1At the Thicket, we know legislative junkies. So to help you get your daily fix of news and opinion about legislatures and state politics, here's a bipartisan list of some statehouse blogs. Suggestions?
In light of all the attention that American legislators have been giving voter identification, I wondered about what our North American neighbors, Canada and Mexico, do. What I learned is that American states fall somewhere in the middle, geographically and administratively.
To Vote, you must prove your identity and address. You have three options:
Option 1: Show one original piece of identification with your photo, name and address. It must be issued by a government agency. Example: driver's license.
Option 2: Show two original pieces of authorized identification. Both pieces must have your name and one must also have your address. Example: health card and hydro bill.
Option 3: Take an oath and have an elector who knows you vouch for you. This person must have authorized identification and be from the same polling division as you. This person can only vouch for one person. Examples: a neighbor, your roommate.
That's very clear—and it works throughout Canada. Mexico also has a clear rule: bring your "Credencial para Votar" to the polls. This photo-voting card is provided free of charge by the Federal Electoral Institute, and has been since 1991.
Happy (belated) birthday to us! The Thicket went public on May 15, 2006. We're pleased, and mildly surprised, that we're still in business. We're not one of the big guys among blogs, but in our quiet niche, "by and for legislative junkies," we have lots of loyal readers. Our beat has consistently been the practice of representative democracy, the legislative institution and state elections and politics--with a few podcasts on policy issues thrown in.
Over our 5-year history there have been 431,376 pageviews of The Thicket (compared to 1 mill. per day for Politico). In the last year, 65,000 different people visited The Thicket 75,000 times. 92 percent of our visitors are from the United States. The distribution of readers among the states is approximately proportional to state population, except that Colorado and the District of Columbia--the homes of NCSL's two offices, rank second and third in visitors behind California.
We have also had readers from 150 other countries during the last year, led by the English speaking countries of Canada, UK, Australia and India. For some unknown reason, Venezuelans have made the largest number of visits from non-English speaking countries.
We've posted 1,240 items in our history. That's about four per week--our goal when we set out on this venture. We wish we could post more frequently, but all of our writers have other jobs to do at NCSL. The top 5 most viewed posts in the last year were:
Thanks to all of our readers! Our best stories often come from your suggestions. Keep those ideas--and your thoughts and comments on The Thicket--coming.
For several years, state legislators have adopted a variety of approaches to fill gaps in federal responsibility for immigration policy and delays in immigration reforms.
According to a new immigration report from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), the 50 states and Puerto Rico have introduced a record 1,538 bills and resolutions relating to immigrants and refugees in the first quarter of 2011. This number surpasses the first quarter of 2010 by 358 bills.
In this edition of The Buzz at State Legislatures, we talk with several state legislators regarding immigration legislation. In April, 2010, Arizona made national news with its enactment of SB1070, which added new state penalties related to immigration enforcement.
Representative John Kavanagh of Arizona explained to The Buzz that the state was frustrated with federal inaction and the increasing crime, drug smuggling and human smuggling. Download ImmigrationCavanaugh *
Utah is trying a compromise on immigration that could end up being a model for other policymakers, or yet another law tangled up in court. Utah Senator Curtis Bramble spoke with The Buzz at State Legislatures magazine and told us why Utah is taking an approach that addresses both enforcement and the need for workers. Download ImmigrationBramble *
Recently NCSL published the May issue of The Canvass, and the lead article detailed the various kinds of state primaries. I wrote that story, and I thought I had squeezed just about everything there was to know about primaries into less than 1000 words.
I was wrong. Dr. H. Edward Flentje, professor of public administration at Wichita State University (and my favorite professor in graduate school) called me. It seems I left out a key part: the history of primary elections.
So here’s the rest of the story. Soon after the American Revolution, political parties made nominating decisions for statewide offices by a gathering of their state legislators; these were the first caucuses. By the early 1800s, “the legislative caucus fell before those who demanded that the people be given a voice in nominations,” says a venerable but out-of-print text, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, by V.O. Key, Jr.
