Today Senators Clinton, Boxer and Kerry, along with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, held a press conference to unveil an ambitious and very comprehensive election reform proposal, which they want enacted in time for the 2006 mid-term balloting. Thank God they moved quickly on this idea, instead of letting the memories of a second straight presidential election nearly winding up in the courts fade.The proposal itself is pretty far-reaching, including (1) making Election Day a federal holiday, (2) creating uniform rules for handling of provisional ballots, (3) requiring early voting opportunities, along with no-questions-asked absentee balloting, (4) boosting training for poll workers, (5) criminalizing voter intimidation tactics, (6) restoring voting rights for former felons, (7) requiring paper receipts for electronic voting machines, and (8) providing the federal funds to make sure this reform isn’t as shoddily impemented as its predecessor, the Help America Vote Act.The only quibble I have about the specifics of the proposal is that the sponsors should make sure to provide some leeway from the more prescriptive features of the bill for states with an exemplary record of fair and voter-friendly election administration. I’m thinking of Oregon, whose excellent administration of an all-mail-ballot system has produced remarkable voter turnout levels with virtually no complaints. And I’m also thinking of my home state of Georgia, where Secretary of State Cathy Cox (who may well be the Democratic candidate for governor in ’06) has done the best possible job of implementing a statewide touch-screen system. Yeah, I know, Diebold Conspiracy theorists don’t like that, but as Sam Rosenfeld recently explained in The American Prospect, Georgians seem to love the new system, and there have been no allegations of fraud or other irregularities there.The Diebold reference leads me to another point about election reform: Democrats need to go to considerable lengths to establish that this issue is not just about Democratic complaints concerning the outcome of the last two presidential elections, and that supporting election reform does not mean endorsing the views of those who believe the whole system has been completely rigged. Why? Because unlike a lot of Democratic proposals these days, this is one that we actually need to get enacted into law, because it will materially improve our chances of winning elections. And given the broad popularity of most of the election reforms contained in the new proposal, there is actually a fair chance that some if not most Republicans can be coerced, shamed or otherwise stampeded into going along. We definitely need to give it a shot, and keeping the message of election reform on a higher, nonpartisan, “good government” plane is essential to that task. If it doesn’t work, then fine, we can go after the GOP hammer-and-tongs at that point.Beyond that, I hope Democrats who embrace election reform are willing to link this issue to a broader political reform agenda: redistricting reform, lobbying reform, corporate subsidy reform, budget reform, ethics reform, and a recommitment to campaign finance reform. The current system ain’t benefitting Democrats, and ain’t benefitting the country, so we should throw caution to the wind and make it definitively clear that there’s little about the current system we are not willing to take a serious look at and, if appropriate, change.So: I enthusiastically applaud the sponsors of the Count Every Vote Act as trailblazers in what we can only hope will be a whole new theme in Democratic politics from Washington to every state and city. And I hope those bloggers who like to call themselves “Reform Democrats” will get specific about what that means and weigh in with what JFK used to call “great vigor.”
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 11: If Biden “Steps Aside” and Harris Steps Up, There Should Be No Falloff in Support
At New York I discussed and tried to resolve one source of anxiety about a potential alternative ticket:
One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.