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

Mon Nov 19 23:53:59 PST 2018

I wanted to correct my email below.. I had glanced at the results and
mistook the Use Senate race (won by Diane Feinstein over a fellow Democrat)
with the governor's race. In the actual governor's race, Democrat Gavin
Newsom has 61.3 percent with votes still coming in. The core Republican
vote in other two-party statewide races is about 36%. Republicans will end
up with either 13 or 15 percent of House seats when the dust clears.

Speaking of California and vote effectiveness, it's revealing to see how
much greater the dropoff in votes in statewide contests is from governor to
the contest sthat only have Democrats (Lt. governor and Senate) and those
that have Republicans. Nearly two million fewer votes (about a sixth)  in
the Lt. governor elections, as opposed to less than 200,000 fewer votes in
the secretary of state race. I guess California Republicans are
experiencing what it can feel like for third party backers so often denied
ballot access, but in far greater numbers..

Rob

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 8:36 AM Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org> wrote:
>
> 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]
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
>>
>> Posted on November 18, 2018 3:17 pm by Rick Hasen
>> Not so sure I agree with this one.
>> Posted in The Voting Wars
>>
>> ...
>>
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>
>
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> Rob Richie
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> 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 240
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-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Richie
President and CEO, FairVote
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 240
Takoma Park, MD 20912
rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616  http://www.fairvote.org
FairVote Facebook   FairVote Twitter   My Twitter

Thank you for considering a donation. Enjoy our video on ranked choice
voting!
(Note: Our Combined Federal Campaign number is 10132.)
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