The replacement? Statewide conventions. Key says that “the convention was a means for the expression of the ‘popular will’ of the party; it was representative government for the party.”
Conventions remained dominant for the next hundred years, but just as the caucus had before them, “the convention came to be regarded as an instrument of organization control, as a means of boss rule,” wrote Key.
What then? Direct primaries, regulated by state legislatures. Wisconsin enacted the first statewide primary law in 1903 and by 1917 primaries had spread to all but a few states.
Primaries, then, were a 20th century innovation, that replaced a 19th century innovation, that replaced a gathering of politicians. It’s all about “the push and pull between the preferences of party organizations and popular choice,” says Flentje.
In that context, it is interesting to note that Washington has indeed cancelled its presidential primary for 2012, saving $10 million by doing so. It will use caucuses instead.
For another version of the history of primaries, try the Britannica.
State primary dates have gotten a great deal of legislative attention this year as states try to comply with the MOVE Act of 2009. The law’s intention is to protect the right to vote for military and overseas voters. Prior to MOVE, many overseas citizens were effectively disenfranchised because their absentee ballots didn’t arrive in time to be counted. Now, thanks to MOVE, states are required to transmit absentee ballots to overseas voters at least 45 days before any federal election, including primaries. A 2009 issue of NCSL’s elections newsletter, The Canvass, outlines the MOVE Act provisions and how they relate to state policy.
My colleague, Jennie Bowser, has been following MOVE Act bills. She reports that 10 states plus the District of Columbia had September primaries in 2010. Doing so again in 2012 would make it all but impossible to transmit ballots by September 22nd, 45 days before Election Day on November 6, 2012.
All 11 jurisdictions are noted below, along with recent legislation to fix the problem:
Delaware
Hawaii (HB 2397, passed in 2010, moves the primary to the 2nd Saturday in August)
Maryland (HB 671, passed in 2011, moves the primary to the last Tuesday in June)
Massachusetts
Minnesota (SF 2251, passed in 2010, moves the primary to the 2nd Tuesday in August)
New Hampshire
New York
Rhode Island
Vermont (S 117, passed in 2010, moves the primary to the 4th Tuesday in August)
Wisconsin
DC (B 90, passed in 2011, moves the primary to the 1st Tuesday in April)
August primaries may be a problem, too. Bowser notes that “while it is conceivable that states with late August primaries could meet the 45-day window, some of them appear to be pushing their primaries earlier anyway.”
The states that had their 2010 primaries in mid-to-late August were:
August 10th: Colorado, Connecticut
August 17th: Washington, Wyoming
August 24th: Alaska, Arizona, Florida
August 28th: Louisiana
Among these eight, Colorado this year changed its primary to the first Tuesday in June (the bill is on the governor’s desk), and Washington has moved from the third to the first Tuesday in August. Proposals were introduced in Alaska, Arizona, and Connecticut, but all of these states have adjourned for 2011 without passing a primary date change.
For more on state primaries, including a catalog of the differrent types of primaries, see the May issue of NCSL’s The Canvass.
C.G.P Grey, an American who lives in London, writes a quirky, often humorous blog about British and American government and geography--and anything else that interests him. In a recent posting he muses about the location of American state capitals:
The United States is a bit odd in when [sic] it puts its state capitals. Ask a random person what the capital of a random state is and they’ll probably tell you the name of the largest city in that state – but in the US that’s rarely the correct answer.
Only 17 of the 50 states have their most populous city as their capital: Wyoming, Idaho, West Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, Iowa, Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Utah, Colorado, Massachusetts, Arizona, Rhode Island and South Carolina. [Update: Alert followers of The Thicket on Twitter have noted that there are only 16 states on this list and wonder what the 17th is. The answer is Ohio, where Columbus is the largest city.]
The other 33 states have a small, generally obscure, city as their capital.
