Showing posts with label delegate selection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label delegate selection. Show all posts

Monday, July 24, 2023

On "the nitty-gritty battle for delegates" for 2024

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • California Republicans were always going to have to do something with their delegate selection plan to bring it into compliance with national party rules. But under those RNC rules there are variations in the proportional methods required before March 15. And consequentially, Republicans in the Golden state are planning to use a different proportional in 2024 than they did in 2020. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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Look, I thought the AP story on Trump and the delegate battle now and ahead was a good and informative read. It did well in pulling together a number of disparate pieces to tell a story about how the Trump campaign has done well playing defense on the delegate rules it established in 2020 and even some of the offense it has played on a smaller scale. 

It is an important story. There have been more wins -- as measured by status quo maintenance -- for the former president than losses, and that is no small thing as the invisible primary pushes deeper into the third quarter of 2023. Whether this 2024 Republican presidential nomination race develops into an actual delegate battle or not is colored to a great degree by how the frontrunner (or front-running campaigns if there are multiples) shuts the door now on opponents in the delegate rules and across the various other invisible primary metrics (fundraising, endorsements, staff, etc.).

Yes, the polling support could collapse for Trump at some point, but for now the former president has some built-in advantages that insulate him to some extent. It is not the incumbency advantage, but this [understatement alert] has not been the typical competitive nomination cycle either. 


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Still, it can be tough for me not to read accounts like the AP's with anything other than a critical eye. There are a couple of things FHQ would highlight:

1) On Michigan Republicans' and the process they have laid out for delegate allocation and selection in 2024...
"In Michigan, where the state GOP has become increasingly loyal to Trump, the party’s leadership this year voted to change the state’s longtime process of allocating all its presidential delegates based on an open primary election. Under a new plan widely expected to benefit Trump, 16 of the state’s 55 delegates will be awarded based on the results of a Feb. 27 primary. The other 39 will be distributed four days later in closed-door caucus meetings of party activists."
There will be a congressional district caucus process in Michigan at some point, but it is not clear whether that will fall on March 2, four days after the state-run primary. Yes, that plan was adopted last month, but the caucus scheduling hit a snag with the RNC earlier in July.


2) On California Republicans and their plans for 2024...
"One potential opening for a challenger like DeSantis could be California, which has 169 delegates to dole out, more than any other state. 
"Thanks to changes passed by Democrats in the state Capitol, California’s primary contest will be on March 5, requiring the state GOP to change its delegate plan in order to comply with national GOP rules for early contests. 
"The changes, which the state’s Republican Party is set to consider and approve late this month, are set to award delegates proportionately to the candidate’s share of the vote, rather than award all delegates to the winner
"That could give a candidate trailing in second place a chance to make up ground—especially someone like DeSantis, who has made a point of campaigning in the state."
Democrats in Sacramento did change the primary date to Super Tuesday. 

...in 2017

California Republicans had to make a change to the winner-take-all by congressional district system -- NOT truly winner-take-all -- used before then for the 2020 cycle. The problem was that the changes to the CAGOP bylaws in 2019 were only temporary and reset to the same noncompliant winner-take-all by congressional method after 2020. That Republicans in the Golden state have to change back to a more proportional system for 2024 is a condition of their own making. There is really no need to place the blame on Democrats in 2017.

And FHQ does not know if a second place finisher in California is going to make up ground in the delegate count. They will lose less ground than if it were winner-take-all by congressional district, but they will not make up ground. 



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From around the invisible primary...


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Sunday, June 4, 2023

Sunday Series: Demystifying Delegate Allocation and Delegate Selection

Delegate allocation.

Delegate selection.

Delegates, delegates, delegates.

The 2024 invisible primary is deep in the heart of rules season. Each of the national parties have settled on the rules that will govern their respective presidential nomination processes next year. Well, both parties have mostly done that. The Democratic National Committee still has to finalize which states will receive (or not receive) waivers to conduct primaries or caucuses during the early part of the primary calendar next year. But other than that (not insignificant) detail, the guidelines within which states and state parties can operate for 2024 have been set for some time. And states and state parties have been, are and will continue to make decisions -- when to schedule primaries and caucuses, how to allocate and select delegates, etc. -- as 2023 progresses. 

And those are important decisions that can influence the path a presidential candidate takes in getting to the nomination. But together, all of those rules, the layers of national party guidelines, state laws and state party rules, form a complicated matrix that seems far removed from a voter walking into a polling place and pulling the lever for their preferred presidential candidate. 

For most, those who, like FHQ, grew up or currently reside in a state with a presidential primary, that can seem like the extent of the process. One expresses their presidential preference, some candidate wins the primary and the candidate who wins the most across the country becomes the nominee. More often than not, that is true. However, that description of the process is a vast oversimplification that smooths over many of the complexities that can render that way of understanding things false. 

In truth, what happens every four years is that those votes in primaries and caucuses throughout the United States translate into delegates and it is those delegates who decide at the national convention who a party's presidential nominee is going to be. But that process of votes producing delegates for the various candidates can be shrouded in mystery, or perhaps more appropriately, complexities. 

Many of those complexities owe to the fact that there are two parallel events taking place in that translation of votes to delegates. One of those, delegate allocation, most folks at least vaguely understand. If a candidate wins more votes, they more often than not win more delegates. There are exceptions to that rule, but in the vast majority of cases, the candidate with the most votes in a given state's contest is the candidate who is awarded the most delegates. This is true if the state party rules for delegate allocation are proportional (where if a candidate wins 53 percent of the vote, that candidate wins around 53 percent of the delegates), winner-take-all (where a plurality winner statewide can win all of a state's delegates) or something in between those two.

But as FHQ has often described it, that allocation process is only granting the various candidates delegate slots based on the results of the primaries or caucuses. There is a second process -- delegate selection -- that operates in the background to actually fill those slots. They end up filled with people that go the national conventions aligned with and/or bound to the candidates to whom the slots have been awarded. 


Taylor Swift and National Conventions

Confused yet? 

