[EL] Toobin and House Results -- Re: ELB News and Commentary 11/18/18

Mon Nov 19 05:36:52 PST 2018

I'll note that California is going to be at least 45-8 Democratic in the
delegation, and perhaps will end up 46-7. The Republican candidate for
governor won 45.5%, but the GOP House vote was lower -- and just low enough
to tip nearly every close  House race to D's. So that vote margin did have
a rather significant effect.

Rob

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 8:32 AM John Tanner <john.k.tanner at gmail.com> wrote:

> Getting back to the House vote, does California skew those results?
> Certainly in the Senate, there were two Democrats who split the entire
> vote.  I don’t know whether there were similar House contests
>
> On Nov 19, 2018, at 12:03 AM, <larrylevine at earthlink.net> <
> larrylevine at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> I was attempting to point to the irrelevance of citing a national vote
> total in races in which that number has no relevance. Apparently, I missed.
> However, I believe one of the purposes for the Electoral College was just
> this circumstance – to protect smaller states from the dominance of larger
> states. Another purpose was to shield against the election of a certain
> kind of candidate to be President, which doesn’t seem t have worked to well
> this time around.
> https://www.historycentral.com/elections/Electoralcollgewhy.html
> Larry
>
> *From:* Fredric Woocher <fwoocher at strumwooch.com>
> *Sent:* Sunday, 18 November 2018 8:40 PM
> *To:* larrylevine at earthlink.net; jboppjr at aol.com; davidadamsegal at gmail.com;
> mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu
> *Cc:* law-election at uci.edu
> *Subject:* RE: [EL] Toobin and House Results -- Re: ELB News and
> Commentary 11/18/18
>
> I don’t get your point here, Larry.  So what if Clinton’s entire margin
> was from California?  If one objects to the electoral college because it
> does not count everyone’s vote equally, why is 2016 not a legitimate
> example of the objection that the vote of 3 million Californians was
> overcome by the votes of 250,000 people in Montana and Wyoming (or whatever
> the vote margins were there)?
>
> Fredric D. Woocher
> Strumwasser & Woocher LLP
> 10940 Wilshire Blvd., Ste. 2000
> Los Angeles, CA 90024
> fwoocher at strumwooch.com
> (310) 576-1233
>
> *From:* Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>] *On Behalf Of *
> larrylevine at earthlink.net
> *Sent:* Sunday, November 18, 2018 7:18 PM
> *To:* jboppjr at aol.com; davidadamsegal at gmail.com;
> mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu
> *Cc:* law-election at uci.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] Toobin and House Results -- Re: ELB News and
> Commentary 11/18/18
>
> Agree, Jim, but still find it curiously interesting. What distorts the
> whole picture is California. It’s kind of like every time I hear someone
> say Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by 3 million votes I recall that
> was her margin in California, so they just about broke even in the rest of
> the country. It comes up often when I do presentations and someone
> challenges the electoral college and uses the 2016 popular vote as
> justification for changing. I tell them they have a right to not like the
> electoral college, but 2016 is not a place to rest the argument.
> Larry
>
> *From:* Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> *On
> Behalf Of *jboppjr at aol.com
> *Sent:* Sunday, 18 November 2018 6:46 PM
> *To:* davidadamsegal at gmail.com; mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu
> *Cc:* law-election at uci.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] Toobin and House Results -- Re: ELB News and
> Commentary 11/18/18
>
> I find the comparison between seats won and the total nation vote per
> party to be meaningless. We dont award seats based on the national vote per
> party , but by district, so campaigns are conducted by district, not to
> generate a maximum national vote.
> In addition, candidates matter more in District elections while they would
> be substantial less significant if the national vote count determined who
> won. If fact, Tip O'Neill's maxim that all politics is local would be
> repealed.
> So judging district-based elections by national proportional results is
> incoherent and invalid.
> Jim Bopp
> ------------------------------
>
> On Sunday, November 18, 2018 David Segal <davidadamsegal at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It'd be what you'd want taken in isolation (and I support systems that are
> more likely to yield proportionality than the current one) but Toobin
> should have contextualized the stat in the asymmetry relative to what
> happens under the current districts for Republicans.
>
>
>
> Repubs won 50.4% of the two parties' popular vote in 2016 but took 55.4%
> of seats.
>
>
>
> 52.9% vs 56.8% in 2014
>
>
>
> 49.3% vs 53.7% in 2012
>
>
>
> And also could have been spoken to in the context of the longer historical
> norm that Nicholas mentions. (Which isn't necessarily a positive feature of
> our system, and could be corrected for through PR.)
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 8:22 PM Mark Scarberry <
> mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu> wrote:
>
> Jeffrey Toobin, in the New Yorker article, writes:
>
>
>
> "Even the good news from the election comes with a caveat, however.
> According to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, Democrats won
> the over-all popular vote in the four hundred and thirty-five races for the
> House of Representatives by about nine per cent, but they managed to
> capture only a relatively narrow majority of seats. This is because the
> district lines are so egregiously gerrymandered, especially in states fully
> controlled by Republicans."
>
>
>
> Assuming my math is correct:
>
>
>
> A 9% margin would put the percentages at 54.5 to 45.5 (leaving aside third
> parties). Out of 435 seats, 54.5% would be 237, and 45.5% would be 198. It
> appears that, with a few races still to be decided, Democrats will have at
> least 232 seats and Republicans will have at least 198. If the five other
> raises split evenly, the division will be 234 or 235 Democrats, and 200 or
> 201 Republicans. Is this particularly disproportionate?
>
>
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> Prof. Mark S. Scarberry
>
> Pepperdine Univ. School of Law
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 4:09 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
> ...
>
>
>
>
>
> Jeffrey Toobin Expresses Some Optimism About Voting Rights
> <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102371>
> Posted on November 18, 2018 3:17 pm
> <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=102371> by *Rick Hasen*
> <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
> Not so sure I agree with this one
> <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/26/how-voting-rights-fared-in-the-midterms>
> .
> [image: Share]
> <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D102371&title=Jeffrey%20Toobin%20Expresses%20Some%20Optimism%20About%20Voting%20Rights>
> Posted in The Voting Wars <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60>
>
> ...
>
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