He goes on to show what would happen if state capitals were located in the center of population for each state. He went to a lot of work to produce this map of the location of each state capital (blue), the largest city in the state, if not the capital (red) and the population center (green).
His original posting includes a table showing the distance from the population center of each state to the capital. The farthest? Alaska--544 mi. The closest? South Carolina and Maine--2 mi.
One reader poked fun at Grey's Blog by suggesting that if state capitals should be near the population center of the state, then it would be best to locate the capital in a Winnebago because of population shifts over time.
Check out Grey's clever Venn diagrams of the United States and Britain and their possessions. When he's not writing his blog, Grey is a public speaker specializing in time management. He spoke at NCSL's Legislative Summit in Louisville in 2010.
The Monkey Cage, a blog that links political science research to current issues and events, recently was named blog of the year by The Week. It deals more with national politics than it does state government, but if you like The Thicket's occasional ventures into political science, you'll like The Monkey Cage. Its name is cleverly drawn from the H.L. Mencken quote, "Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage." The Week cited The Monkey Cage for "injecting the wisdom of the academy into everyday political discourse."
An interesting recent post in The Monkey Cage reports on Catie Ballard's field experiments in Tanzania and Bosnia to determine the effect of Internet exposure on citizens' attitudes toward government. She found that people who were given access to the Internet became more knowledgeable and critical of current affairs in their countries but that that did not necessarily contribute to greater engagement and democratization:
Thus, at first glance the Internet’s capacity to make citizens more critical of a poor-performing government seems a boon for transparency and accountability—integral components for building a robust democracy. But rather than encourage individuals to press their government to adhere to higher democratic standards, in this case disaffected individuals became increasingly willing to consider alternative forms of governance. This suggests that exposure to the Internet may prove a double-edged sword for democracy and democratization.
In other words, more knowledge about government and politics through the Internet can lead to greater distrust and cynicism--something that we have found in the United States as well.
Sherri Breaux, division director and chief legislative researcher for the Louisiana Senate, received the first Kevin B. Harrington Memorial Award for Excellence in Democracy Education. She was recognized for her passionate devotion to educating young people about our system of democracy through her work with the Louisiana Legislative Youth Advisory Council (LYAC), the Commission on Civic Education and the America's Legislators Back to School Program. Massachusetts state senator and NCSL President Richard Moore presented the award to Breaux in Boston last weekend.
Breaux was nominated for her years of service promoting democracy education. She worked tirelessly to help create and staff the LYAC, composed entirely of high school students. By facilitating communication between the young people and the legislature, the council gives students a unique opportunity to be involved in the workings of government. Each June, during the legislative session, Breaux plans a two-day event, which includes a public hearing for young people and a leadership seminar for new LYAC members. She serves as a coordinator for NCSL’s America’s Legislators Back to School program, encouraging state senators to visit classrooms. Breaux also staffs the Louisiana Civic Education Commission.
The award, sponsored by the National Conference of State Legislatures’ (NCSL) Trust for Representative Democracy, will be given each year to an individual or organization for advancing the public’s understanding of state or local representative democracy. It is named for Kevin B. Harrington, the founding president of NCSL. He was was an educator by profession and, as president of the Massachusetts Senate (1971-1978), organized the Legislative Education Office. He was a leading advocate of civic education and believed government should play a significant role in promoting the civic education of its citizens.
“We are very pleased to be honoring such a worthy individual,” said Senator Richard Moore, NCSL president. “Sherri Breaux’s outstanding commitment to educating young people about American democracy embodies the spirit of the Harrington award.”
Ms. Breaux is pictured with Neil Harrington, Senator Harrington's son, and Senator Moore.
Yale University political scientists Daniel Butler and David Broockman have recently published an article, "Do Politicians Racially Discriminate against Constituents? A Field Experiment on State Legislators." Their research consisted of sending a fictitious e-mail message to approximately 4,800 state legislators with a request for assistance in registering to vote. Some of the messages were sent using an apparently white name (Jake Mueller) and some under a stereotypical black name (DeShawn Jackson).