Yeah, it happens. And FHQ gets asked about this a lot. I can launch into that "Well, the nomination process is one of two parallel processes..." and folks' eyes start to glaze over. There are a lot of layers involved in this process and it quickly gets messy. So let's think about all of this delegate allocation and selection a bit differently. 

Think of a national convention like a Taylor Swift concert. Sure, one's mileage may vary in terms of the entertainment value of those two events, but the convoluted nature of the process to actually get into either event is similarly opaque and complicated. Just as Swifties in the fall of 2022 wanted to get tickets to see the singer/songwriter in concert, candidates want to get as many of their delegates into the national convention (in order to be nominated as the party's standard bearer). But just like those diehard Taylor Swift fans, the various candidates have to compete against other candidates, some with vastly more resources (like ticket resellers buying in bulk), to gain access. 

But both are competing for something similar. Swifties want tickets that reserve a spot for them at the concert. Presidential candidates are vying in primaries and caucuses for delegate slots that reserve spots for their delegates at the convention. That is the delegate allocation process. It is getting tickets to the show. 

Now, suppose you are the parent of two young Swift fans. Ideally, you want three tickets so you and your two kids can see Taylor. Only, because of the process -- ahem, allocation -- you manage to get just two tickets. Who gets those two tickets? You cannot possibly let your two underage kids go alone. Or can you? But how do you choose between the two kids in the scenario that a chaperone is necessary? Do you flip a coin? Do you let them literally battle it out in hand-to-hand combat to see who goes? Do you design some Taylor Swift trivia contest? And assuming your kids are not twins, you have to design a process that levels the playing field for them that does not advantage the older kid. In fact, you probably want to use some system that does not appear to play favorites at all. 

That is the delegate selection process; the rules of deciding (or that decide) who goes. 

And state parties operate within national party guidelines to set the rules for both allocation and selection. They set the rules for 1) how folks get tickets and that 2) decide who gets to go based on how many tickets were acquired. The getting the tickets part is allocation. Those are the proportional and winner-take-all rules mentioned above. All states are proportional in the Democratic process, but there is a mixture of those rules (and various hybrid forms in between) across the states and territories in the Republican system. Voters vote in the primaries and (the first round of) caucuses and that determines how many of the delegate slots -- those tickets to the national convention -- are allocated to the various candidates. Each state has a set number of tickets to allocate based on different formulas across the parties that weigh population (the bigger the state, the more tickets it gets) and partisan voting history (the more Republican a state is, for example, the more tickets it gets to the Republican convention).

But how do state parties decide the actual people that get to go to the concert; those who get the tickets?

Again, that is the delegate selection process. In some states, like Alabama, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania or Rhode Island, when voters vote in a presidential primary, those voters vote for their presidential preference and also vote for delegate candidates. Those states merge the ticket acquisition portion with the process of deciding who gets to go. To some degree, it is similar in caucus states. Caucus-goers attend their precinct caucuses and collectively their votes determine how many delegate slots are allocated to which candidates and start the process of deciding who gets to go, a process that plays out through county, district and/or state conventions. This is the way things have been for, say, Iowa Democrats in the past and will continue to be the case for Iowa Republicans in 2024. 

Yet, in most cases and in most states, there are two very separate processes: a primary for delegate allocation and a caucus/convention system for delegate selection. The latter is something that almost universally gets missed by casual observers in this whole process. In other words, even in primary states there are caucuses. But they are separate caucuses with separate (or if not completely separate, then a subset of) decision makers from the primaries. It is in those caucuses where that subset of typically very tuned-in partisans begins to decide who gets those tickets, who fills a candidate's allocated slots to the national convention.

Take New Hampshire, a traditional primary state. All one ever hears about is the primary there. It has been first, after all, for more than a century. But delegates are selected in the Granite state before the primary. Slates of delegate candidates are selected for each candidate in pre-primary caucuses and then folks are pulled from those slates to fill slots allocated to the candidate once the results of the primary are in. This is basically the model Iowa Democrats appear to be proposing for their 2024 process and from where some of the recent confusion comes. The state party is abandoning the merged allocation and (start of the) selection processes and is proposing to bifurcate them. The idea is that the traditional caucuses will be held on the same January night that Republicans hold theirs, but the decisions made that night only affect the selection process (who goes to the convention). A separate all-mail preference vote (one that presumably concludes after the initial caucuses) will be what determines the allocation (how many tickets each candidate gets).

In most primary states, however, the selection process in those caucuses follows the primary. But again, they are separate. 


Hijacking who gets tickets

There is one additional layer to all of this that separates the two major parties and how each handles the selection process overall. Think of it as a safeguard that Democrats at the national level have added to their selection process that does not exist in the Republican process. The rules that state parties operate under on the Democratic side give the candidates the right of review over who fills any delegate slots allocated to them. Candidates who have been allocated any delegates have the ability to weed out any delegate candidates who have made it through the selection process and into one of their allocated slots but who are not actually affiliated with or sympathetic to the candidate. To extend the concert analogy, Democratic candidates have some backend control over who gets their tickets.

By comparison, there is no such safeguard on the Republican side. There is no right of review. A candidate may lose a primary but if that candidate has a dedicated enough following at the grassroots level, those supporters may be able to overrun a caucus and/or convention and force through a disproportionate number of delegate candidates. That produces a delegation that may be bound through the allocation process to support a particular candidate but one that is made up of people filling those allocated slots who support someone else. Recall that during the 2016 Republican primaries there was some talk about the possibility that delegate slots allocated to Donald Trump may be filled with people aligned with another candidate. That talk has returned for 2024.

Now sure, that may sound as if it is undemocratic, the idea that one candidate may be able to make an end run around another candidate who has received more votes overall in the primaries and caucuses. But it is (or has been) much easier to speculate about that than it has been for a candidate to actually successfully implement such a strategy across enough states to change the course of the nomination at the convention. But still, the possibility exists that a well-organized campaign can come in and hijack the decision on who gets a ticket to the national convention. 


Conclusion

Obviously there is more to it all than this. There are maybe more layers that make the Taylor Swift concert ticket analogy work better in some facets of the delegate allocation/selection process than others. But complicated though all of this may be, it helps to think of allocation like getting tickets to the national convention and selection as deciding who gets to use those tickets and actually go to Chicago or Milwaukee in 2024. The rules governing each process may be stretched beyond this simple example, but for the most part this is basically how it works. 



