Well, in the case of the person I was talking about, Tia, she liked Bernie
Sanders, but she wasn't even aware that he was no longer a candidate. She does
not know who the candidates are. All talk of politics seems irrelevant to her.
When I pointed out that what the people in charge do, has a direct impact on
her life and that if people want things to change, they need to know what's
happening and get involved in some way, she said that made sense to her. And it
did, for about 2 minutes only, I suspect.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2020 10:34 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Wisconsin State Senate Race
There is something that Miriam did not mention and it may be because she simply
did not observe it, but I have observed this very many times. That is when
someone says that they do not plan to vote or that they are uninterested in
voting they usually say something derogatory about the choices they have been
given or else when asked why they do not vote they then say it. I will have to
admit that I have encountered a good many people who simply are completely
uninterested in politics without offering a reason, but they seem to be in the
minority. Most of them show that depiction of the nonvoting population as
apathetic is wrong. They care, but they are entirely turned off by the kinds of
candidates they get, or at least by the kind of candidates they are aware of.
___
Carl Sagan
“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder
and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to
nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will
prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront
the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the
Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will
penetrate its deepest mysteries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
On 8/18/2020 6:46 PM, Erica R wrote:
Thank you for your reply, Miriam. I agree that it seems like many young people
and people of color do not see any purpose to voting because they are not
included in the process and therefore don't see it as impacting their lives. I
also have anecdotally experienced the phenomenon of many people previously
uninterested in politics wanting to vote for Bernie Sanders because they felt
included in his campaign and platform. I should add for context that Wisconsin
also has a law requiring photo ID to vote, which is estimated to have
disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters in the state,
disproportionately minorities, elderly people of color, and young people.
On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 5:21 PM Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
This article reminds me of a brief discussion I had with my home health aide
this morning. My knowledge of poor and working class black and brown people,
for the past few years, is first hand, and comes from what these aides say to
me. They have little education. I had two, briefly, who were African American
and since I've been living here, two who emigrated from Jamaica. This one had
been attracted by what she heard Bernie Sanders say many many months ago when I
was listening to Democracy Now and they played a clip of one of his speeches. I
don't think she'd ever heard him before. By the way, she's 25, and a high
school graduate. This morning again, I was listening to Democracy Now and she
said in a sort of startled voice, "Oh, I didn't realize that the elections are
soon." I asked how she could have avoided hearing all the election talk. She
said that she isn't interested in politics. She isn't. She's interested in
gossiping with other family members and friends on her I phone. Along with the
4 hours, five mornings a week that she works for me, she's a child care worker
at a Catholic agency that cares for troubled kids and kids who've been removed
from their homes for one reason or another. She has her own three year old
child who lives back in Jamaica with her mother, and a boyfriend with kids with
whom she lives here. Her friend, who is much brighter and more caring, worked
for me previously, but she joined the army. The point is that all of these
people whom the Left sees as potential voters, are socially and emotionally
detached from this society. They're here because they want to better their
lives but they don't feel included, nor do they especially want to be. Back in
2016, I had a very young, very bright, extremely marginal African American aide
briefly: 20 years old, unmarried with a 2 year old. She planned to vote for
Bernie Sanders. Then there was an African American woman in her 30's who was
nice, but less intelligent and was not interested in voting. If you want to
have a Democracy with an active engaged citizenry, then you need to provide for
the people, help them feel that they are important, and provide education. You
need to be reaching out to people continuously on a personal basis. It doesn't
happen in a mass society where everything is impersonal and everyone
communicates by smart phone.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > On Behalf Of Erica R
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2020 5:50 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Wisconsin State Senate Race
We had an interesting primary election for our state senate representative here
in Madison, Wisconsin last week. It was a 7-way split with nobody taking the
majority. The winner was a democrat, and the strongest competitor was a young
progressive from a black, Muslim, immigrant family. Turnout was two times as
high as it was for the last state senate primary election at 38%.
The progressive candidate was endorsed by Ilhan Omar, Democratic Socialists of
America national and local chapters, The People for Bernie, and many more
organizations. Unfortunately she received almost no coverage in the mainstream
Wisconsin press. Madison is heralded as a liberal paradise, but is home to the
worst disparities in educational outcomes and incarceration between black and
white residents. A lot of focus has been paid in recent years to awareness for
this issue with little progress or substantive measures taken. Despite
Madison's outward pro-diversity image, the progressive candidate was lambasted
for her vocal and unapologetic support of Black Lives Matter. She was present
at and spoke at some protests.
A local independent arts and culture news outlet, Tone Madison, summed up the
race and turnout. There is some reference in the text to images of maps that
show the turnout in different neighborhoods, but the results shown in the
images are explained in the text. Also note the introduction says that the
primary winner will be the next state senator, she will be unopposed in the
general. Full text below and here's a link:
https://www.tonemadison.com/articles/mapping-turnout-and-power-in-madisons-big-state-senate-primary
Mapping turnout and power in Madison's big State Senate primary
Andrew Sernatinger
politics
What the results in the 26th District reveal about Madison's political
geography and the chances for upstart candidates.
The votes from the August 11 primary are in and Madison will have a new State
Senator in the 26th District: Kelda Roys. The competitive seven-way Democratic
primary was basically unheard of in Madison politics, and had candidates
genuinely representing different interests in the city.
