GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, June 19, 2018

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] in the news.

[0:00:08 Speaker 2] Welcome to in the Newsweek three on Professor Shaw.

[0:00:11 Speaker 3] And I’m Professor McDaniel. Thank you for joining us.

[0:00:13 Speaker 2] Got a couple topics we wanted to cover. And we thought we would start with what seems to be the issue that’s dominating the headlines on that’s immigration. So just to set the table real briefly, immigration, border security, immigration reform has been on the table for a long time. Okay, How many undocumented people are there in the United States today? I want to say I want to say, like, 11 million, but I I might be making that figure out a

[0:00:40 Speaker 3] video. It might be less. But the problem with the undocumented is that there are some people who enter illegally. Um um or and there’s people who have visa overstayed our visa. And so you have this problem of did you enter illegally, or did you come in legally and overstay your visa? And so But I’m I’m thinking it’s close to eight, but it may be near 11. I don’t have the exact numbers,

[0:01:07 Speaker 2] but I think this is you know, this is an enormous number of people who you know, the country and the legal system need clarity. Need to figure out what is our stance or what we want to dio um, the Trump administration and actually the Trump campaign. You know, President Trump when I was running for office campaign very vigorously on, you know, cracking down tighter border security. I think there’s a little bit of a misnomer, though, that I would separate conceptually border security from illegal immigration or undocumented worker status, those air to kind of separate things. And as a public opinion guy, what I would point out to you is that on border security, Americans tend to be pretty hard line. That is, they they want to protect the borders. They think it’s first of all, it’s a matter of rule of law. But also, you know, we have these laws in place that are designed to rewards certain kinds of people in behaviors. And, you know, allowing people to jump the queue is you know, it is something that we don’t think is a good idea majority anyway. So there’s border security. But there’s another aspect to the immigration issue, and that is what do we do with people who are here on that issue? Most Americans actually prefer, you know, the liberal of the Democratic point of view, which is actually, some Republicans hold this position as well. We need to figure out a pathway to citizenship. You know that there’s not much appetite for deporting a 9 10 11 million people who are here illegally. But what do we do? You know, you in most Americans like, well, you know, if you have some sort of, ah, demonstration of loyalty may be paid back taxes, you know, take classes where your allegiance to the United States or do some sort of service. Then you know they’re willing to grant citizenship status or some sort of temporary status, that a pathway to citizenship is something that has a broad amount of support. So the Republicans kind of have the upper hand with respect to public opinion on border security. But the Democrats have the upper hand when it comes to what to do with people who are here illegally, right? And so that they’re these two separate issues. Now what’s going on right now is that the executive, as you know, the president is in charge of enforcing the laws of the country generally and in this particular case is in charge of enforcing immigration laws. And so the issue that’s erupted over the past couple of weeks is the decision by immigration authorities to separate people who are here, illegal families that are here and legally separate some Children from their parents right now. And that might be kind of mystifying to you. Why would you do this? What sense does this make? And I’m certainly not here to justify. But the explanation is that what’s happened is that the United States has developed a reputation. The border security and immigration authorities have developed a reputation that is known in other countries that they will not separate families. So if you come over with the child, they will treat you differently. And in particular they will process claims to political asylum, which is a way that if you’re here illegally, if you come across the border, you don’t have the proper documents, and you’re nabbed by Immigration Naturalization Services. If you have a child and you claim that you are seeking asylum either, for, uh, because your government and your home country’s persecuting you or even something as simple domestic abuse, right that you go into a separate sort of category and processing process, right? So they’re incentives to bring Children over. And there are incentives to claim political sound because you’re treated differently. And the response of immigration thirties the United States recently has been, well, we’re going to separating process. Those Children from their parents separate them from their parents. Well, you guys have probably seen the visuals on this, and it is, you know, it’s kind of heartbreaking and heart rendering. So, um, you know, the response to this particular policy has been quite negative. And in fact, there’s a Russian Congress now to deal with this particular aspect. Like, you know, we should make this, you know, in this particular response, right? Don’t let authorities separate parents from Children, and then there’s a broader movement. Now let’s get immigration reform done. But it’s a tricky issue. Politically, Republicans in particular kind of thorn on the issue. A lot of the conservative Republicans want to be kind of hard core on both border security and rule of law when applied to undocumented workers. And so they’re afraid, you know that this is the position is going to hurt them Democrats or a little less. I think corn on the issue. They would like to see immigration reform, but they’re not unhappy to see Republicans twist in the wind and to see the fall of political fallout, probably from some of these really tough pictures. So, Chris McDaniel, public policy guy, Immigration it is. What do you think

