to go there, a very small amount of research would have revealed that in fact Janavs is a Republican. How did Olson convince voters? Certainly not because they were informed (just as you weren’t). Probably because they voted straight party ticket based on the slate mailers – as the LA Times reported Olson mailed “thousands of campaign mailers . . . as well as about 50,000 e-mails directed at registered Democrats, emphasized the candidate’s endorsement by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party.” Its also possible people voted for her just because they liked the name better.

    Now we’re getting somewhere; so my next question is… why aren’t there Republican “slate mailers?” My wife and I are both registered Republicans; we’ve both given money to both the RNC and the state Republican Party.

    If they had sent out slate mailers, we would have been happy to vote Republican as a default in any contest where we didn’t have a specific reason to vote for someone else.

    Patterico gave us some suggestions of whom to vote for; we would have taken those, then for the rest of the races, voted according to the Republican slate.

    If they’d bothered sending one out — as evidently the Democrats did.

    We have now moved to a point, CStudent, where we have the beginnings of a plan: in future elections, the state GOP should never miss the opportunity to send out recommendations on every race in the state. We voters may not follow every jot and tittle of such slates; but at least we’d have some idea how to vote in otherwise clueless contests.

    Maybe Janavs could have been re-elected; you think?

    Save the bile for someone else plz. I was just trying to be helpful.

    CStudent, you’re wildly overreacting. Go back and reread what I wrote in comment 21; there is nothing that could even possibly be considered “bile.”

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (6e94cd)

  33. Ray – of course the constitution can be irrelevant; I can think of two clauses off the top of my head which have been rendered irrelevant by the passage of time:

    Article V places the following condition on the amendment power: “Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section fo the first Article”.
    Article II specifies, among other things, that a person who whas a Citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption fo the constitution is eligible to be President.

    Neither of these clauses have any relevance whatsoever today, except *possibly* insofar as they may be used to provide insight into the interpretation of other clauses, and that’s a stretch.

    I’d also argue that the third amendment is irrelevant, mostly because there is no conceivable set of political circumstances in the modern world in which it might come into effect; things just aren’t done that way any more. Same thing for the clause allowing the Congress to grant letters of marque.

    In any event, i’d not say that the electoral college was irrelevant today; i’d say that prior to 2000, it was possible for people who disagreed with the principles behind the electoral college to shrug their shoulders and decide that it didn’t matter, because the electoral college was irrelevant: in practice, the popular vote decided elections anyway. 2000 revealed that to simply not be true, and that’s what changed.

    You may be correct in your point that I will have “little chance” of convincing a majority that the electoral college requirement is wrong. Then again, you may not; are you aware of the movement in the blue states to get states representing a majority of electoral votes to agree to allocate their votes to the popular vote winner? A bill to do that has passed the California State Assembly.

    aphrael (e7c761)

  34. Desert Rat – I understand that the Presidential election is not a straight popular vote; my contention is that it should be.

    aphrael (e7c761)

  35. Kevin Murphy – i’d forgotten that post. That’s one of the few good arguments i’ve seen for retaining the electoral college, but my problem is this: it is only by convention that electors are determined by a popular vote at all; as far as the constitution is concerned, they could be selected by the states by means of throwing darts at a phone book. Granted that this convention is unlikely to be challenged any time soon, it still strikes me as being a flaw that it could be challenged at all; and while #2 and #3 are laudable goals, the fact that #1 breaks ties by discounting votes cast by voters in heavily populated states and inflating the value of votes cast by voters in lightly populated states strikes me as being undemocratic.

    aphrael (e7c761)

  36. aphrael–

    about the tie-breaker: yes it is a bit anti-democratic to break ties by weighting disperses votes more than concentrated votes, but there are several decent reasons for this.

    1) That was part and parcel of the Constitutional Compromise;

    2) Voters tend to be swayed by local concerns and/or local powers (e.g. monopoly media). When voters are concentrated it is easier to indoctrinate them to particular views than if they are spread out. Not to say that rural voters don’t have common attitudes, but these are less likely to be synthetic.

    3) Urban voters may be ignorant of the land and resources that surround the rural voters, and/or allocate them without regard to rural concerns. An example of this kind of “democracy” is Oregon where the majority lives within 30 miles of Portland and has basically zoned the rest of the state as parkland, severely impacting the livelihood of rural residents.

    4) As governing systems go, this has worked fairly well, and if it ain’t broke….

    On the other hand, I’ll spot you the election of 1960, which had so many problems — including clear fraud that put Kennedy slightly ahead in the popular vote, 14 unpledged electors and a faithless one — only restraint by the (official) loser prevented a really ugly outcome.

    Kevin Murphy (0b2493)

  37. Dafydd

    I retract my “bile” – probably the product of a grumpy mood on a long day at work. In fact if I had the ability to edit posts after they go up I probably would have deleted it.

    I don’t know why Republican’s didn’t do more to get out their candidates – I can speculate. Judicial elections are supposed to be non-partisan – but that’s obviously only true on a superficial level. Secondly, lots of Dems were focused on the election because of the primary election for governor which probably gave the election more focus for Dems.

    It was a pretty calculated move on Olsons part. She may be a crappy judge, but it was an astute political move.

    CStudent (59bfb8)


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