As we come to the end of another year, there are a lot of things happening. 

Let’s start with North Carolina and the Ninth District, the last of the House seats still up in the air.  It is unclear how much of the vote count has been impacted by the shenanigans.  There is substantial evidence showing that political operatives broke North Carolina law by getting involved in the collection of absentee ballots from non-relatives.  There is also evidence suggesting that these individuals may suggests that these operaves were selective in turning in the ballots that they received and may have altered other ballots (e.g., by casting votes in races that the voter left blank).  Since some states do allow non-relatives to collect absentee ballots, what is happening in North Carolina shows the need to have some anti-fraud measures in such voting.  Making it easy to vote is a good thing.  However, historically, we have known that most voter fraud is connected with mail-in or absentee voting and not with in-person voter-impersonation.    Of course, Republicans have been more concerned with stopping in-person fraud in ways that make it difficult to vote in person.  Meanwhile, they have uniformly been willing to relax the rules designed to assure that ballots received in the mail actually reflect the intent of the person who supposedly have cast them.  Going forward, Democrats — wanting to make it easy for people to vote — need to be sure that the rules include adequate protection to prevent con-artists from stealing and altering ballots before they get to the election office.

We have also seen the start of Democrats announcing that they are considering running for President.  Over the next three to six months, we will see more Democrats announce their campaigns; some of these candidates will decide to halt their campaigns before we reach July, but many of them will make the late Summer when we begin to have debates.  While the DNC does not need to finalize its debate plans yet, it does need to consider what the Republicans did wrong in 2016 (as well as what the Democrats did wrong in 2016).  The Republicans big problem was having too many candidates for a single debate.  The simple reality is that more candidates on the stage translates into less substance and more personal attacks and everyone agreeing with what they perceive as party orthodoxy.  On the other hand, there is no rational method for choosing which candidates make the debate.  The Republican tentative solution was what many called the JV or kiddie-table debate in which polls were used to separate the top candidates from the others.  However, after the first four or five candidates, the gap between the remaining candidates will often be less than the standard margin of error in most polls.  (In other words, the difference is close enough that the real standing of the candidates is unclear.)  Offering my humble suggestions, the following makes sense to me:  1) No more than six or seven candidates on the stage at a time (even that is probably too many, but it allows each candidate to have a semi-substantive response to each question); 2) all parts of the debate need to be in prime time (see next suggestion below) even if that means short breaks between the parts in which candidates are rushed on and off the stage with no opportunity to schmooze with the audience for those in the earlier parts; and 3) the candidates in part one or part two (or part three if there are even more candidates) should be randomly suggested and there should be a limit on the number of consecutive times that a candidate can be in any part (in other words, no part is clearly the “Not Ready for Prime Time” debate and no candidate is consistently going in the early debate or the late debate).  Continue Reading...