[0:05:47 Speaker 3] s o First of all, thank you to Philip Minis who helped us out, Actually, 12 million undocking. And actually, one of the arguments put forward about why you have this boom in the undocumented population is because the US used to have somewhat of an open border where people go back and forth for work. But when they closed off the border, these people kidnapped could no longer go back. And so they’re kind of stuck. And so there’s an argument of these hard line immigration laws actually increased the number of the undocumented the number of undocumented immigrants because they cannot go back and return as they were able to in the past. And this has really been something that’s been on the table for more than a decade. So, uh, during President Bush’s presidency, he tried to do with immigration. Could make anything done President Obama is trying to do with it. Now we have a president Trump, and you’re one of things about this. Is people are asked, Why can the present get away with this was president to do this is we also need to remember that President Obama X exerted a great deal of executive privilege in terms of how he was going to handle the immigration laws. And so what you’re seeing is that the growth of the power of president that you saw kind of during President Bush but also doing President Obama the president Trump is taking advantage of this. And so it is a story about immigration. But it’s also a story about executive privilege and really the amount of power with the executive branch has, and we’re seeing that grow more and more over time and again, it’s important. Remember that when President Obama was in the Senate, he complained about the amount of power that President Bush ad when President Trump, when President Trump was running for office to complain about the bottom power President Obama had. Now that they have it, they’re not really going to relinquish it, and they’re going to in any way try to see it grow. What we should. What we should expect to see is Congress kind of coming in and trying to actively curtail the power of the executive branch. And it will be interesting to see how the relation between Congress the president goes forward, given things we’re seeing coming on the Obama administration but also the Trump administration.

[0:07:52 Speaker 2] It’s a great point by Professor McDonnell. Infected leads nicely into the video segment. We like to run to close out this particular issue area of discussion. So if we could run that real quick start

[0:08:02 Speaker 6] with that battle at the border, the firestorm growing over Children being separated from their parents, sparking protests around the country. Now nearly 2000 Children taken from the parents accused of illegally crossing over a six week period Images like this one, you see right there is getting a lot of reaction this morning. And Michael, as you know, President Trump, is now heading to Capitol Hill tomorrow to discuss immigration with Republicans. But this morning, first lady Melania Trump is already weighing in and what she’s seeing, and former first lady Laura Bush, now calling the policy cruel overnight. Our senior White House correspondent, Sylvia Vega, has much more for us this morning. Good morning, Cecilia.

[0:08:37 Speaker 7] Hey, David, Good morning to you know, this is a policy that is now just eating away in terms of controversy at this White House. And now, in the middle of all this controversy, a rare intervention from two first ladies who normally are not weighing in on policy matters. Let’s go right to First Lady Melania Trump’s statement, released through a spokeswoman, she says. Quote. Mrs Trump hates to see the Children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart. Now this both sides line really seems to be echoing the president’s claim that Democrats are to blame for this. Of course, the president’s critics say he could unilaterally stop this essentially with a phone call and bring this policy to an end. I want to go now. To Mrs Bush’s comment. She is comparing these detention centers toe World War two era Japanese American internment camps, quote I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries. But the zero tolerance policy is cruel, is immoral, and it breaks my heart. David, you know this. This is a growing chorus of opposition, from Republicans to the president’s own allies in the evangelical community to

[0:09:47 Speaker 6] and to sell. You make a good point there. So what does the president hope to accomplish when he goes to Capitol Hill? Does he want the zero tolerance policy stop or is he okay with what he’s seeing? These Children being separated?

