Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday.
and I have strep throat which I rate 0/10 not recommended.
so your video about the political situation in Brazil
made me think about the political situation here in the United States
specifically the tortuously long, Kafka-esque process through which the two major political parties
in the United States determine their nominees for President.
delving deeply into the whole sorted affair would take like a month
so today we're just going to look at one state: Missouri
last week the people of Missouri voted in their presidential primaries
and on the Republican side, Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz statewide by about .19 percent
And on the democratic side, Hilary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by a similar margin
But what actually matters for becoming your party's nominee is not how many votes you get but how many delegates are
pledged to you because the nominees are not actually chosen by voters.
They are chosen by delegates at the party's national conventions in July. The Republicans are
meeting in Cleveland the Democrats in Philadelphia. On the Republican side there
will be 2473 of these delegates voting at the convention and on the Democratic side
there will be 4765-ish. It depends a little
bit on if anybody dies. Right, so despite only winning the statewide primary by
point two percent Hilary Clinton emerged from Missouri with 47 delegates
to Bernie Sanders' 35. In fact, she would have won more delegates than Sanders even if she lost by .2
percent because the Missouri Democratic Party has named 13 so-called super
delegates who can support whomever they want at the convention and most of them
have endorsed Clinton. Missouri's super-delegates include the state's
governor Jay Nixon, Senator Claire McCaskill, and like other prominent
members of the state's Democratic Party. Then there are the 71 delegates who
actually represent Missouri's Democratic primary voters. By state party rule, their votes
are split proportionately according to the results, so if Clinton had gotten a hundred
percent of the vote, she would have gotten all 71 delegates, but she just
barely beat Sanders, so instead she got 36 delegates to his 35. This year in Missouri there were about
8,800 democratic votes for each of these 71 pledged delegates. Which means that at the party's
convention in Philadelphia Governor Jay Nixon will have, you know, around 8800
times more power than the average Democratic voter in Missouri, and
not to belabor the obvious or anything, that's not a power distribution
generally associated with the word democracy. But wait, there's more! Over on
the Republican side Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz very narrowly statewide, but emerged
with 37 delegates to Cruz's 15. And John Kasich, who got ten percent of
the vote, won no delegates at all. But it wasn't all bad news for Kasich, because
on the same day in Ohio, he got 47 percent of the Republican vote but all
of the state's 66 delegates.That's because the rules of the Republican state party in
Ohio dictate that whoever gets the most votes gets all the delegates,
whereas the rules created by the State party in Missouri dictate that if no one gets 50 percent,
the winner gets twelve delegates, and then five delegates go to the winner of each
of Missouri's eight congressional districts. Trump won the state and five of the
congressional districts ergo 37 delegates. Alright, this is going to get a little
complicated: bit of context for non-Americans: there are 435 congressional
districts in the United States. Each of these districts elects a congressperson
every two years who goes to Washington and fails to pass a budget. Presumably they also do
other things but the main thing is to make sure that we don't accidentally
pass a budget. Each state gets a certain number of congressional districts based
on their population, and after the 2010 census it was determined that a smaller
percentage of Americans lived in Missouri so they lost a congressional
district. While fast growing states like Arizona and Florida gain districts but this losing
a district offered the state of Missouri an opportunity to redraw its
congressional boundaries. Back in 2010 there were six congressional districts
represented by Republicans and 3 represented by Democrats. If one of those
had to go, the Republicans obviously wanted it to be a majority Democratic
district which is what happened because 1- they control the state legislature and
2 - one of the democratic congress people helped them because in that process
his district became even more democratic. You know, now he's less likely to lose
his job. Today congressional districts in Missouri are drawn mostly in a way that
makes the elections within them extremely lopsided. Like in 2014 the first
congressional district of Missouri voted 73 percent to 21 percent for
the Democrat. The third district meanwhile voted 68 percent to 27 percent for
the Republican, et cetera.
But per Republican state party rules, no matter which district you win you get the same five
delegates. Like in Missouri's 1st congressional district about 34,000 republican votes were cast
in the 7th district it was closer to 150,000. So just by virtue of living in
the first district instead of the seventh, your Republican primary vote is five times
more powerful. In short Hank, all of this is extremely complicated and none of it is
particularly democratic, at least not in a straightforward way we
usually imagine democracy. Political parties are weird institutions in the
United States, like, they're simultaneously public organizations and private clubs.
They make their own rules, the rules are constantly changing, but in many cases
the rules are regulated by the states. And political parties are powerful, but
only insofar as their supporters allow them to have power. Also they don't really
have card-carrying members, but almost every national elected figure belongs to
one of them. Now some of this is a legacy from a time when the United States was openly
suspicious of what we now call voting rights. I mean, for most of American
history, most adults couldn't vote and political parties served partly as a
check against revolution or radical change. In fact, the nominating process has become
much more democratic over time. Like as recently as 1968 only 34 percent of
Republican delegates were chosen by primaries, and only 38 percent of Democratic
delegates. And for the last 10 election cycles, in both parties, the person with the most
overall primary and caucus support has also been the eventual nominee.
But that may not be the case this year, and it remains to be seen who will actually
wield the power when the party and the people disagree. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.