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Texas Republican Ted Cruz reading "Green Eggs and Ham" during a Senate filibuster in 2013.
TV coverage of the Senate may reduce its effectiveness
Jul 31 2020
Televising every moment of the Senate's proceedings is a wonderful monument to government transparency, one that brings corruption-scrubbing sunshine to the self-proclaimed world's greatest deliberative body. Right?
Perhaps, but it's more complicated than that. Newly published research concludes gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress has reduced substantive debate, heightened partisanship and increased the amount of time members spend on posturing and self-promotion.
The report is the second in recent days detailing what's underpinning the dysfunction of the Capitol, at a time when legislative branch weakness is widely viewed among the main threats to democracy. In the other, former members of Congress painted a dire picture of their former workplace, saying it is ill-equipped to rally even in emergencies such as the current coronavirus pandemic and economic collapse.
<p>The TV study, from Cornell University, provides a rare analytical attempt to address an issue that has been the subject of years of theoretical debate: Does televising government in action help or hurt the deliberative process, in the end aiding or interfering with the function of our democracy?</p><p><p style="text-align: center;"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>In an attempt to answer the question, law professor Edward Stiglitz and economics graduate student Aviv Caspi examined debate in the Senate from January 1983 through January 1989, a period that straddled the start of C-SPAN's coverage of the chamber in May 1986. (House proceedings went live seven years before.)</p><p>They examined about 300,000 speeches by senators during debates to see how much those statements were similar to the previous statement — and statements by senators of the same party and the other party. (No, they didn't read many millions of words; this work was automated.)</p><p>They then looked to see if the similarities in the rhetoric by members of the same party increased or decreased after the cameras were turned on. </p><p>What they were looking for was whether "herding" — in essence, agreeing with your kind — by Republicans and Democrats increased with television. The answer was a qualified yes. </p><p>The study also concluded this tendency to toe the party line became most pronounced the closer to Election Day.</p><p>The authors also attempted to look at the impact on the behavior of senators who represented more or less "discerning" constituents, using the percent of state populations with college degrees as the measure of discernment. What they found is that senators with the most educated constituents distanced themselves less in their speeches from members of the other party.</p><p>Another finding was that TV's arrival boosted the amount of Senate time spent in what's known as morning business — the parliamentary time when senators can address any topic they like. "Members likely favor this time because it allows them to posture before cameras — showing fidelity to party, or differentiating from members of the other party — essentially without constraint," the study said.</p><p>The authors also conclude that their work suggests the Supreme Court may be justified in resisting years of lobbying from good government groups and media organizations that say oral arguments should be televised.</p><p>For <a href="https://www.usafmc.org/congressxroads" target="_blank">its own study</a>, the <a data-linked-post="2638671988" href="https://thefulcrum.us/united-states-association-of-former-members-of-congress" target="_blank">Association of Former Members of Congress</a> interviewed 31 of its newest members — a senator and 30 House members who left office in the previous two years — about the causes and possible solutions to congressional dysfunction. They will sound familiar to observers of Capitol Hill's slide into partisan gridlock.</p><p>The report says the constant need for members to return every weekend to their home districts to politic and raise money has given Democrats and Republicans alike fewer chances to form relationships that can result in working together on difficult issues.</p><p>Former members also report a tendency of party leadership to keep the two sides apart instead of promoting events that would build bipartisan trust.</p><p>The report calls for more members to participate in overseas trips where they have a chance to get to know each other and where party membership is less significant.</p><p>Also suggested are members visiting the districts of represented by the other party and conducting joint field hearings.</p><p>Finally, the report concludes that members need more time together away from the glare of the media and the public.</p><p>"To have all congressional business open at every step can sometimes diminish opportunities — and incentives — for the private interactions necessary for bipartisan and legislative success," the report concludes. </p>
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Alex Wong/Getty Images
Total bipartisan rejection of Trump’s idea the election be postponed
Jul 30 2020
President Trump took his crusade against voting by mail to a whole new level Thursday, suggesting for the first time that "delay" of the election is the best way to prevent his re-election from being stolen from him.