[0:09:57 Speaker 7] Well, he really caused mass confusion on Capitol Hill last week when he seemed toe dismiss the Republican compromise this Republican compromise on immigration. The White House had to clarify, saying that it’s actually the Democratic bill that he is

[0:10:10 Speaker 8] opposed to eso this trip to refer tomorrow is really about rallying Republicans on the Hill for this issue over this issue that has vexed them for years, you know, the president said he doesn’t want to

[0:10:21 Speaker 7] see these images, but again, David, his critics say he could stop this himself.

[0:10:25 Speaker 6] City video. I know you’ll have much more on world news

[0:10:27 Speaker 2] tonight I like that trash truck

[0:10:29 Speaker 3] going behind her in the White House when I was

[0:10:31 Speaker 2] trying to get to class on speedway here these days. Uh, but you saw exactly what Professor McDaniels talking about there, which is? The Congress is in charge of laws that Congress has passed immigration loss. But the president is in charge of interpreting, enforcing those laws. And, you know, the A few years back, President Obama basically said they were gonna back way off and enforcing a lot of these immigration laws. And, you know, the great bid on Saturday Night Live questioning, You know where they sort of said like, Wow, the president has that authority. Well, unless the Congress steps up and does something about it, then presidents tend to get away with really shaping and interpreting these laws that the Congress wants clarity. The Congress has to pass laws. In fact, I think Ted Cruz introduced a law basically ending the sort of separation of families that we’ve seen in the last last few days. Last few weeks, that has not passed, but it’s been introduced. And so by the time you guys see this, maybe we’ll have some resolution on that

[0:11:29 Speaker 3] it’s going to be some that drags out a bit. And, um, I think President Trump saying that it’s Congress’s fault, a little bit of an overstatement cause I mean, he has a lot of executive privilege but also is taking advantage of a Congress that can’t. He’s taken advantage of Congress that for some reason seems inept in order. Get things done. President Obama got frustrated with it, so he started doing executive orders. President Trump realized you like anything done what I’m gonna do, whatever I feel like doing. You may hate it, but you all can’t work together to stop me. So I think, uh, think President Obama realized that I think President Trump realize that as well. That’s why you don’t understand why the presidency to be doing presidency. So to be able to do these things on Chek is because the legislative branch for something reasons that cannot get its act together.

