The Curious Case of Wisconsin Recall Turnout

Forgive me, but I couldn’t help but laugh about the news reports about how much higher the estimated turnout was going to be for the recall election than the general election that elected Governor Walker two years ago.

 Admittedly I’m a Wisconsin outsider, but this doesn’t send the world’s greatest message. It says “We couldn’t be bothered to vote two years ago, but now that there’s a recall vote, we better run out and vote.

These people either love the policies of Scott Walker or hate them, but could not rouse themselves for a general election that received far less national media fanfare.

I’m a big proponent of actually turning out and voting. I’m not sure that it could’ve prevented this election, but it couldn’t have hurt.

Maybe, if people acted more like every election was a recall vote, we wouldn’t get ourselves into such dire straits that switchboards at talk radio shows wouldn’t burn up with day after day of angry callers, quite so often.

 It would be interesting to find out what made this recall election, so much more important than the general election that elected Scott Walker in the first place.

Elected By Straws

If anyone reads Book Diplomacy with regularity, god bless you. For the last several weeks, I’ve been working on a paper for my graduate seminar on how electoral system change effects party strategy in terms of how political parties or candidates go after voters.

 It was a very fundamentally complicated paper as there aren’t many articles on the topic to be had. I had to look at how the electoral system was, the change that reformers were hoping to enact and the effects of said electoral reform.

After producing a twenty page paper on the topic, I decided that “we should produce a global mandate that we should elect representatives by drawing straws.

I’m only halfway being a smart-ass. There are so many different ways to elect candidates in the world that it’s enough to make one’s head spin. This makes comparative work very difficult because of differences in countries social and political contexts, their methods of election, etc.

 A system where we just draw straws would be much more effective than worrying about things like proportional or majoritarian systems and how they divide up the seats. Plus, the expense of putting on elections would be greatly reduced. And finally, voters rarely know about their representatives anyway, so how would a straw ballot be detrimental?

The Curious Reality of Presidential Elections

In presidential systems, there’s this widely held, though ultimately incorrect belief that the presidential contest is more important than the legislative contests.

 Now it is true that the President has a higher profile than most local or national legislators and has the ultimate say over most matters of national policy as Congressional vetoes are rare. But it is the leaders of Congress who ultimately introduce legislation  Though the federal level is important, the local level is basically forgotten in the voting calculus.

Many key local and statewide contests take place during non-presidential years. If we use the “greatest impact on everyday life” as a variable than its’ local elections that matter most because these elect our mayors, alderman, and county board members who have the power to enact ordinances or raise taxes that effect our everyday lives.

 Presidential and Congressional decisions, though important, could take years to filter down to the local level, if they ever do. Given this context, why are presidential elections considered so important?