How is this any different from the hypothetical of Racistville in the OP?
Because black property owners have no means to change their status under the law; it is de facto discrimination. All Republicans have to do is get elected to a majority, and they can change the law to suit their ends.
Losing an election has consequences.
All the blacks have to do in Racistville is get elected to a majority on the town council and they can change the ordinance (and Republicans probably have as much chance of controlling the Massachusetts legislature as blacks do of controlling the Racistville town council). It’s de facto discrimination in both cases…against blacks in Racistville, and against Republicans in Massachusetts.
You know, I like Wyoming’s system: if a Senator needs to be replaced, for whatever reason, the state party to which he belonged makes a list of three candidates and presents it to the governor, who chooses from that list. I think the special election is supposed to be at the next even November, but I could be wrong.
Except that members of political parties are not protected groups.
The problem with a constitutional law of democracy is that there’s little in the way of constitutional framework for any of it. The only relevant parts of the Constitution, for the most part, are remedial amendments aimed at specific historical problems. On the systemic questions (e.g. how to deal with partisan fairness, as opposed to rights of specific individuals of certain characteristics), there is almost no guidance.
Because there’s really no constitutional principles to apply, we have to either say there are no constitutional restrictions, or divine them from vague principles (which conservatives are normally opposed to, unless it happens to be Bush v. Gore). One person one vote is a great invention, but it isn’t deeply rooted in the Constitution. It is exactly as ephemeral a legal construct as the right to abortion or the right to homeschool one’s child.
If we invent the principles, we have to invent them on the basis of some underlying theory of how democracy ought to work. But that’s one thing the courts have never really done. We have a handful of ad hoc principles (1P1V, partisan gerrymandering is OK, don’t make districts in shapes that reflect race in any way), but no legally recognized underlying theory of how democracy is supposed to function. In fact, you’ll find that many doctrines in the law of democracy have mutually exclusive underlying political theories.
Turning to the question at hand, we have to ask what the underlying principle is. Bricker suggests the principle has something to do with the protection of the rights of political minorities from the majorities creating unfair rules for partisan purposes. That’s a fine rule. And it goes to the heart of the democratic paradox: that majorities control the law, but must not be allowed to control the law that determines who is the majority. But you can’t hold that general rule consistently with the other rules we have, like the fact that explicitly partisan gerrymandering is A-OK. Or the fact that ballot access rules are determined by legislatures, etc.
Even assuming that the MA legislature’s decision is a nakedly partisan one, the question is what distinguishes nakedly partisan changes in appointment rules from nakedly partisan gerrymandering and nakedly partisan ballot access rules since we allow the latter two as constitutional. In my estimation, partisan gerrymandering is allowable because it can be overcome, if with occasional difficulty, by elections. If a party could truly gerrymander itself into perpetual safety in a given district, then the Supreme Court would craft an equal protection principle to end it. I think this probably falls into the same category. There’s no need to invent a constitutional principle because the problem fixes itself over a long enough timescale.
The Warren court seems to have thought otherwise.
It isn’t up to the courts at all, but to the people and their elected representatives.
Sure is. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with the nature of his complaint. He’s objecting, objecting, to Senators being chosen by the people, democratically, via majority rule (in a one person, one vote election at that), rather than by one of their hired hands. The “political minorities” whose rights he claims are being trampled are who, exactly? The members of the losing party in the last election, who are also likely to lose the election for the replacement? How are their rights being trampled or even disrespected? Elections produce losers as well as winners, that’s their nature, but the fact of losing does not imply unfairness.
Or perhaps, as Mr. Moto astonishingly suggests, the appointive “right” of a hired-hand governor, who putatively may be of a different party than the former Senator, are the ones being trampled, instead of being allowed to hold sway over the rights of the people themselves? Is that what you think Bricker is suggesting instead?
If you, either, could explain some relevancy of that principle to the case at hand, it would help tremendously.
No, first you have to show how allowing democracy to function is “nakedly partisan” at all. Do you or Bricker assert that the Republican electoral disadvantage in Massachusetts is due to the Democrats’ rigging the rules against them in some way, rather than to the simple unpopularity of their political views and candidates?
If not, then what is the problem being raised? Is it something more than pouting over Romney not having been able to flout the will of the people by appointing as Kerry’s replacement someone with views antithetical to those the people chose in the previous election, compounded by pouting over the Republicans not being able to even temporarily recover their Senate filibuster power with the death of the hated Kennedy? Is either of those positions consistent with either a philosophical or a legalistic principled view of minority rights in a democracy? Is the fundamental objection he raises anything more than “naked partisanship” itself? If so, that is not apparent at all.
The “problem” is nothing more than Bricker’s party’s embrace of principles that are not shared by the majority, and their failure to persuade the majority to join them. Let them try to fix that one before trying to rig the system to actually favor the minority.
ETA: The same-party restriction was heavily discussed and reported, but I see it didn’t make it into the final law. That is a side point, however.
A side point perhaps, but I just thought a poster so agitated about incomplete and misleading arguments would take greater pains to check those details out. You were demanding that others search for a bill you hadn’t read yourself.
He’s not. He’s objecting to the double standard in which, when there’s a Republican governor and it looks like a Senate seat will be vacant, the Mass. legislature takes away his power to appoint a temporary senator until an election can be held to elect the permanent senator, and when there’s a Democratic governor and the seat is vacant, and when there’s a Democratic governor and it looks like a Senate seat will be vacant, the Mass. legislature gives him the power to appoint a temporary senator until an election can be held to elect the permanent senator.
It’s not a question of democracy, it’s a question of manipulating the rules for partisan advantage. That’s what he’s objecting to.
You know who else was democratically elected? Mitt Romney. The citizenry of Massachusetts gave him the power to select a replacement for a Senator.