[0:12:16 Speaker 2] Yeah, it’s true. I mean, we’ve been emphasizing the primacy of the Congress with respect to the Constitution, right. Article one longest section. The most dedicated power is clearly going to the Congress. But you know what we’ve seen since World War two, certainly, and maybe even accelerated in recent years is if the Congress doesn’t act and there’s a vacuum the president tends to step in, and is that constitutional? Is that the way we’re supposed to do? It will. Probably not, but somebody’s got to step in. And if Congress doesn’t use its power, presidents have that opportunity. So there’s four other issues we want to talk about today. We want to hit. The inspector general’s report on the Clinton email scandal will try to bring some clarity on that. I want to talk about a partisan gerrymandering case. They went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court basically punted on it. We also want to talk about professor of Daniel’s favorite thing. Rank ordered voting. All right, so say a few words about that. And we also want to talk about interesting article in The New York Times this last week about affirmative action hurting certain kinds of students. Maybe not the students you would think who were hurt by affirmative action. Eso Let’s start him and kind of rapid sequence. I want to talk about the inspector general’s report on the Clinton email investigation, so this is on issue that’s hanging around from 2016 where, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she was faced a lot of scrutiny, a lot of tough questions because she used a so called homebrew server Aziz well as personal emails to conduct official State Department business. And there were there was an investigation by the FBI into this. Now the FBI’s investigation is the subject of an investigation. This is consequential not only because of the initial question, which is, you know, communications and the sanctity of communications for people who are serving in the executive branch. You know what sort of transparency, what sorts of privacy issues are there, what we do with someone who does something that they’re not supposed to do when it comes to communication, Right? So that’s that’s the initial issue, right? But in the investigation, what became clear with the inspector general’s report was that members of the FBI who were investigating the Clinton email controversy, you know, seemed like they had political agendas, had political biases, didn’t pursue leads. All of this stuff was sort of came out, and the i G report, so we wanted to get distill this as much as possible cause there’s a lot of controversy about what is and what is not in the Inspector general’s report. So we actually prepared a quick and dirty we’ll set a bullet points for you. So if we could put those up on the screen will kind of walk through those real quickly. Here’s A so far as we’re concerned, everything you need to know about the report the I. G s report I d meeting inspector general found no evidence of political bias. So the FBI prosecutors who were considering should they take action in 2016 against Hillary Clinton for her use of a homebrew server onder her use of a private email to conduct official business, they said. They said that well, the FBI people were involved in that they did not appear to be affected by bias. Now, let me be quite clear. It doesn’t say they weren’t biased when it said is there is no evidence that their decisions about what to do with Hillary’s situation were affected by bias. Okay, so in fact, there were all sorts of interesting emails by people involved about how much they hated Trump, but they couldn’t find any evidence in the ideas report that the FBI’s attitude posture behavior towards Secretary Clinton was affected by by second bullet point here the FBI’s actions. The inspector general said they were ultimately, even though they didn’t find direct evidence of bias, cast a cloud over the bureau and senior damage and did lasting damage to the FBI’s reputation. This gets back to press for McDaniel. We were talking about this before class. You know, the FBI supposed to be ultimate, you know, kind of element of civil service in the United States that they are beholden to a set of rules and norms that are there, not partisan, that they’re you know, they’re subject to evidence and expertise, and they’re supposed to be the very best of the bureaucracy. In some ways, you know, they’re not touched by bias, you know, thinking about the you know, the old movie The Untouchables with Kevin Costner. You know, these people who aren’t subject to, you know, the Mob or Al Capone’s influence right there, the best of the best. And when you’ve got email exchanges back and forth between FBI agents saying, you know we’re gonna take Trump down and stuff like that that that hurts the image of the FBI. And it adds to this cloud of mistrust that hangs not over here, the not only over the political branches of government in the United States but now to our civil service. So, ah, third bullet point. We want to mention the text messages, and these were between the ones that are really kind. Attract a lot of tension between this FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, and I think Peter Peter Straws straws like I think that’s how you pronounce it. They were, as we say in political science lovers, and so there’s a lot of emails back and forth between them and ah, In a message on August 8 2016 Pain said, Trump’s never gonna become president, right? Right? And strategic replies, No, no, he’s not, will stop it. So these things came out, and actually that this third bullet point is really what they’re talking about in bullet 0.0.2. In other words, these are the things were really damaging. It doesn’t seem that there’s evidence that any of these people acted on the sort of anti trump impulses, but they sent these messages and they sent them out over, you know, there, FBI emails, and that’s that’s the kind of thing that really does damage. And if you’re a Trump supporter and you look at that, you go, you know, really, that’s the FBI. They’re supposed to be investigating. You know, the secretary’s use of emails and a homebrew server in their reluctance to investigate her aggressively, how could it not have been influenced by their political views? So even there’s no direct evidence that kind of stuff hurts the perception about the FBI’s behavior in this whole thing. In the last two bullet points, we wanted to mention real quickly the Clinton meeting with Loretta Lynch. This is you guys probably don’t remember this, but in the summer 2016 Loretta Lynch was on a airplane in Phoenix. Bill Clinton happened to be on the tarmac at the same time. Why Bill Clinton saying out of Tarmac and Phoenix, I’m not quite sure if you’ve been to Phoenix in the summer, you know it’s 100 and 50 degrees, but But, you know, Bill’s bill and Bill actually boarded her. This is theater knee General Loretta Lynch. Bill Clinton boarded her plane at the same time the FBI was investigating his wife, former secretary of state. And so that contact meant that Loretta Lynch had to ultimately recused herself from the case and that that was something that should not have happened. And again kind of contributed this icky feeling about the whole thing. And then, finally, our favorite guy, James Comey. I’s personal email. The report found that Comey used a personal Gmail account. Ironically, given that the whole you know, the subject of the investigation was Hillary Clinton’s personal email he uses for official government business when he was FBI director. So Comey doesn’t come across well in any of these sorts of things. So these air kind of the main finding of the inspector general’s report. There was no evidence that bias affected the way they treated the Clinton case. But there’s all this kind of unprofessional. I think you term it behavior on the part of the FBI agents that created, you know, this odd cloud of suspicion around the whole thing. So that’s all we want to say about that. For some Daniel, any observations

