Date: Tue, 25 Jul 95 23:17:20 CST From: "jim blair" To: eflahert@garnet.acns.fsu.edu, alt-politics-economics@cs.utexas.edu, alt-politics-greens@cs.utexas.edu,alt-politics-usa-misc@cs.utexas.edu Cc: BCc: Subject: Loony Lani and the Newt: Districts by Race Loony Lani and the Newt: Districts by Race Attached is a reissue of a previous post. Since it was issued, the congressional maps in Louisiana and Georgia have been ruled unconstitutional because they were drawn to create racially segregated congressional districts. "Liberals" have generally favored, (and "Conservatives" have opposed) such segregated districts, since they insure the election of "minority" congresspersons. These districts also turned out to have been a major factor in the Republican Congress created in the last election. In fact, the new Speaker of the House may owe his election to the race based districts! The shift in votes cast in the last election was very small: Republicans had received a majority of the votes cast in contested Congressional elections as far back as 1990. The big gains made by Republicans in the House in 1994 are the result of the mechanism explained in the attached post. Another example of Milton Friedman's "Invisible Hand" in politics: both Left and Right advocate policies that harm their interests. Date: Tue, 14 Feb 95 21:05:37 CST From: "jim blair" To: alt-politics-greens@cs.utexas.edu Proportional Representation & was Lani Loony? A recent exchange on alt.politics.economics (under the title: Was Lani Loony?) may be of interest here: I have seen some discussion on the same topic. It opened with Ed Flaherty (eflahert@garnet.acns.fsu.edu) describing a paper by Dr. Tim Sass of FSU & Dr. Stephen Mehay. Sass & Mehay collected data on city councils throughout the US for 1980 and 1990, and correlated it with fire and police dept data. They found that minority (non-Anglo) representation came to fire & police AFTER it had come to city councils. They (or Ed or someone) concluded that minorities need political clout on councils to get city jobs. The conclusion: Lani Guinier isn't loony. (NOTE ASIDE: Anglo has a interesting history; it was originally used to distinguish Anglos from Saxons in England, later English (who had become Anglo-saxons in the meantime) from Germans, French, Dutch, and other Europeans. Now it seems to mean ANY of the above-except Spanish) Any way, here was my reply to Ed's post: RE: Was Lani loony? I share T. Scott Thompson's questions about this study. Just what CAN it prove? Does the city council hire the police and firefighters in any city in the US? Since they are career jobs there is a longer turnover time in them than on a typical city council, which is re-elected each few years. Imagine an old established city with police and a fire department.. There is an influx ofimmigrants from X. They begin to apply for jobs in the city. Turnover rates in the private sector may be rapid, but new hires in civil service is mostly to replace those who die or retire. If the X people tend to cluster in a few of the city wards (and even if they don't) some of them are likely to be elected to city council where they will constitute a larger percent of the total council, before they will represent that same percent of the police force. Doesn't the Sass and Mehay paper just document this? I agree that discrimination did limit access of minorities to civil service jobs in many parts of the US during most of our history. Is any one seriously suggesting that this is the case today? Four more points of discussion: Gerrymandering, One man 10 votes, How to have more minority representation in Congress, and in the White House! GERRYMANDERING Back to that old established city. It has 100,000 citizens and is divided into 10 wards of 10,000 each. There are 51,000 who vote for party D and 49,000 who vote R. The districts each have 5100 D's and 4900 R's, so the city council is 10 D to no R. But the R party discovers that they can control the re-districting of the city wards through a friendly judge. They construct a set of bazaar districts such that one district contains 10,000 D's and no R's. The other 9 each has 4900 R's and 4100D's. The R party now controls the city council 9 to 1. They have invoked the well known political principle of the Gerrymander: to REDUCE the influence of a group, create special districts where they are the large majority. Then you can keep them out of power even when they are the majority! ONE MAN 10 VOTES If instead of 10 districts each with one locally elected representative, they decided to have all 10 council members elected "at large". And to give each voter 10 votes, which could be spread out or cast all for one candidate. Election would be by total VOTES not by total voters. This way a relatively small dedicated group of fanatics can get represented on the council. Lani assumes that race is the most important factor in how people vote. But what if it turns out that bigots or religious extremists exert even more influence over their supporters? And the candidates who try to appeal to the broad general community interest get only one or two votes of mild support from many, and so lose out to the most extreme candidates each of which has 10 votes from a small following. Will that improve government? HOW TO GET MORE MINORITY REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS The Democratic Party has been working to create "minority" congressional districts, and I wonder how much their success contributed to their loss of control in the last election.(see GERRYMANDERING) Gary Frank is a Republican who was elected and re-elected to congress from a New England district that is similar to the overall nation in being about 10 % African-American. His campaign was not based on "vote for me because of my race", " but vote for me because of my ideas of how to deal with the nations' problems." Some one out there in Oklahoma let me know the racial composition of the congressional district that just elected J.C. Watts. Because the other way to have more minority representatives in congress is to select good "minority" canditates who have appeal to the majority of the voters. And to be fair, it is not just Republicans who do this. Doug Wilder was elected governor of Virginia and David Dinkins mayor of NYC as Democrats. HOW TO ELECT MORE MINORITY PRESIDENTS Nominate Colin Powell. ,,,,,,, _________ooo__(_O O_)__ooo___________________________________ (_) LATER: My post gets some support from this essay: End of the line for black Democrats? By Faye Anderson On Nov. 3, Americans will go to the polls to cast their votes in the last national elections of the 20th century. The stakes are high: All 435 House seats and 34 Senate seats are up. It's by now familiar that President Bill Clinton's fate hangs in the balance, thanks to l'affaire Lewinsky. The stakes for black Americans are also high. The election outcomes at the national and state levels will set the stage for political empowerment for the first 10 years of the new millennium. The Democratic Party and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) have seen the Clinton presidency take its toll on them. In 1993, there were 259 Democrats in the House, including 38 blacks. CBC members held the chairmanships of three House committees and 17 subcommittees. Less than six years after Clinton rode into town, the Democratic caucus is down to 206 members. Reduced to a minority within a minority, the CBC has little prospect of gaining influence over domestic and foreign policy. Thundering on the House floor about the perils of messing with Bill is powerful theater. But when it comes to exercising real power, the CBC comes close, but no cigar. Most CBC members are ensconced in seats sheltered from the new conservative landscape. Unwittingly, the civil rights leadership has, with its goal of maximizing the number of majority-black districts, diluted the black vote by isolating black politicians from the mainstream. And packing black voters in electoral homelands has made the mobilization of the Democratic base more challenging in these midterm elections. With the outcome of the congressional races predetermined, the public has little motivation to vote. That impacts the chances of Democratic candidates in competitive races where an increase in black voter turnout can determine outcome. Here's the double whammy. While the personal political fortunes of the black politicians are tied up in a party that's in decline, they must appeal to a black electorate that is more conservative and disproportionately young. Of the more than 14 million black registered voters, approximately 5 million are between the ages of 18 and 34, the "hip-hop generation." A survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies shows only 58% of hip-hoppers identify with Democrats; a mere 22% are "strong" Democrats. Thus, efforts to boost black voter turnout based on Democratic Party loyalty are likely to fail. On the eve of the 21st century, blacks should declare their independence and vote for candidates who best address their concerns. In politics, there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests. Faye Anderson is president of the Douglass Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. From USA TODAY Friday October 16, 1998