What’s YOUR objection to democracy?
No, a constitutional convention a couple of centuries earlier did, not *any *of the living “citizenry” who would be affected by the partisan rigging he was about to undertake, and which several posters here would have applauded. Remember too that that part of the MA constitution, like the US one, was created at a time when Senators weren’t popularly elected anyway. The Federal-level discrepancy with the principles of elected representative democracy was corrected a century ago via amendment, but the state, like many, hadn’t gotten around to it until it became an actual problem.
None at all. I support it. I just don’t happen to believe, as you do, that assigning a significant power to a single temporary hired hand instead of to the people themselves, and perhaps contrary to their clear wishes, meets any plausible definition of the word.
Captain Amazing, perhaps you could be the first to explain how what the MA legislature has done differs in any substantive way from neutrally advancing the principles of democracy. How is it not accurate to say that on both occasions they prevented partisan rigging of democracy, the first time by preventing a hired hand from flouting the will of the people who employed him, and the second time by preventing a minority in the US Senate from unearnedly regaining (an also antidemocratic) filibuster power?
Who here considers the Governor’s power to replace a Senator to be important when you decide for whom to vote? Who has it in the top ten criteria? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Then you are against our entire system of government. We have a representative democracy–a whole boatload of temporary hired hands that can act against the clear wishes of the people. I guess this is news to you.
No. You know this is wrong, you know this is nothing more than partisan bullshit, and you don’t care, because you would rather wrap it up in the flag and democracy and whatnot to justify whatever the hell the Democrats do. I’m not going to play this game with you anymore.
[khan]
Senator Kirk?!?!
[/khan]
The citizenry of Massachusetts, to our shame, elected Mitt Romney governor. The state legislature has the power to decide whether or not the governor gets to appoint a replacement senator. As with many things, the legislature can pass laws to give the governor certain powers, and it can revoke those powers. The Massachusetts legislature has, granted, in this case been unusually forthright in its ability to decide whether or not the governor is likely to act in the interests of the state.
The voters can toss them out at the next legislative elections if they feel they’ve exceeded their authority. I’m perfectly happy with their actions, but, for example, if they had reversed the special election provision, it would weigh negatively into my decision the next time they came up for a vote. Incidentally, how many people would have really been upset had the Illinois legislature managed to act fast enough to strip the appointment power from Rod Blagojevich? Personally, as Senate vacancies don’t come up often, I’m perfectly fine with the legislature taking a bit of an ad hoc approach to the procedure, and will judge them by the results, not in adhering to procedural consistency.
And of course, if this sequence happened in a reliably Republican state that happened to elect a Democratic governor, everyone’s feelings would be unchanged. Right?
Speaking only for myself, that’s correct.
I wonder, though, how many states have voted in majorities of one party in both chambers of the state legislature for a lasting period (more than 10 years, say) and elected a governor from the other party during that reign? I don’t know the answer, but my guess is not that many. That kind of division is the result of competitive statewide elections, not mono-party control. And where it does happen, I would guess that it is on the tail of a significant, national shift (e.g. the total death of the Republican party in the Northeastern United States).
California is certainly among the list. Of course we just recall our governors and then elect an action hero actor to take his place.
Well, unlike Republicans, Democrats aren’t evil.
Seriously, what the fuck do think torturing people, a ruinous war of lies (or mind numbing incompetence) with a price tag in the trillions, the housing crash, with warning. that pig fucker you shit on the flag to vote for knew about the housing bubble but put all his incompetent might in a war hunting imaginary boogie men with phantom WMDs. Don’t forget the lies that flow from your side, like foul slurry into the big city sewage plant after an epidemic of explosive diarrhea. The birthers, the conspiracy nuts, the Rushes, the people hell bent on forcing religion down other’s throats.
Tell me, as a republican supporter, are you proud of the 10% unemployeed, including families struggling to put on the table, the tear soaked shoulders of hundreds of thousands whose loved ones, including servicemen enlisting to protect America died over the incompetence or lies of a president wrongly claiming WMDs?
How about the incompetence of the Katrina response?
How about the torture victims, begging for mercy, begging to let their wounds heal before new ones are inflicted, the folks sent to be brutalized in countries such as Syria, regardless of innocence. Are you proud of that?
Because that was the result of your votes as a Republican. That you show no remorse for the misery, and damage you helped cause shows how crippled, and petty your character is.
Tell you what, when your Republicans grow the fuck up, and stop filibustering every little thing and kicking and screaming like the spoiled little babies you are, then we can grow up and be civil, but until then, to fight the evil your party brings, we will fucking fight dirty as hell. Like your party already does.
The Republican party, as a body can get fucked and “an hero”.
For example, Bricker, don’t you feel the Mass legislator has a moral duty to use every available tool to fight a political body that would send innocent people, without so much as even a lawyer, off to be beaten an tortured for a year?
Tell me, Bricker, why did that inhuman Republican monster (that you voted for and apparently continue to support) kidnap Mr. Arar? He’s a dual citizen, he’s Canadian. Yet enroute to Canada from Switzerland, Bush’s henchmen kidnapped him, held him without access to council, then shipped him off to be tortured. An innocent man, who’s family was left to worry about him day and night while he screamed for mercy during his daily beatings.
Thanks to Republicans.
I’m sure Mr. Arar, the hundreds of thousands of grieved, and the millions of unemployed facing an uncertain future thank you for your vote, Bricker.
That is why stuff like like this okay. It may be evil, but it’s a lesser evil then Republicans would bring.
Maybe so. But when you don’t have to be evil at all, being a lesser evil is still pretty damned objectionable.
(Note: I’m using your term. I don’t think this is “evil” at all.)