[0:20:03 Speaker 3] are it was also important know that they actually said that Comey was in supporting that should never said anything publicly at all. But I also want things the FBI has been trying to overcome Is the legacy from Diego Hoover, who used the FBI to basically ah, bully whoever he wanted to s o They don’t want that image anymore. And something like this actually hurts, but also to kind of humanize them that initially defended but to humanize them. If you can think of anybody if you work anywhere, you have an idea of who you want your next boss to be. You know, a new boss is coming in. People like, Well, she were gonna be boss because she was kind of crazy. Uh, not on. I think. I think we’ll lobby for Karen. We see this going on, but when it happens within the FBI, we’re supposed to be impartial. This becomes extremely problematic. And it means that the justice system is justice. Political is anything else, Which means Well, what can we really believe is fair? Just in American society?

[0:21:06 Speaker 2] Yeah, it’s, you know, too tricky issues. Professor Gail says this is basically a lot of people were sort saying, Well, we think Hillary Clinton would be the next president, you know, and I don’t know. Does it really make sense to go after her Aggressively? Um, you know, in this investigation and what the I G s report said was that they could not find any evidence that other political bias or professional bias influenced their decision to take kind of a non aggressive posture towards the Clinton email investigation. You just can’t help but look at all this stuff and go. Well, there may not be direct evidence, but you know, and on the other hand, Democrats were furious and remain furious that Comey, you know, continue to sort of talk about the email situation publicly and say things like, You know, that Clinton behaved. I don’t think he was. It

[0:21:55 Speaker 3] was it was it was not illegal, but recklessly or not criminal, but recklessly

[0:22:00 Speaker 2] and that kind of language. And there a lot of Democrats who believe to this day that that election was swung by Comey’s last press conference, which occurred in late October, Um, in which he said, Well, she’s not guilty of anything but, you know, just continue to raise this Clinton email issue. Um and and again, the ideas reports said that all of these press conferences that Comey did were not standard operating procedure. Didn’t say they were wrong. It just said That’s not the way the bureau typically works, which obviously could be read as a sort of an indictment of that. So couple other issues. I’ll take gerrymandering of Professor McDaniel, Take rank order voting. Uh, just a real quick. We thought there was gonna be a big decision on partisan gerrymandering. Now, we haven’t gotten to gerrymandering in the course modules yet, but it’s essentially when you draw, you know, after every 10 years there’s a census of United States. The next will be in 2020 and the census determines how many representatives the states get into the Congress. And even if there is no reapportionment, that is, if you’re number of representatives that your state gets doesn’t go up or down. Even if it’s the same number, you have to redraw the lines. That’s redistricting after the census, Jerry Mandir ing is when you draw the lines in a way to maximize something right, you can have a racial Jerry Mander, where you’re trying to maximize one group’s representation at the expense of another. You gonna partisan gerrymandering where you’re maximizing Republicans at the expense of Democrats, or vice versa. So that’s That’s Jerry Mandiri, by the way, Seth Mascot, a colleague of mine who went to U C. L a couple years after I did. He is on a one person crusade because Elbridge Gerry, who is the namesake of Gerry Meandering his name, is being mispronounced, that his name is pronounced Gary. And yet we say Gerry meandering, I’m really such a nerd. It’s unbelievable, but a rate so, but no one is. There’s no he’s lobbying for gerrymandering. There were two big cases. Big protests. Legal suits brought against two states that wound their way up to the Supreme Court last week. One from Maryland, where the Republicans were contesting what they considered a Democratic Jerry Mander. And one in Wisconsin where the Democrats were contesting what they considered a Republican, Jerry Mander. The core argument is that these were partisan Jerry manners, so these weren’t raced gerrymanders or in those partisan gerrymanders and the court. The Supreme Court has historically not been terribly interested in adjudicating on partisan gerrymanders because the Constitution clearly lays out that the state legislatures are in charge of determining the district’s right, and so the court has been kind of, you know, they don’t really want to get too involved in that right. But these cases wound their way up. In fact, we have a short video from the hill, which is Ah, Washington website. There’s a lot of good political reporting, and it kind of explains some of the particulars of the Maryland and in the Wisconsin case, if we could cue that up.

