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

Mon Nov 19 18:43:12 PST 2018

One of many bizarre Florida laws means that zero votes are counted in 4
deep blue districts where the GOP couldn't muster a candidate. This odd
rule is not only a proximate cause of the FL-24 undervote for Senate (and
thus Scott's victory, most likely), but probably renders 800,000 or some FL
Dem voters invisible in these stats. (And maybe ~300,000 Republicans)

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 11:56 AM David Segal <davidadamsegal at gmail.com wrote:

> Dems as of now are up by 3.3 million in CA and 8.5 million over all across
> the country.
>
> Hard to assess, but looks like few hundred thousand of the 3.3 million
> vote gap could be attributed to top-two races w/o Rs.
>
> There were 4 D v D generals, 4 D v I/G generals, and 1 R v R generals. But
> most of these are races where an "opposite-party" challenger would have
> been getting low double digit percentages.
>
>
> D5
>
> 155k(D) - 42k(I)
>
>
> D6
>
> 129k(D) - 30k(D)
>
>
> D8
>
> 93k(R) - 61k(R)
>
>
> D13
>
> 246k(D) - 32k(G)
>
>
> D20
>
> 156k(D) - 37k(I)
>
>
> D27
>
> 144k(D) - 37k(D)
>
>
> D34
>
> 94k(D) - 35k(G)
>
>
> D40
>
> 78k(D) - 22k(D)
>
>
> D44
>
> 84k(D) - 37k(D)
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 8:31 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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