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Sunday, May 28, 2023

Sunday Series: Ranked Choice Voting in 2024 Presidential Primaries, Updated (May 2023)

One electoral reform that FHQ has touched on in the past and has increasingly popped up on the presidential primary radar is ranked choice voting (RCV). And let us be clear, while the idea has worked its way into state-level legislation and state party delegate selection plans, widespread adoption of the practice is not yet at hand. 

However, there has been some RCV experimentation on a modest scale in the delegate allocation process primarily in small states. And that has opened the door to its consideration in a broader swath of states across the country. States, whether state parties or state legislators, are seeing some value in allowing for a redistribution of votes based on a voter's preferences to insure, in the case of presidential primaries, that every voter has a more direct say in the resulting delegate allocation. 

That is apparent in legislation that has been proposed in state legislatures across the country as they have begun convening their 2023 sessions. Again, RCV is not sweeping the nation, as the map below of current legislation to institute the method in the presidential nomination process will attest. There are a lot of unshaded states. But if RCV was adopted across those states where it has been passed (Maine), where it has been used in Democratic state party-run processes (Alaska, Kansas and North Dakota), and where it is being considered by legislators in 2023 then it would affect the allocation of nearly a third of Democratic delegates and a little more than a quarter of Republican delegates. That is not nothing. 



The thrust of activity on adding RCV to presidential primaries for 2024 in legislatures across the country has shifted since FHQ last updated the situation in April. While much of the first few months of the 2023 state legislative sessions were about introducing legislation, the time since has mostly been about moving that legislation, and in recent days, doing so before legislatures adjourn. 

Unlike much of April, however, there were a few new bills proposed since the last update. A pair of companion bills in both chambers of the New Jersey legislature were introduced to establish RCV in presidential primaries and for the election of electors to the Electoral College. In Colorado, a measure to set up RCV for the 2028 cycle quickly came and went. SB 301 was proposed in late April and went nowhere before the legislature in the Centennial state adjourned for the year earlier this month. And just this last week, a trio of New York Republican members of the US House introduced legislation to prohibit the use of RCV in elections to federal offices. It is not clear whether that extends to the nomination phase as well. But not much is clear about the bill without text. Currently, the details are missing.

There was, however, continued progress for some of those RCV-related bills that have previously been floating around out there this session. 

From 30,000 feet, the overview remains much the same. The existing pattern of legislation has been for Republican-controlled states (where legislation has been proposed) to move bans on RCV while Democratic-controlled legislatures and Democratic legislators in red states have largely been behind efforts to augment the presidential primary process with RCV. That outlook has not changed. But it has evolved to some degree. To the extent any of the RCV-related legislation has been successful, it has been more likely to move through legislatures and be signed into law in Republican-controlled states. The Montana measure to prohibit RCV that was before Governor Gianforte (R) during the last update was signed into law, for instance. It brings the Treasure state in line with other neighbors -- Idaho and South Dakota -- in banning RCV during the 2023 session. 

All of that maintains the status quo as it has existed in those states. And in many ways, that -- maintaining the status quo -- is the path of least resistance with regard to RCV. 

And resistance is the key word when the focus shifts to those states with active bills to institute RCV for 2024 (or beyond) in the state-run presidential nomination processes. It is not that those bills have not budged, it is that most of those bills have not easily made their way through the legislative process. Yet, most is not all. A handful of RCV measures have found some modicum of success. 

In Hawaii, the differences across passed versions of the bill raised last month were squared and that measure was sent off to Governor Josh Green (D) for his consideration. But while that may bring RCV to the Aloha state, any new law will not affect state-run presidential primaries. That is because while the Hawaii legislature was able to push HB 1294 through before adjournment in early May, the bill to create a state-run presidential primary failed. However, Aloha state Democrats do intend to use RCV in their party-run primary again in 2024. Beyond that, the only other measures that moved since late April were ones in Minnesota and Oregon. HB 2004 in Oregon passed the lower chamber there and awaits action in the state Senate. And in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, an appropriation bill with a RCV rider passed the legislature and was signed into law. However, the money will be used not for implementing RCV but for the Secretary of State of Minnesota to include consideration of the process in a broader voting study.

And that is it. 

The last month may have seen incremental developments, but those changes have occurred as legislatures have been adjourning. And that may be the biggest change this month. More RCV-related bills have been rendered inactive or dormant as legislatures have tagged out for the year (or for regular sessions anyway with no guarantee that RCV will be revisited). That claimed both bills that had been proposed in Vermont, for example. The Senate version passed the upper chamber, but stalled in the House and never moved before the legislature in the Green Mountain state ended its session. 

The picture, then, of RCV and the 2024 presidential nomination process remains one of incremental movement at best in the first half of 2023. A handful of Republican-controlled states in the mountain West have bolstered the status quo with bans of RCV, and momentum on the pro- side has been next to negligible. There may be incremental advances where RCV is being experimented with in the presidential nomination process for 2024. But note also that most of the experimenting is being done by state parties in party-run processes on the Democratic side. And further, regardless of whether the legislation has sought to establish RCV or ban it, most of the movement has been in relatively small states. Idaho, Hawaii, Montana, South Dakota and Vermont are not the big hitters of national politics. Laboratories for or against RCV are in small states for now. And that may or may not be the best proving ground for it in the presidential nomination process (or anywhere else).

The bottom line, however, is that while RCV may be considered a remedy to some of the maladies that plague American politics, its adoption is not yet widespread. And that does not look to change much more than incrementally in 2023. 





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Sunday, April 23, 2023

Sunday Series: Ranked Choice Voting in 2024 Presidential Primaries, Updated (April 2023)

One electoral reform that FHQ has touched on in the past and has increasingly popped up on the presidential primary radar is ranked choice voting (RCV). And let us be clear, while the idea has worked its way into state-level legislation and state party delegate selection plans, widespread adoption of the practice is not yet at hand. 