[0:24:57 Speaker 0] Supreme Court on Monday ruled narrowly against a group of Democratic voters in Wisconsin who challenged their state’s redistricting map as an unconstitutional partisan Jerry Mander. The court said the residents black standing to bring the case forward and remanded the case back down to the lower court to give the voters an opportunity to prove they were injured by the maps, which were drawn by Republican legislators. The case, Gil Verses Whitford stems from a challenge Democratic voters brought against the redistricting of legislative districts. They argue Republican officials unfairly and strategically put them at a disadvantage.

[0:25:30 Speaker 2] Okay, so that’s sort of the bare bones of the decision. What’s fascinating here and the courts done this a lot lately, the court said. The plaintiffs in the case. The people who said Hey, this Gerry Mander is unconstitutional, Court said. Those plaintiffs don’t have standing. Yeah, this is This is something that you have to have you have to actually to bring a lawsuit, you have to actually demonstrate that you were irreparably damaged by the law or the action and what the court said. What the Supreme Court said is that they gave the voters who were involved in the suits, both in the case of Maryland in the case of Wisconsin, opportunities to show how they were irreparably damaged by the lines. And they never really did that. In other words, they did not have standing to bring the suit. The court took a complete pass on the issue of, you know, standards by which they would judge whether a partisan, you know, drawing of lines was too much, Aziz said. The court doesn’t really want to get into that too much, But there are questions about, you know, can can you basically disenfranchise group sort of marginalising such that they don’t have any shot at electing somebody, even though they represent a considerable portion of a state or an area. These air interesting questions, but the court took a pass on them. They basically said, And this is an interesting question, right? Which is is there any such thing as standing in a case involving a partisan gerrymander? You know, let’s just say I’m Ah ah, Republican and Travis County. And you know, the lines are drawn in such a way that I can never hope to elect a Republican representative. Um, and you could draw the lines to include me in the Hill Country and Williams and counting in a way that I could elect help electric. But exactly what’s the harm done to me in having a Democratic representative under those circumstances? So I’m interested in this decision, even though it allowed the court basically decide step, you know, gerrymandering. So first, McDaniel Any thoughts on the lack of a Jerry man during

[0:27:31 Speaker 3] decision? I think the standing thing is very important because if you allow the court say we must recognize partisanship, I guess as a za criteria, what other criteria become coming to play as well? And so they you may be opening up the best that can of worms that you can’t control, and I think in many ways the court took a stand look, unless you can prove that this does harm, you can really cool so that this harms you can’t do it. We know with racial Jayaraman in that there is clear harm. I mean, the South is a perfect example of that, but But this? Yeah, can you Can you really demonstrate that now? One thing of many states have done to really avoid this is the vaccine gone to nonpartisan committees to draw the districts and a lot of seats and making this push where you take it out of control, the Legislature and you put it within a nonpartisan committee, with the idea being that the’s not parts committees will draw fair districts.

[0:28:23 Speaker 2] That’s happened in a number of places. Texas, actually, after the 2000 Census and redistricting mandate, set up a three person commissions to Republicans, one Democrat and one of the Republicans, Bill Ratliff. There’s a very prominent Republican back in the eighties and nineties, sort of sided with the Democrats. And so one of the reasons that the Republicans redrew the redrawn lines in 2000 for was that they were unsatisfied with this commission that the state Legislature had in fact, set up. The state Legislature can kind of do this. However, they want to draw the line so they can punt over to a special committee, you know, but it’s a state legislatures that have the right to do this. And I think that’s kind of what the Supreme Court’s wants to be able hands off about. You know, the Constitution says the state legislatures can figure this out, and so you gotta have a pretty high standard for the Supreme Court to weigh in and knock out. You know, the decision of the duly elected branch of whatever state we’re talking about. So great. Not much movement there. Could you explain to us a little bit about rank order voting?