They found that 61 percent of the legislators responded to the Jake alias and 55 percent to DeShawn--"a statistically significant difference of 5.1 percentage points (p=0.04)" (p. 14). They conclude:
Overall, we find that the putatively black requests receive fewer replies. We explore two potential explanations for this discrimination: strategic partisan behavior and the legislator's own race. We find that the putatively black alias continues to be differentially treated even when the emails signal partisanship, indicating that strategic considerations cannot completely explain the observed differential treatment. Further analysis reveals that white legislators of both parties exhibit similar levels of discrimination against the black alias. Minority legislators do the opposite, responding more frequently to the black alias.
It's tempting to quibble with the methodology and findings of this research. For example, while the differences are "statistically significant," is the small difference of 5 percent meaningful? Would the differences have disappeared if the "Jake" and "DeShawn" messages had included home addresses in the legislators' districts? Many legislators receive hundreds of e-mails a day and perform triage on them by responding only to the ones identifiably from their own districts. Certainly the response rates would have increased if it were an identifiable constituent making the request.
But my bigger concerns are the ethical issues of political scientists performing this kind of research.
Writing in a Washington Post blog, Ezra Klein calls this research "simple and elegant." That's one point of view.
I think of it more as treating legislators as lab rats: Performing an experiment by telling them a lie and then measuring how they respond. Ring a bell and see if they salivate.
It's a little bit like the FBI creating a crime and then trying to ensnare public officials in it. Only the political scientists' deception doesn't have an FBI sting's justification of uncovering corruption. The only saving grace is that this study reports only group behavior, not individual responses, so there's no "gotcha." There is, however, a profound disrespect for the work that legislators do, the enormous demands many of them work under, and the idea of public service.
To their credit, the authors address the ethical issues of performing experiments on public officials (pp. 12-14). They defend their research design as meeting a standard for experiments on publlic officials that they ascribe to the eminent political scientist, Robert Putnam: If it's only "slightly deceptive, but innocuous and highly revealing," then it's OK to make work for public officials.
When I asked Alan Rosenthal, an equally noted political scientist, about this, he mused, "How is 'slightly deceptive' a defense for deception? What do you think political scientists or the media would say if a legislator defended his or her misbehavior as 'slightly corrupt, but harmless and profitable?' They would make a joke of an elected official who said this."
Now that I've biased you with my rant on this subject, you can weigh in with your own opinion in this poll:
8/25/11 Update: Another study of legislator responsiveness to fictitious constituent requests--this one from South Africa--has drawn further attention to the ethics of experimental academic research. See "Politicians Like Constituents Like Them" in The Monkey Cage and ensuing thoughtful comments about research ethics.
From the State House in Trenton, New Jersey there is a clear view across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. In the Google Earth image below, the complex of buildings below the "A" pin marker at the top right is the State House and the white line in the middle of the river at the lower level is the Pennsylvania border.
David April, the tour program coordinator for the New Jersey Legislature, wonders if his is the only state capitol from which one can see another state.
After some investigation, the only other capitol from which another state is visible that we know of for sure is Cheyenne, Wyoming. The Colorado border is only about 10 miles south of the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne, and one can see mountain peaks in the Centennial State from the Capitol.
Massachusetts is also just a few miles away from the State House in Providence, Rhode Island. Paula Dominguez, research director for the Rhode Island General Assembly, says that she lives in Rhode Island but has to drive through Massachusetts to get to the State House. But she says that the city of East Providence blocks the view from the capitol to the Bay State. Another friend in Providence reports, "On a clear day from the rim at almost the top of our dome (where no one is supposed to go, but some do), you possibly could be able to see across the bay toward the MA South Shore. I cannot say that I have seen that far, however."
Annapolis, Baton Rouge and Tallahassee are each about 30-40 miles from another state's border (Delaware, Mississippi and Georgia, respectively), but it seems unlikely that one can see that far from those capitols.
Corrections to this post are welcome! (See comments below.)
