I was on with Larry O’Connor on the drive at 5 talking about the election. The audio podcast is here and the interview starts at around minute 31.

PJ Media.

“If you were perplexed by President Obama’s post-election comment that he heard the voices “of the two-thirds who didn’t vote,” you can be forgiven.  Normally, American presidents don’t see the electorate through the lens of those who do not participate.  But Obama’s comments reveal a view toward election process rules that is shared by some of the more extreme groups hostile to our democratic republican system of constitutional government.

Let’s decode his comments.

It is a favorite fable among far-left groups like the Advancement Project and Demos that more voters is always good and fewer voters is always bad.  They firmly believe that the path to a progressive policy wonderland is to get everyone with a heartbeat to vote.  This is part of an even older fable that the “system” robs the underclass of power through laws, rules, racist constructs and oppressive societal structures – like having to make the effort to register to vote, for example.

Obama, and his fellow travelers in the election-process world, firmly believe that if only, if only all “barriers” to the ballot were removed, then that progressive-policy wonderland would finally be realized.  Then we’d enjoy the American version of a workers’ paradise, 8.0.

It’s the voices of the two-thirds who didn’t vote that Obama pays more attention to today than the rest of the country who did. When he made his comment, he wasn’t being flip, he was being transparent for a change.

That’s precisely why “voting rights” groups fight to implement election-process changes like same-day registration, vote by mail, felon voting rights and extended early voting. , ,  ,”  Full story at link above.

Link: “The measure will eliminate at-large council elections and replace them with by-district elections.

This means that voters would elect council members from among candidates who live in their respective district.

According to an analysis of the measure written by City Attorney Kara Ueda, the city’s current at-large election system means that voters citywide elect all five council members.”

The downside of single member districts is that it segments and fractures Americans.  Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, this can only occur if certain pre-conditions are met, and the remedy of single member districts is imposed to address specific violations of federal law.  The preconditions are not so easily met.  In California, however, the rules are different and liability attaches easier.  The California law has essentially jettisoned Gingles One and does not require the level of compactness in the federal law.  Compactness is an accident of human demographics.  Thus, it is a less constitutionally offensive concept.  The California Voting Rights Act seems to make race the “predominant factor” (my italics for purposes some will understand) in redistricting decisions.

California seems to have the balance wrong and is creating single member districts as a presumption.

What does this mean? It means that candidates do not have to appeal to broader cross section of voters.  It means more radical, more polarizing, more extreme elected officials can win elections because they will represent the very narrow interests of a particular neighborhood or area.  Such polarization is tolerable as a remedy for specific violations of federal law, but the California law seems to have the balance wrong.

Naturally, this is no accident.  The more extreme political elements in California are perfectly comfortable with electing more extreme elected officials.  More extreme elected officials means more discord, more disagreement and very often more government.  Plaintiff’s lawyers also make more money, and so do the so called “civil rights” organizations who push lawsuits.

“Those 102 cases included instances in which the department was the plaintiff, defendant or played some other role. So the Justice Department didn’t initiate the action in all of those cases. Because Obama was vague about what he meant by “taken on” cases we rated this claim Half True.”

Link.

Hans von Spakovsky has this important piece Four Lessons From the 2014 Election linked here:

“First, the manipulation of election rules and political trickery didn’t work. In Kansas, for example, the Democratic Party forced its U.S. Senate nominee to withdraw and refused to comply with a state law that required the party to name a replacement candidate for the ballot. Democrats were hoping that their voters would consolidate behind faux-independent candidate Greg Orman, a contributor to Barack Obama and the DSCC who, according to Vice President Joe Biden, would have caucused with Democrats if he had won. That political trickery failed — Republican incumbent Pat Roberts cruised to an easy victory with 53% of the vote to Orman’s 42%.”

Signing onto this:

November 5, 2014

President Obama did a last second call for Kay Hagan in North Carolina this week.  The North Carolina Democrats turned up the volume on the Republican-voter-suppressor narrative.  The pivot made clear what opposition to election integrity is really all about: base turnout.

It looks like the VoterID = Jim Crow 2.0 narrative failed in North Carolina.  As I’ve said for years, that outcome is inevitable when the full spectrum of electorate is engaged on Voter ID. Why? Because the vast majority of voters support voter ID.  The scare-the-minorities base turnout model only works when the scare tactics can be isolated to a small paranoid demographic.  Once the broader electorate learns about the voter ID fight, the opponents of voter ID lose.

That’s what happened in North Carolina, and that’s what will happen in any other election where Democrats seek to microtarget minority voters with scare tactics.