[0:29:25 Speaker 3] All right, So recording in the news. So rank order voting. I think many people were. You go to vote, you cast a vote for the one person and and you move on Rank order. Voting means that you have to say there are three or four people on the ballot. You rank them so one through five. And the idea is that a person with the lowest vote total gets taken out to the next round and their boats. So let’s say number five everybody who ranked the fifth highest vote getter number one. Well, that person’s taken out to the person that ranked number two now becomes the number one vote and so on and so forth, and so you kind of wind it down to a 21 individual winner. Now, it was important to note is that they’re a bunch of different voting styles that are out there. So we’re used to the single member plurality system, and there are multiple others. There’s cumulative voting where you walk in, you’re given three boats. You can either bumbling your votes for one person. You can spread them out over others. There multiple voting methods and this rank order voting is kind of something that people have been pushing. However, one of things that people do like about it is that it allows. If you have a very strong, intense feeling for somebody, you you can help them, and in many ways it actually helps to create a multi party system. However, there are some concerns that it might be on Democratic specifically were just voting for one individual, where a small group of individuals with very intense preferences can kind of take over, um, take over the election for governor or this or some other office. Ah, lot of people have really champion rank order voting in regards to voted for a Legislature where your seeding, multiple individuals. And so the idea is that the intensity of certain preference will not take over the Legislature, but we’ll make sure these groups are represented. And so it’s really gonna be interesting to see how this goes forward, specifically looking for one individual supposed to a body of individuals. And it’s again, this is not something new there numerous types of voting methods that are out there, and we need to kind of be aware of these various voting methods. But the fact they all come with the positives and negatives.

[0:31:41 Speaker 2] Yeah, this is Ah, this is something we want to introduce this week because there was a election last week in Maine. Start to elements of this rank. Voting ranked choice voting came up. The first was that main reaffirmed their support. There was a referendum on whether main would continue to use ranked choice voting as their main mechanism for selecting candidates statewide and for their legislative races and may really main reaffirm that on. Then. As you know, since Maine was using it, they also had rank order voting for their state legislative elections. And