However, there has been some RCV experimentation on a modest scale in the delegate allocation process primarily in small states. And that has opened the door to its consideration in a broader swath of states across the country. States, whether state parties or state legislators, are seeing some value in allowing for a redistribution of votes based on a voter's preferences to insure, in the case of presidential primaries, that every voter has a more direct say in the resulting delegate allocation. 

That is apparent in legislation that has been proposed in state legislatures across the country as they have begun convening their 2023 sessions. Again, RCV is not sweeping the nation, as the map below of current legislation to institute the method in the presidential nomination process will attest. There are a lot of unshaded states. But if RCV was adopted across those states where it has been passed (Maine), where it has been used in Democratic state party-run processes (Alaska, Kansas and North Dakota), and where it is being considered by legislators in 2023 then it would affect the allocation of nearly a third of Democratic delegates and a little more than a quarter of Republican delegates. That is not nothing. 


The thrust of activity on adding RCV to presidential primaries for 2024 in legislatures across the country has shifted since FHQ last updated matters in March. While much of the first few months of the 2023 legislative sessions were about introducing legislation, the time since has been about moving that legislation rather than proposing new bills. As such, there were no new measures introduced to layer RCV into the presidential nomination process (or ban it altogether) since mid-March. There was, however, continued progress for some of those RCV-related bills that have been floating around out there this session. 

From 30,000 feet, the overview remains much the same. The existing pattern of legislation has been for Republican-controlled states (where legislation has been proposed) to move bans on RCV while Democratic-controlled legislatures and Democratic legislators in red states have largely been behind efforts to augment the presidential primary process with RCV. That outlook has not changed. But it has evolved to some degree. To the extent any of the RCV-related legislation has been successful, it has been more likely to move through legislatures and be signed into law in Republican-controlled states. The South Dakota measure to prohibit RCV that was before Governor Noem (R) during the last update was signed into law. Likewise, the ban bill in Idaho was signed by Governor Little (R). And in Montana, the measure to prohibit the use of RCV in the Treasure state has made it through the legislature and awaits Governor Gianforte's consideration. 

All of that maintains the status quo as it has existed in those states. And in many ways, that -- maintaining the status quo -- is the path of least resistance with regard to RCV. 

And resistance is the key word when the focus shifts to those states with active bills to institute RCV for 2024 (or beyond) in the state-run presidential nomination processes. It is not that those bills have not budged, it is that most of those bills have not easily made their way through the legislative process. Yet, most is not all. A handful of RCV measures have found some modicum of success. 

One of the Hawaii bills has passed both the state House and Senate. Only, passage of the legislation has been in two different forms and it is unclear whether the two sides will be able to iron out those differences in a bill that includes a number of other electoral changes. [And recall that Hawaii does not yet have a presidential primary. It may by the end of the 2023 legislative session, but RCV would only come to the presidential primary process in the Aloha state in 2024 if there is a presidential primary in 2024.] The Vermont Senate was also able to pass its version of an RCV bill (exclusively for the presidential primary in the Green Mountain state), but that measure has yet to be taken up in the state House. And the House version of the same bill has been untouched in committee since it was introduced in February.

Outside of that, movement has been slow or non-existent most everywhere else on pro-RCV legislation. There were committee hearings on bills in Connecticut and Illinois. But in the former there was no recommendation from the committee one way or the other and that bill continues to be dormant. The Illinois committee hearings occurred with great fanfare (or at least news coverage), but has subsequently been met with some pushback. 

And that is it. 

The picture of RCV and the 2024 presidential nomination process remains one of incremental movement at best in the first part of 2023. A handful of Republican-controlled states in the mountain West have bolstered the status quo with bans of RCV, and momentum on the pro- side has been next to negligible. Vermont and Hawaii may get RCV over the finish line, but progress has been slow. That may incrementally advance where RCV is being experimented with in the presidential nomination process for 2024. But note also that most of the experimenting is being done by state parties in party-run processes on the Democratic side. And further, regardless of whether the legislation seeks to establish RCV or ban it, most of the movement is in relatively small states. Idaho, Hawaii, Montana, South Dakota and Vermont are not the big hitters of national politics. Laboratories for or against RCV are in small states for now. And that may or may not be the best proving ground for it in the presidential nomination process (or anywhere else).

The bottom line, however, is that while RCV may be considered a remedy to some of the maladies that plague American politics, its adoption is not yet widespread. And that does not look to change much more than incrementally in 2023. 



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Sunday, March 12, 2023

Ranked Choice Voting in 2024 Presidential Primaries, Updated (March 2023)

One electoral reform that FHQ has touched on in the past and has increasingly popped up on the presidential primary radar is ranked choice voting (RCV). And let us be clear, while the idea has worked its way into state-level legislation and state party delegate selection plans, widespread adoption of the practice is not yet at hand. 

However, there has been some RCV experimentation on a modest scale in the delegate allocation process primarily in small states. And that has opened the door to its consideration in a broader swath of states across the country. States, whether state parties or state legislators, are seeing some value in allowing for a redistribution of votes based on a voter's preferences to insure, in the case of presidential primaries, that every voter has a more direct say in the resulting delegate allocation. 

That is apparent in legislation that has been proposed in state legislatures across the country as they have begun convening their 2023 sessions. Again, RCV is not sweeping the nation, as the map below of current legislation to institute the method in the presidential nomination process will attest. There are a lot of unshaded states. But if RCV was adopted across those states where it has been passed (Maine), where it has been used in Democratic state party-run processes (Alaska, Kansas and North Dakota), and where it is being considered by legislators in 2023 then it would affect the allocation of nearly a third of Democratic delegates and a little more than a quarter of Republican delegates. That is not nothing. 



Since the last update in late January, an additional 11 bills have been introduced in seven states -- Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont -- to establish RCV in at least presidential primaries. Only one bill to create RCV among all of those introduced has even passed a chamber, and that was one of the handful of bills in Hawaii. It passed with an effective date in the year 3000. That is not a typo. It was purposefully set for well into the future to spur further conversation about the measure in the state Senate.