The idea was either castigated, dismissed as impossible or disregarded as a silly trial balloon diversion by senior members of Congress from both parties as well as legal scholars.
But it nonetheless intensified the president's efforts to sow doubt about the reliability of the November result — which, if he ends up contesting and refusing to concede defeat, could produce a constitutional crisis posing an unprecedented challenge to democracy.
<p>Even the suggestion of delay, from a sitting and politically embattled head of government, conjured up fresh anxiety about how easy it could be for a committed autocrat to upend the United States' global standing as a virtuous beacon for its unbroken two-century record of peaceful transfers of power.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Trump floated an election postponement beyond Nov. 3 in a tweet that started out as a riff on the unsubstantiated claim he's made dozens of times since March: That mail-in voting available to everyone because of the coronavirus — which he wrongly differentiated from no-excuse absentee balloting, "which is good" — will result in "the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history." </p><p>Tacked onto the end was the newsworthy part: "Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"</p><div id="57628" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7bdb07540878ba6ee4b867f68c385674"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1288818160389558273" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT E… https://t.co/VcSCg7IPwj</div> — Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/statuses/1288818160389558273">1596113169.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The president has no legal authority to delay the vote on his own. The Constitution says it's up to Congress to regulate the "time, place and manner" of federal elections, and federal law has fixed Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in every even-numbered November since 1846.<br></p><p>And so it could only be lawfully switched through legislation cleared by Congress — where essentially no one in authority is contemplating such a move, in either the Democratic House or the Republican Senate.</p><p>The date has never been pushed back — not during the Civil War, the flu pandemic a century ago or World War II. And doing so even by a few days would create enormous complications for the timely certifying of results and the work of the Electoral College. And the deadline at the end is immovable. The Constitution says the presidential term ends at noon Jan. 20.</p><p>"Only Congress can change the date of our elections, and under no circumstances will we consider doing so to accommodate the president's inept and haphazard response to the coronavirus pandemic," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the Democrat who chairs the committee with jurisdiction over election law.</p><p>Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to comment to reporters at the Capitol but told a Kentucky TV station the election timetable is "set in stone." House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said "we should go forward with our election." </p><p>And several of Trump's most prominent allies in the Senate GOP — including Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — dismissed the notion of any delay. </p><p>"We're going to have an election, it's going to be legitimate, it's going to be credible, it's going to be the same as it's always been," Rubio told reporters at the Capitol.</p><p>"It's unthinkable that that would not be the case," added Mitt Romney of Utah, one of the president's few vocal GOP critics on the Hill. </p><p>Other Republicans laughed off the proposal as a clever way to distract from the alarming news announced just before Trump took to Twitter: The economy shrank at a head-spinning 32.9 percent annual rate in April, May and June even as many states were pushing to reopen during a slight break in the Covid-19 outbreak.</p><p>Good-governance advocates and civil rights groups reacted emphatically to Trump's suggestion. Some warned it was a foretaste of more dangerous behavior to come before the election, while others used the moment to urge Congress to deliver a generous amount of fresh help for smoothing their mail voting systems in the economic rescue package now stuck in negotiations.</p><p>"Trump poses an existential threat to our democracy," said Sean Eldridge of the progressive voting right group Stand Up America, which is already organizing a grassroots campaign to organize nationwide protests if Trump is defeated but clings to power. "Americans need to be ready to mobilize."</p><p>Beyond condemning Trump's "extraordinary statement," Trevor Potter of the Campaign Legal Center said, the best way for Congress to respond is to reach a quick bipartisan deal on money "to make sure that the election takes place safely and smoothly," because "time is running out to give the states the funding they need to get this right."</p><p>There is no evidence of widespread election fraud using mailed-in ballots, which will be available to all voters without any excuse requirements in at least three-dozen states this fall. A quarter of all votes were cast this way in the past two elections, but that number is expected to double at least because of voters' fears of contagion at polling places. </p><p>Five states will rely almost exclusively on mailed ballots, and their safeguards are widely hailed as preventing foreign hacking and the domestic envelope theft or tampering. </p><p>Trump's claims that fraud is assured are therefore baseless. So is his claim that expanded remote voting is the "biggest risk" to his reelection. Studies have shown no partisan tilt in overall absentee vote, and the GOP for years made the mail part of its strategy for getting out its vote, especially among the elderly.</p><p>The president and many in his administration have often asked for and used absentee ballots, which Trump says is somehow more appropriate than states proactively delivering either ballots or absentee request forms.</p><p>In April, when the pandemic was at its initial peak, Trump told reporters he would not consider postponing the election. "I never even thought of changing the date," he said. "Why would I do that? Nov. 3, it's a good number. No, I look forward to that election."</p><p>But two weeks ago, he refused during a Fox News interview to commit to accept the results. "I have to see," he said then."I'm not going to just say 'yes.' I'm not going to say 'no.' "</p><p>Attorney General William Barr, in his combative House testimony Tuesday, said he had no "reason to think" the election would be rigged but "if you have wholesale mail-in voting, it substantially increases the risk of fraud."</p>
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J. Scott Applewhite/Getty Images
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, here at Monday's Capitol service for the late Rep. John Lewis, will ultimately negotiate the fate of additional federal funding to smooth the election.
