May 2007 No. 21Table of Contents |
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On May 8, Hoosiers went to the ballot box to select partisan candidates for city and town elections this November 6. What influenced their choices? A recent Gallup poll relating to presidential elections found that Americans now are just as comfortable voting for a woman as a man and a black as a white candidate. They are less likely to vote for a 72+ year/old (42%), a thrice-married person (55%), or a Mormon (60%). Party affiliation of those polled made less of a difference in their answers than their religious preferences.
Americans still hold as the “greatest” Presidents, those who guided the nation through turbulent times or who had special charisma—Lincoln, Reagan, Kennedy, Clinton, and Franklin Roosevelt. Party affiliation did make a difference in these choices.
In April, Americans volunteered to Gallup pollsters that honesty and being straightforward are the most important characteristics they want in a President. From a list of “essential qualities,” Americans chose strong/decisive leader (77%), good moral character (68%), effective manager (63%), and focused on uniting the country (59%).
Not only has the 2008 presidential race started early, states are now clamoring to hold the earliest primaries so their voters’ decisions have greater influence on picking the top dog out of a big field of candidates.
New Hampshire and Iowa have long held the earliest partisan primaries—and got a disproportionately big share of candidates’ attention, regardless of their small share of electoral-college votes. Other states are moving in. As many as 20 states are moving toward a February 5, 2008, primary. Then Florida jumped to January 29 “ignoring the threat of sanctions” from the national parties, The New York Times reported.
The big states want to have a big impact on candidate selection. IN made no gesture in that direction. “Who’s first” in the nominating process has become a new political game. Some states think there will be no clear victor after February 5 and that their later primary may become more important in the selection from a smaller field of front-runners. States could become losers in the process as candidates will focus on national and international issues and cannot spend much time on top-burner topics in each state.
USA Today reports that only 7% of Americans checked the box on their 2006 federal income tax return that designated a $3 contribution to finance presidential campaigns. That’s down from 27.5% thirty years ago. The drop is “due to widespread disgust with campaign spending and advertising,” said This Week magazine.
The two major parties spent more than $1 Billion in the 2006 election cycle, reported the Federal Election Commission. The Seattle Times says top-tier presidential candidates are now raising $250,000 a day—that could add up to nearly $100 Million by the end of primaries next year. No wonder they focus on super-rich supporters and on high-octane fund-raising events.
Just how much more will be spent on the 2008 elections for the US President, Congress, governors, and state legislatures is anyone’s guess? Let the games begin.
Candidates have already begun televised debates, each hoping to get people excited about them, their ideas, and energized enough to vote for them, give to their campaigns, and perhaps join their “team.”
“Among the 5,000 advertising messages a day that Americans absorb, political campaigns must become increasingly savvy about how and why successful brands cut through the clutter,” writes the online San Francisco Chronicle. “What we’re going through right now is a phase shift in politics—which is going from a top-down, centralized, hierarchical world to a much more democratized, bottom-up, participatory form,” said the director of the San Francisco-based New Politics Institute. So, “branding” meets politics.
The 2008 elections will be shaped by a new medium—the interactive Internet and its multiplying blogs. YouTube “is a sign of why 2008 won’t be like 2004,” says The Washington Post. An anonymous filmmaker already launched “the first viral attack ad” that was viewed a million times online in a matter of hours. It “blows up any notion that candidates and mainstream media outlets can control the campaign dialogue. Especially online.” Sen. Barack Obama now connects directly with supporters on Facebook.com. “Google” a candidate’s name to check out their Web site. What do the candidates want you to think when you think about them? What’s their brand?
We all know that a half-million more Americans voted for Al Gore than George W. Bush in 2000. But that wasn’t enough. Some of those votes were in the wrong states, and the “winner-take-all” rule of the U.S. Electoral College tipped the scales in Bush’s favor. Four years later, Kerry would have won if just 60,000 of his votes had been in the “right” states, even though Bush beat him by 3.5 million votes.
2000 was not the first time that the person with fewer votes nationwide won the presidential election. IN’s own Benjamin Harrison won in 1888 with 90,000 fewer votes than incumbent Grover Cleveland but 65 more Electoral votes. In 1876 a special commission decided that Rutherford Hayes won over Samuel Tilden who got a quarter-million more votes. In 1824 the US House decided John Quincy Adams beat Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and two others.
According to the US Constitution, the states elect the President with each state having a number of votes equal to the total of its membership in Congress. In IN, as in most states, voters determine the “winner” in their Congressional district and the “winner” of the most districts gets IN’s total electoral vote, 11.
The current “winner-take-all” Electoral College system seems to make “one American, one vote” an empty phrase. Candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of “battleground” states with large Electoral College voting blocks. Two-thirds of campaign advertising and visits is focused on 5 states and 99+% on only 16 states. The rest are “spectator” states, though oddly including populous California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey in recent elections.
Supporters of a method of electing the President that counts every vote equally—regardless of where it’s cast—organized the National Popular Vote (NPV) campaign with IN’s former U.S. Senator Birch Bayh as one of their architects. It is a state-by-state effort to guarantee that in 2008 the candidate with the most votes will win the Presidency.
The NPV will become effective when the states that adopt it have an aggregate total of 270 of the 538 nationwide electoral votes. Here’s how it works:
Make sense? Too simple? Why not? Maryland became the first state to enact the NPV bill in mid-April. For months now, almost weekly, in some 45 states, the identical concept has passed a chamber of their legislature. IN Reps Pierce (Bloomington) and Grubb (Covington) introduced it this year—HB 1807—but it had no hearing. Will IN get on the band wagon in time?
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