On the one side you had candidates representing segments of the Democratic
establishment, with its interest in modest socially liberal policies and
capital-friendly economics: Kelda Roys, John Imes, and Amani Latimer Burris. On
the other, you had grassroots “progressive” Madison, represented by Nada
Elmikashfi, Brian Benford, and Aisha Moe. Then there was William Henry Davis
III, an underdog even among underdogs.
For the two “sides” in the election, each candidate represented a subset of
their base: Roys, for example, was able to win the real estate and technology
interests of the Democratic Party, while Benford could tap into the
progressivism of the 1990s that’s been pushed aside as Madison has tried to
lock down a neoliberal development model for the city, and Elmikashfi appealed
more to the younger crowd of millennials and zoomers, as well as an impressive
coalition of local community groups, nonprofits, unions, and environmentalists.
(I am a member of Madison's Democratic Socialists of America chapter, which
endorsed Elmikashfi.)
With so much going on in the race, the voting data can tell us a great deal
about the ongoing showdown between establishment Democrats and leftist
upstarts. Despite COVID-19, it was the highest turnout for the 26th District in
at least 20 years. Just shy of 50,000 voters participated—more than double the
number of ballots cast in 2016, when long-serving State Senator Fred Risser ran
unopposed. This year, Roys took the lead with 19,789 votes (40.2%), followed by
Elmikashfi (26.8%), then Benford (9.5%), Latimer Burris (8.9%), Moe (7.4%),
Imes (6.2%), and lastly Davis (0.8%).
Roys took a plurality, but not a majority—60 percent of the votes cast in the
race were for someone other than the winner.
The race came down to Roys and Elmikashfi, who pulled ahead of the rest of the
pack as the only candidates with double-digit support. Roys and Elmikashfi were
the only two candidates to win wards in the district: Roys 55 to Elmikashfi’s
24.
Is this a vindication of establishment liberalism in Madison? If we pick apart
the numbers beyond the overall percentages, it reveals a much more nuanced
picture of Madison's political geography.
The above ward map shows the level of support for either Roys or Elmikashfi
(dark blue is strong Roys, dark orange is strong Elmikashfi). The first thing
you’d see is a typical east-west divide, but east-west doesn’t tell us anything
about the people who voted other than where they live.
Pair that instead with a map of income in the district, and you see something
much more interesting: the lower income wards tended to go to Elmikashfi, and
the higher income ones went for Roys. But there are more poor people than
wealthy people, so shouldn’t that have carried Elmikashfi? Sure, if everyone
voted, but they don’t: the less money you make, the less likely you are to vote.
If we look at how many ballots were cast by ward, we’ll see something else
interesting: The poorest wards and the wards with the most Black and brown
residents had the lowest turnout in the city. What’s more, the wards covering
and adjacent to the UW-Madison campus had absolutely miserable turnout: some as
low as 48 votes total cast. Whether that’s from COVID-19 keeping students from
sticking around or the fact that the primary happened right before move-in
week, it had the effect of suppressing the student vote. The highest turnout
was along the Isthmus (downtown and the near-east side) and the west side
closer to Middleton.
That should give us pause when thinking about the results. Even with double the
turnout, who turned out played out according to your class and race. This isn’t
to say only rich people voted, but the turnout doesn’t reflect the city—it
over-represents white people and people with more money. Madison’s no different
than the rest of the country in this respect.
For those who voted, why did they pick one candidate over another? We don’t
have any polling information to draw from. We could speculate about how the
Black Lives Matter movement, the Presidential election, or attitudes to the
candidates’ policies influenced the outcome, but actually the strongest
determinant of the outcomes was how much money each candidate raised.
There’s a 94% correlation between the money a candidate raised (as a percent of
total funds raised) to the percent of votes won. Basically, the more money you
raised, the more votes you got.
If we sort the candidates by the two sides (establishment/centrist vs.
grassroots/progressive), you notice something else. Grassroots candidates
outperformed compared to the establishment candidates: they won a share of
votes above their portion of the funds raised. The establishment candidates
(Roys, Latimer Burris, Imes) all got a lower return for their money. So
grassroots campaigns are more effective, dollar for dollar, but that doesn’t
matter if you’re running against someone with a shitload of money to burn. Roys
actually had among the worst ratios of money raised-to-votes won, but she had
so much money that she still won out over the other candidates.
Why should this matter? We like to think that money isn’t everything, and it is
not the only thing; Brian Benford performed exceptionally well considering his
shoe-string budget. But in modern US politics without publicly funded
elections, you gotta pay to play. Money buys exposure and the appearance of a
professionalism that many voters look for to signal who is a legitimate
candidate and who isn’t.
Given the spread, one might ask if the election was “spoiled” by having too
many candidates. Would Elmikashfi have won if this race was just her and Roys?
Sadly, no. Assuming the two-sides dynamic holds up, it would have been 56-44
for Roys—a much better spread for Elmikashfi, but there’s no silver medal for
second place. This is comparable to the April Presidential Primary in Dane
County, where Bernie Sanders took 40% to Joe Biden’s 55%. Both Sanders and
local grassroots candidates have the same problem: even if your perspectives
are widely popular, it's extremely difficult to activate the new voters you’d
need to win. Still, this is a testament to grassroots organizing that they
could provide a real alternative to business-as-usual politics.