Anger, not panic, from advocates as Senate seeks no new election aid
Jul 28 2020
There's not a dime for creating a safer and smoother election in the Senate Republican economic stimulus proposal — which has voting rights groups, democracy reform advocates and some election administrators professing outrage and frustration, but not panic just yet.
The roughly $1 trillion package, unveiled Monday and blessed by the Trump administration, is essentially the GOP's opening bid for negotiations with the Democratic House. It has voted for $3 trillion more in coronavirus recovery funds including $3.6 billion for states to make their November contest healthy, comprehensive and reliable despite the pandemic.
Securing significant aid for the states — mainly so they can accommodate a guaranteed surge in voting by mail — has become good-governance lobbyists' singular focus during the public health emergency. They remain cautiously optimistic the ultimate bipartisan deal this summer will include several hundred million beyond the $400 million they secured this spring, banking that the pleadings of election officials in many red states will outweigh President Trump's unfounded allegations about the fraudulent evils of mail voting.
<p>Advocates have taken heart that some senior Republican senators, most notably Missouri's Roy Blunt, have <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/congress-election-money" target="_blank">publicly endorsed additional funding</a>.</p><p>On the other hand, there is intensifying worry that — even if the states get more cash for printing, sending and then counting absentee ballots, plus hiring election workers and sanitizing polling places — the mail-in vote could still be chaotic and wholly unreliable if the Postal Service is unable to deliver tens of millions of envelopes on time. </p><p>"That would force people to risk their health to vote and virtually guarantees election chaos," said Robert Weissman, president of the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen.</p><p>The Senate GOP package is essentially silent on money to rescue the Postal Service from a financial crisis this fall, aid Trump also opposes.</p><p>On Tuesday, as details of the Senate GOP plan were being fully digested, advocates for election aid who position themselves as centrist and bipartisan remained essentially silent. That's a potentially strong signal these groups have confidence they'll get some of what they're after in the end, but only if they keep their rhetorical powder dry and don't do anything to antagonize Republican negotiators, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.</p><p>Groups on the left, in contrast, sounded emphatic alarms and put the blame squarely on McConnell, who will have the power to sign off on every line item in the package</p><p>The country "is running out of time to protect our health and constitutional right to vote, and the Republican-controlled Senate is playing partisan politics with our democracy," said Jana Morgan of the <a href="http://www.declarationforamericandemocracy.org/" target="_blank">Declaration for American Democracy</a> , a coalition of 160 labor, civil rights, environmental, women's rights and good government groups. "McConnell and his Republican colleagues' blatant disregard for the safety of voters is appalling."</p><p>"Public health experts have made clear that the threat of coronavirus isn't going away anytime soon and it's unbelievable that the bill Mitch McConnell released today completely ignores the crisis we'll face if states don't have the resources they need to ensure every eligible voter has options to be able to safely cast a ballot this November," added Tiffany Muller of the progressive group Let America Vote.</p><p>It remains unclear how soon negotiations will produce progress on the bill, which will be the last major legislative response before the election to the historic economic and public health challenges spawned by Covid-19.</p><p>The Senate GOP plan, assembled after a week of internal party discord at the Capitol and mixed signals from the White House, is vastly different from the much more generous measure the House passed in May — before the virus started its summer surge and the economy started swooning again.</p><p>Tens of millions of Americans are on course to lose their enhanced jobless benefits this week, and the centerpiece of the Senate bill would slash by two-thirds what has been since April a $600-a-week unemployment payment. The House bill would keep the current benefit going until January.</p><p>The Senate bill also would provide tax cuts and liability protections for businesses, schools and hospitals, while the House bill would make the government bolster virus safety measures in the workplace.</p><p>House Democrats would allocate $1 trillion in general relief for cash-strapped state and local governments. Senate Republicans left them out of their bill altogether.</p><p>The main point of agreement is that both bills would provide a second round of $1,200 direct payments to most American families, although the two sides differ on some details. </p>
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Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Sen. Roy Blunt (right) speaks with Sen. Lamar Alexander prior to the start of the Rules Committee hearing on election preparations.