The 2023 session remains young, but there has not been a lot of legislative momentum behind the efforts establish RCV. 

However, there has been some negative momentum. Several pro-RCV bills ended up bottled up in committee and are either dead or effectively so. That includes the four bills in Virginia and the two considered in New Hampshire. In addition, legislation to ban RCV has found limited but greater success than the measures that have sought to create RCV systems. The South Dakota bill to prohibit RCV winded its way through the legislature and is on the governor's desk for consideration. Other ban bills have been passed by their chamber of origination in Idaho and Montana and another measure to stop RCV usage has been introduced in West Virginia. 

The legislative efforts nationwide continue to have a partisan tint to them. Legislation to create the infrastructure to implement RCV is more likely to be introduced in Democratic-controlled states and if not in blue states, then by Democratic legislators. Introduced measures to ban RCV have been exclusively introduced in Republican-controlled states and by Republican legislators. 




A few notes on bills included and excluded from consideration:

1. The intent was to highlight legislation that would affect presidential primaries. That includes bills that would exclusively cover presidential primaries and those that would impact all or most primaries, including presidential primaries. 

2. FHQ was probably a bit more inclusive than necessary. A handful of the bills listed above while currently active, would not take effect until after 2024. The New York and Oregon legislation is that way. The 2022 New Jersey RCV bill that carried over to the second session in 2023 would not take effect until the January 1 twelve months following the point at which the secretary of state in the Garden state had determined all voting machines were operable for RCV. New Jersey and New York together account for a significant chunk of delegates on the Democratic side and none of those would be impacted by this legislation in 2024. [The newly added Oregon bill falls into this category as well.]

3. Some bills were not included. There is an RCV ban bill in North Dakota as well. But there is no state-run presidential primary in the Peace Garden state. That is true of the efforts in Alaska to repeal RCV there. If the state-run RCV process were to end, the Democratic Party could still utilize the practice in a state-run presidential nominating contest. Similarly, ban legislation that sought to prohibit RCV only in local elections -- as in Minnesota -- were also excluded. Finally, if RCV was tethered to a broader push to move to a nonpartisan primary like in New Mexico, then that was also left out. It should also be noted that Nevada was left unshaded on the map above. The state Democratic Party used RCV in the early voting portion of the caucuses in 2020, but not across the entire process.

4. Hawaii technically fits two categories on the map. Democrats in the Aloha state used RCV in their party-run primary in 2020, but have legislation that combines a switch to RCV and the use of a state-run presidential primary as well as separate legislation to establish a presidential primary and move to RCV in all elections (including any presidential primary that may be created). 

Kansas and Maine also fall into two categories. Kansas Democrats used RCV in their party-run process in 2020, and there is also legislation to add RCV to all primaries in the Sunflower state. That would only matter in the presidential arena if separate legislation creating a presidential primary passes the legislature and is signed in to law. Moreover, there is legislation to return to plurality voting in Maine, but it faces an uphill climb in the Democratic-controlled Pine Tree state.



Related:


Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Winner-take-most, please

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) continues inching toward a presidential bid. No decision is on the horizon in the near term, but initial hiring has taken place and super PAC infrastructure is taking shape. Former Senate colleague, Cory Gardner (R-CO) heads one such entity, and Rob Collins, who was involved with the super PAC, Future 45, during the 2016 cycle, is in the fold as well. Future 45 often gets pegged as a Trump-aligned group but most of the money it took it in was spent against Hillary Clinton rather than for Trump in that cycle. In the staff primary of 2024, Collins' support of Scott is noteworthy but it seems more like just that -- Scott support -- rather than a defection from Team Trump.


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Douglas Schoen has an op-ed up at The Hill assessing the state of the Republican presidential race. And that is fine. But this section violated a major pet peeve of FHQ's:
The design of the Republican Party’s winner-take-all delegate system also inherently benefits a candidate like Trump, whose devoted base comprises roughly 35 to 40 percent of the primary electorate. This is far from a majority but is enough to carry him to the nomination, as it did in 2016.
Technically, this is right. There is a "winner-take-all design" to the Republican presidential nomination process. But when one describes it in this manner without all the important caveats, it just ends up perpetuating the myth that the Republican allocation process is ALL winner-take-all. It is not

Look, it takes a lot to explain all of the caveats. Truly winner-take-all rules, where one candidate can win all of a state's delegates if he or she wins a small plurality even by just one vote, are prohibited before March 15. But states can be proportional with a winner-take-all trigger, where if a candidate wins at least a majority of the vote statewide, he or she wins all of the state's delegates, before March 15. And states after March 15 can still adopt a variety of rules. They are not all winner-take-all after that point. 

The answer to this should be pretty simple. So, for 2024, call the Republican delegate allocation process winner-take-most and be done with it. Winner-take-most encompasses the full range of proportional (winner-take-more), hybrid and winner-take-all rules without having to get down in the weeds about the caveats to all the different plans. This holds when comparing the Republican process to that of the Democrats as well. The latter mandates proportional rules while the former allows a variety of winner-take-most rules. 


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Over at Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein has a good one on how an organized Trump campaign in 2024 might be able to exploit the divorce between delegate allocation and selection in the Republican process and use it to his advantage even in the event he doesn't win a majority of allocated delegates. A few things on this one:

1. There may be some tinkering at the margins that brings some delegate allocation in line with the allocation process on the state level, but it is probably too late in the 2024 process to mount a full scale effort to change the rules. The national party rules are already locked in for the cycle and have been since April of last year. But there may be some efforts on the state level to alter state rules on the matter. 

2. Still, there is reason to think that those efforts will be limited. As Bernstein notes, delegates on the Democratic side have to meet the approval of the candidates/campaigns they will represent at the national convention. That is not necessarily the case on the Republican side. But there was an attempt to add candidate approval to the rules that were to come out of the 2012 Republican National Convention. Here is the FHQ dispatch from Tampa at the time and the relevant excerpt from a proposed rules change that did not make the cut: 

Proposed Rule 15(b):
For any manner of binding or allocating delegates permitted by these Rules, no delegate or alternate delegate who is bound or allocated to a particular presidential candidate may be certified under Rule 19 unless the presidential candidate to whom the delegate or alternate delegate is bound or allocated has pre-certified or approved the delegate or alternate delegate.