Bipartisan accord in the Senate for more election cash, but how much?
Jul 23 2020
A bipartisan consensus has become clear in Congress that states need more federal help, and quickly, or else their elections in November risk becoming dangerously unhealthy, inefficient and unreliable — mainly because they might not be ready to deliver and count the torrent of mail ballots requested by voters anxious about the coronavirus.
All the witnesses made essentially that point Wednesday in a Senate hearing. And they had a clearly receptive ear from Roy Blunt of Missouri, who convened the session as the Republican leadership's point person on election funding.
But Blunt did not reveal how much he was willing to include in the next pandemic economic relief bill, negotiations on which have gotten off to a scattershot start in Congress this week. Republicans have been fighting among themselves about much the economic rescue package should cost and which of President Trump's expensive ideas to include.
<p>"Voters in this country must be able to cast a ballot safely and securely and without putting their health at risk — both this fall in the general election and in the remaining primary elections leading up to the general election," Blunt said, adding that he was "trying to identify the right amount of new money" both needed and politically possible.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>That was a clear signal GOP leaders will include money for elections in the legislation — knowing much of it will be spent to support expanded voting, which the president insists without evidence will assure "the most corrupt election in our nation's history," as he tweeted this week.</p>
<p>"We need to prepare for an unprecedented flood of mail-in ballots by ensuring the Postal Service has sufficient funding and makes no detrimental changes to their operation that could have a negative impact on elections this fall," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at the hearing — raising an issue that is separate from aid to the states, but if unaddressed has the potential to cripple the election. </p>
<p>One witness was Rick Steam, the Republican elections director in St. Louis County, the most populous jurisdiction in Blunt's state. He said 45 percent of votes in local elections in June were cast by mail, quadruple the usual share, and that he's expecting an even bigger vote-by-mail burst in the August primaries and the November presidential contest. </p>
<p>Temporary workers had to be hired to process the deluge last month, he said, and his budget does not anticipate such hiring for two more elections this year.</p><p>Congress delivered $400 million to the states in March to smooth their elections, but only if they provided a 20 percent match. The witnesses — including two GOP secretaries of state, Tre Hargett of Tennessee and Mac Warner of West Virginia — pleaded for Congress to release those strings.</p><p>Voting rights groups and election officials say another $3.6 billion would be needed to cover all the unanticipated costs. The House has approved that money in its version of the economic rescue bill now being negotiated.</p><p>Election officials could use the cash to pay for postage, paper and printing of absentee ballots. It's now too late to buy automated mail sorting systems in time for November, so the money could also be used to hire more human tabulators like the crew in St. Louis.</p><p>"Without additional mandates from the federal government or through the courts, we feel good about where we are financially," Hargett testified about the situation in Tennessee, which has strict excuse requirements that hold mail voting to a minimum. "However, if a court decision were to require us to do absentee no-excuse or universal vote-by-mail, that would be a game changer for us." </p>
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