Analysis of Change:
This is the rule that has drawn so much backlash from Paul supporters, Santorum supporters and other state party officials and has threatened to throw the convention into a floor fight. Honestly, this change has the potential to be the proportionality requirement of of 2016: an overhyped rule with no real impact on the process. At the heart of the conflict is the notion that delegates being approved by candidates is a power grab at the expense of a state party's right to choose how it allocates its delegates. Further, it takes a grassroots activity meant to build the party and turns it over to the candidate or candidates. FHQ gets the rationale, but I struggle to see what fundamental impact the change will have.

Actually, I do see the impact it will have. Together with Rule 15(a) the candidate approval mechanism altogether ends the possibility that a statewide vote can be overturned in subsequent steps in a caucus process by enthusiastic and organized supporters of a candidate that did not comprise a majority or plurality of the statewide vote. We can call it the Ron Paul issue. It isn't a problem because the Paul folks and their supporters were behaving well within the confines of the rules laid out for the 2012 cycle. It is, however, perceived as a problem by the national party. It takes what has been an orderly process and leaves the order up to chance every cycle; opening the door to discord within the party and a less than cohesive national convention that could hurt the presumptive nominee for the party.

The backlash was pretty severe and was seen as another in a series of power grabs by the national party orchestrated by Ben Ginsberg who was running the show for the Romney team on the convention Rules Committee at the time. I mean, conversations about the Ginsberg power grab and the true grassroots of the party took place among RNC members for years after this. State parties are loathe to make changes that shift the balance of power away from them. Most will resist efforts to change the linkage (or lack thereof) between the delegate allocation and selection processes. 

The bottom line here is that Trump has in 2023 an institutional advantage that he and his campaign did not have in 2015. That is important.


...
On this date...

...in 1988, it was Super Tuesday. Well, not only was it Super Tuesday, it was Southern Super Tuesday, the first real concerted effort at a regional primary date. I have put 3/8/88 into a lot of datasets a lot of times over the years. It is burned into that gray matter.

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Ranked Choice Voting in 2024 Presidential Primaries, Part Two

See Part One: Ranked Choice Voting in 2024 Presidential Primaries -- 2023 legislation 


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Rules and the National Parties

In part one of this two-part series, FHQ examined states where legislation may expand the reach of ranked choice voting (RCV) into the presidential nomination process. And incremental though that growth may be in the 2024 process, one point raised in that first post remains true: Neither national party has weighed in on ranked choice voting in the nomination process; not in an official capacity in any event. 

Given the partisan pattern observed in the RCV legislating on the state level thus far in the 2023 session, one might expect to see a Democratic National Committee more receptive to the practice and a Republican National Committee more inclined to stand against it. But again, the incremental, and to this point small, advances have not forced either party to act (or react) to RCV adoption on the state level in any corrective way or in an effort to provide guidance to state parties and state legislators. However, just because the national parties have not moved to officially regulate RCV or its expansion does not mean that the issue is not on the national parties' radars with respect to its potential impact on the presidential nomination process.

In fact, Democrats had a series of discussions concerning RCV throughout 2022 in the context of their push to finalize the rules package that will govern the 2024 nomination. To be clear, those efforts did not bear any fruit in terms of actual rules, but the discussions did provide a glimpse into where the national party -- or the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (DNCRBC) anyway -- currently stands on the matter. While no rules for or against RCV made the 2024 DNC rules, there was an RCV-related rules change that was considered at the August DNCRBC meeting, a meeting that was initially set aside for making decisions on pre-window waivers for early states. But once the decision was made to punt on finalizing the states to receive waivers until after the midterms, that left considerable time for the panel to more broadly consider a bevy of other potential changes. It is not that those potential rules changes would have been given short shrift in a meeting dominated by the early primary calendar for 2024, but rather, that other possible amendments to the rules could be discussed more fully instead of quickly dispatched, whether for or against, without the calendar on the agenda. 

And so it was with a potential add-on to Rule 14.B brought to the table by David McDonald (WA) and Elaine Kamarck (MA). 

Rule 14.B describes the parameters of the 15 percent threshold presidential candidates must hit in order to win any delegates in any state or subunit therein. RCV can overlap with that process in several ways. In a traditional sense, RCV has been used to identify a majority winner in a contest. The system redistributes votes based on voters' collective preferences until there is a majority winner. But the delegate allocation process in the Democratic Party operates differently. It is not necessarily about candidates winning a majority, but about those candidates who clear that 15 percent barrier either statewide or within the various congressional districts within a state. 

That is an easy enough fix. The cut-off for redistribution can be moved from a majority to 15 percent like what has appeared in New Hampshire legislation attempting to institute RCV in recent years. But that is also what is missing from the RCV law that will be operable in Maine in 2024. That disparity between what is on the books in Maine and what may be codified in other states for 2024 is a reason for national parties to potentially offer guidance to states -- state governments and state parties -- considering changes to delegate selection processes for this current cycle. 

Moreover, another point where RCV and the delegate allocation process cross paths is in how and to whom the 15 percent threshold applies. As an illustration, recall FHQ's [exaggerated] example from part one:
Here is an example. Raymond Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, told Politico in making a case for the importance of the first-in-the-nation primary there, that Joe Biden was everyone's second choice in the Granite state primary in 2020. Biden, of course, came in fifth in the contest; something that every recent calendar story on New Hampshire Democrats potentially losing their position notes. And folks, Buckley's statement was figurative. He did not mean that Biden was literally every voter's second choice. But if one were to take him literally and assume that RCV had been in place in New Hampshire for 2020, then Biden would have stood to gain a lot of ground. 

How much ground? 

If the RCV bill considered in the Granite state in 2019 had become law, then three candidates -- Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar -- would have cleared the 15 percent threshold in the first round tabulation. But those three only accounted for 70 percent of the vote statewide. Under RCV, the votes of the remaining 30 percent would be redistributed based on voter preferences for the other various candidates. If one takes Buckley's notion literally -- that Biden was everyone's second choice -- then all of those redistributed votes from candidates under 15 percent would have gone to the eventual Democratic nominee, turning Biden's 8.4 percent into nearly 30 percent and a victory. 
Now, in that example, Biden vaults from fifth place in the initial tabulation to winning once votes have been redistributed under RCV. But who qualifies for delegates in that scenario? Does that 15 percent threshold apply to the results after the first tabulation or the final tabulation? That is a very meaningful distinction. And it appears, given the commentary from the members of the DNCRBC around this potential rules change in August, that rules makers lean toward the former. Biden may have hypothetically been everyone in New Hampshire's second choice in the 2020 presidential primary, but he only received just north of eight percent of first preferences. That falls well short of 15 percent. And more importantly, that hypothetical shift from eight percent among first preferences to around 30 percent and not only winning on a final tally, post-redistribution, but qualifying for delegates is not consistent with the tenor of the current threshold rule. 


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But it is issues like those -- who qualifies for delegates and how -- that put reforms like RCV front and center before national party rules makers when those reforms overlap with existing processes. And it was those very issues that McDonald and Kamarck were trying to get out in front of heading into 2024. 

So, what was the proposed change? 

First, here is Rule 14.B as it was in 2020 and how it will be in 2024 (minus the struck line at the end):
Rule 14.B:
States shall allocate district-level delegates and alternates in proportion to the percentage of the primary or caucus vote won in that district by each preference, except that preferences falling below a fifteen percent (15%) threshold shall not be awarded any delegates. Subject to section F. of this rule, no state shall have a threshold above or below fifteen percent (15%). States which use a caucus/convention system, shall specify in their Delegate Selection Plans the caucus level at which such percentages shall be determined.
That is all clear enough. Rule 14.B sets a 15 percent -- no higher, no lower -- threshold to qualify for delegates. Now, here is the rider that McDonald and Kamarck proposed appending to the rule:
Nothing in this Rule is intended to prohibit a State from providing a second choice to a voter who casts a ballot for a candidate who is ineligible to be awarded delegates. A State that intends to provide such a second choice to voters must clearly describe its method for doing so in its proposed Delegate Selection Plan and comply with all regulations of the RBC relating to second choices. Delegates shall be allocated on the basis of the final vote and credentials challenges must be based on the final vote.
This addition is less clear. First of all, the amendment does not directly mention RCV. It neither supports nor opposes its use. But in defending its addition to the rule, McDonald cited a couple of goals: 1) the desire to get out ahead of what is likely to be further experimentation with RCV on the state level for 2024, and 2) setting some guardrails -- particularly candidates qualifying with 15 percent based on first preferences -- to save the DNCRBC some potential headaches during the delegate selection plan review process later in 2023. 

Both of those are noble enough goals. Yet, the language of the above amendment does not exactly spell out either. Also, as some DNCRBC members noted, that rule, if added, can be viewed as if not an indirect endorsement, then an indirect encouragement of RCV by the national party, an encouragement not consistent with the prevailing thinking among the committee members. 

And that is the key factor to tease from this August discussion: the prevailing thinking. The rule did not go anywhere. In fact, MacDonald withdrew the amendment so that the committee would not have to vote up or down on it and either directly or indirectly endorse or oppose RCV.  But the discussion around the possible change was enlightening with respect to where current members on the DNCRBC stand on the reform. Most members who spoke fell somewhere in the middle. The vast middle ground in this case occupies a space where the panel acknowledged that RCV is something that may incrementally advance for the 2024 cycle, but a reform about which the group wanted to remain "agnostic." There was no apparent appetite to craft a rule that would function as a tacit endorsement and would, in turn, potentially open up the floodgates for increased state consideration if not experimentation with RCV. 

In other words, let that experimentation happen organically and on a small scale that the DNCRBC could deal with in mid-2023 during the delegate selection plan approval stage. "Small scale" is important in this case. The only RCV usage in 2020 was in small states with state party-run processes. And the only official addition to this point for 2024 is the state of Maine. All the efforts so far at the state level in 2023 are also in small states. [The proposed RCV systems in New York and New Jersey would take effect after 2024 and those in Virginia already appear to be on life support as the commonwealth's 2023 session quickly comes to a close.] If that is the scale of the RCV expansion, then it is something the DNCRBC can tackle in the review process (even with unforeseen issues outside of RCV likely to present typical review stage problems).

Other members, however, spoke more forcefully against RCV. As if writing from the woods around Walden Pond, Frank Leone (DC) took a Thoreauvian position to "simplify, simplify, simplify." As he said, "I think right now our democracy is under attack. And right now the best way to protect our democracy is to make voting easy and keep counting simple." He went on to say that proponents of RCV had made the case during the 2020 delegate selection review process that RCV was akin to the assembled caucuses made famous in Iowa. Those are the caucuses where voters assemble in preference groups, and those candidate groups who do not make the viability threshold (15 percent) can (physically) move over to another group that did initially qualify in a second round. But, as Leone noted, the party has moved away from caucuses in recent years. To endorse -- directly or indirectly -- RCV would be to walk back that development to some degree.

What Leone's and the additional agnostic viewpoint indicate is something that often gets highlighted in these rules discussions. They often have to maintain a delicate balance between an array of competing interests. And on the issue of RCV what emerged from the DNCRBC meeting in August was a panel that was balancing a potential need to add guardrails around RCV's usage in the 2024 presidential nomination process against an apparent desire to not simultaneously (and indirectly) endorse the reform.

While the efforts to institute RCV on the state level may be driven by Democratic legislators, that may be reflective not of where the whole party is -- or even where the national party is -- but rather where some legislators who happen to be Democratic are on the issue. For its part, the DNC did not weigh in on RCV, not in the rules in any event. But the DNCRBC did leave itself room to provide guidance to state parties outside of the rules -- in its regulations (or how it interprets the application of the rules). State parties will have access to that when finalizing their various delegate selection plans, but without any tacit support for or opposition to RCV. 

Monday, January 30, 2023

Ranked Choice Voting in 2024 Presidential Primaries, Part One

One electoral reform that FHQ has touched on in the past and has increasingly popped up on the presidential primary radar is ranked choice voting (RCV). And let us be clear, while the idea has worked its way into state-level legislation and state party delegate selection plans, widespread adoption of the practice is not yet at hand. 

However, there has been RCV experimentation on a modest scale in the delegate allocation process primarily in small states. And that has opened the door to its consideration on a broader scale elsewhere. States, whether state parties or state legislators, are seeing some value in allowing for a redistribution of votes based on a voter's preferences to insure, in the case of presidential primaries, that every voter has a more direct say in the resulting delegate allocation. 

That is apparent in legislation that has been proposed in state legislatures across the country as they have begun convening their 2023 sessions. Again, RCV is not sweeping the nation, as the map below of current legislation to institute the method in the presidential nomination process will attest. There are a lot of unshaded states. But if RCV was adopted across those states where it has been passed (Maine), where it has been used in Democratic state party-run processes (Alaska, Kansas and North Dakota), and where it is being considered by legislators in 2023 then it would affect the allocation of nearly a quarter of Democratic delegates and a sixth of Republican delegates. That is not nothing. 



Granted, just because a bill has been introduced does not mean that it will pass. If one has followed FHQ (or the legislative process anywhere) for a while, then this observation should not come as a surprise. Bills to shift the dates on which presidential primaries occur are frequently introduced, but often fail. Take Virginia and ranked choice voting as an example. Of the four RCV bills filed in the Old Dominion, half of them have already been effectively killed in committee. Now, one of the remaining two could still become law, but the odds, given the failures to this point, do not necessarily portend success.

So, if none -- or, at best, very few -- of these bills become law, then why does any of this bear watching, especially at a site that tracks changes to the presidential primary calendar and delegate selection process? 

The answer lies in the impact RCV could have on the delegate allocation process. Like most things with delegate allocation, changes are likely only to matter at the margins. But in a close nomination race, those margins can matter. 

Here is an example. Raymond Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, told Politico in making a case for the importance of the first-in-the-nation primary there, that Joe Biden was everyone's second choice in the Granite state primary in 2020. Biden, of course, came in fifth in the contest; something that every recent calendar story on New Hampshire Democrats potentially losing their position notes. And folks, Buckley's statement was figurative. He did not mean that Biden was literally every voter's second choice. But if one were to take him literally and assume that RCV had been in place in New Hampshire for 2020, then Biden would have stood to gain a lot of ground. 

How much ground? 

If the RCV bill considered in the Granite state in 2019 had become law, then three candidates -- Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar -- would have cleared the 15 percent threshold in the first round tabulation. But those three only accounted for 70 percent of the vote statewide. Under RCV, the votes of the remaining 30 percent would be redistributed based on voter preferences for the other various candidates. If one takes Buckley's notion literally -- that Biden was everyone's second choice -- then all of those redistributed votes from candidates under 15 percent would have gone to the eventual Democratic nominee, turning Biden's 8.4 percent into nearly 30 percent and a victory. 

Yes, that is a tremendous exaggeration, but one intended to highlight the ways in which RCV can matter in the allocation process, whether rejiggering the order of finish or, probably more realistically, padding the stats of a would-be winner under the regular rules.  But that is why this is important.

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Of course, that functional view of the effects of RCV omits some of the more political components of RCV in view of the reality on the state level. Most of the push for RCV has a particular partisan flavor to it. Legislation is being offered primarily by Democrats in mostly Democratic-controlled states. Two-thirds of the 21 currently active RCV bills have Democratic sponsors. Thirteen of those 21 bills have been introduced in states with unified Democratic control.

Republicans, on the other hand, have been less inclined to support RCV. There are a couple of Virginia bills that have Republican sponsors and a smattering of bipartisan efforts across the country as well. But that support has been limited, and Republicans have been far more successful in promoting bans on the use of RCV. Both Florida and Tennessee have prohibitions on the practice and South Dakota is considering legislation to go down a similar path. 

But while that partisan difference exists, any bills enacted would impact votes in state government-run primary elections, regardless of party. Neither national party has weighed in on RCV -- not in terms of rule making for or against the method -- and any ban instituted would not affect the way the allocation process has traditionally worked. Yet, laws like the RCV law in Maine affect both Democratic and Republican primaries that are funded and run by the state. RCV bills enacted in blue states will affect the Republican nomination process as well (if there is no state party discretion to opt out). That bears watching not just in Maine, but in Democratic-controlled states as well.

Most of the legislation is to establish RCV, and while some of those bills may be successful, most will likely fail. But that points toward a potentially expanded -- although perhaps only incrementally -- use of and experimentation with RCV during the 2024 cycle. 




A few notes on bills included and excluded from consideration:

1. The intent was to highlight legislation that would affect presidential primaries. That includes bills that would exclusively cover presidential primaries and those that would impact all or most primaries, including presidential primaries. 

2. FHQ was probably a bit more inclusive than necessary. A handful of the bills listed above while currently active, would not take effect until after 2024. The New York and Oregon legislation is that way. The 2022 New Jersey RCV bill that carried over to the second session in 2023 would not take effect until the January 1 twelve months following the point at which the secretary of state in the Garden state had determined all voting machines were operable for RCV. New Jersey and New York together account for a significant chunk of delegates on the Democratic side and none of those would be impacted by this legislation in 2024.

3. Some bills were not included. There is an RCV ban bill in North Dakota as well. But there is no state-run presidential primary in the Peace Garden state. Similarly, ban legislation that sought to prohibit RCV only in local elections -- as in Minnesota -- were also excluded. Finally, if RCV was tethered to a broader push to move to a nonpartisan primary like in New Mexico, then that was also left out. It should also be noted that Nevada was left unshaded on the map above. The state Democratic Party used RCV in the early voting portion of the caucuses in 2020, but not across the entire process.

4. Hawaii technically fits two categories on the map. Democrats in the Aloha state used RCV in their party-run primary in 2020, but have legislation that combines a switch to RCV and the use of a state-run presidential primary as well as separate legislation to establish a presidential primary and move to RCV in all elections (including any presidential primary that may be created).