[0:32:13 Speaker 0] there were

[0:32:13 Speaker 2] some interesting results. San Francisco also uses rank order voting for their mayoral elections and his professor McDaniels, saying, The interesting thing about rank order voting is and you think I guess, Let’s kind of give you guys a big point. Take away point institutions and rules of the game matter, right? This is something we want to emphasize throughout this semester. And the way in which we conduct elections influences outcomes in the United States. I mean, you know, ask Hillary Clinton with respect to the Electoral College, Write the rules of the game, have a big impact on the outcomes that we get. So why the heck do we are we talking about ranked choice voting other than you know, they had some stuff in Maine last week. Well, there are a lot of people who think that if you went to rank choice voting, what you get is you get majority winners. So there another word for ranked choice voting is an instant runoff because what happens is let’s take Texas. You know, you’ve got Republican Democrat, let’s say, a Green Party candidate and a Libertarian Party candidate. And let’s say in the first round the Libertarian gets 5% of the vote, which is the lowest vote total. Well, that person, that candidate would be eliminated and that candid supporters would. Their second choice would kick in so their candidates eliminated and you default to their second choice. So let’s just say the Libertarians, you know as their second choice, preferred the Republican. Well, those votes would go to the Republican, and the vote would be recalculated. And let’s say now it’s the Green Party candidate with low person, and that person’s eliminated. Well, that person’s supporters, their second choice, kicks in, and the votes are reality. Let’s say those go to the Democrat, right, and you keep doing that until somebody gets 50%. That’s when by an instant runoff. So if you have all of that information present in a single vote, you don’t have to have like we have in Texas, you know, um, election. And then six weeks later, a runoff election and the claim on the part of advocates of this system is that it is too claims. The first is it’s more Democratic. That’s the argument it allows people take into accounts so I can vote for my third or fourth or fifth party candidate and still influenced the outcome. Ultimate outcome of the election that my preferences aren’t wasted. And so that’s That’s a strong kind of reason that people advocate for this. They like the fact that you get a majority winner. That’s what they mean by its more Democratic Um, and they also think this is sort of a more tortured argument, but that it would limit the impact of money. And I think the argument runs roughly along the lines of you know, that the two dominant candidates in terms of money people tend to be attracted to them because they know the other counties don’t really have a chance. And so it actually reinforces or exaggerates the influence of money in American elections. The funny thing is that if you look at some of these recent results in Maine and in San Francisco, there’s no evidence that having a rank choice system advantage is less well known or less affluent candidates. In fact, the candidate with the most money one every one of the races that we’re talking about into rank choice voting. So I’m not sure how much of, ah, you know how much of a positive that is, as as kind of one of these consequences of rank choice voting. Maybe it would be, but here it. But we just want to point this out because, you know, when you watch the show, whether it’s American Idol or the voice or these shows, we’re gonna draw you into our nerdy world. In our nerdy world, always, always kind of looks at man, that’s a terrible, like an American Idol. For instance, what’s what’s the mechanism for selecting who advances when you eliminate the person with lowest votes? Um, well, that means somebody with a small committed, you know, core voters of supporters is going to advance week after week after week. Maybe long after, they probably should have been eliminated. You know, let’s say there’s somebody who 10% loves and 90% hates that person’s gonna be around a while because they’re 10% going to rank first. Let’s see on the other side, there’s somebody who had it was the second choice of everybody. Well, they could be eliminated in round number one, right, cause they got no first place votes. All right, so it’s, you know, again, kind of a nerdy observation with respect to American Idol. But But all these shows and contests that we see in American culture and American sports male involve rules, and the rules do matter. And one of things we want emphasises have to think through these rules and figure out what the consequences when you set your game up. Politics is a big game. We have rules. Rules matter. So finally, we want to end with the brief discussion of affirmative action policy, affirmative action, something that both Professor McDaniel I talked about and the context of interest groups on. There was an interesting story in The New York Times last week about the consequences of affirmative action at Harvard. Now Professor McDaniel and I love to take shots at Harvard we didn’t go to Harvard, could have afforded to didn’t get in all that kind of stuff. Hopefully, most of your with us on this Boston’s Yeah, I’m not heartbroken. I didn’t go to Harvard let me put it that way. But Harvard, his hat took some real shots in this New York Times article with respect to how they’ve been conducting their admissions policies. And if we could, we’ve got the actual excerpt from The New York Times article up on the screen. Right? So this is, as it turns out, I mentioned that there’s a little bit of, ah, you know, something that might surprise you a bit. And that is that. Affirmative action policy at Harvard doesn’t seem to have helped African American enrollment all that much. It doesn’t seem to have helped Latino or Hispanic enrollment all that much. What it seems to have done is hurt Asian Americans. Um, so take a look at this article. Ex ERT Harvard consistently rated Asian American applicants lower than any other rates on race on personal traits, right? So this is a criteria they use at Harvard like quote, positive, personality, likability, courage, kindness and being quote widely respected unquote. According to analysis of more than 160,000 student records filed Friday in federal court in Boston by group representing Asian American students in a lawsuit against the university, SEC goes on to say that Asian American scored ah ha as higher higher than other racial ethnic groups on all these admissions scores all these object of criteria but that the subject of criteria the holistic criteria that Harvard uses for admissions processes they were consistently an apparently systematically downgraded right? So the concluding quote here is, it turns out that the suspicions of Asian American alumni, students and applicants were right all along. This is the group, Students for Fair Admissions said in a court document laying out the analysis. Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 19 twenties and 19 thirties. So, um, you know, we’ve talked about, um, affirmative action, the context of jobs. But we’ve also talked about in the context of admissions to colleges. And again, what we set up in that discussion was the idea that you know the rights of the individuals on the one hand. So in this case, a student who does really well in the test but is not admitted to the school, and the school’s argument is that yeah, you individually were hurt. But that’s because we’re serving a larger purpose. We’re trying to help this group that has been systematically disadvantaged, right, that this is a trade off that we’re always talking about in American politics, right, the rights of the individual versus the rights of the collective or the group, and this is a constant tension in the American system. But what happens in the case here of like, where, um, you know, it’s not just individuals that are hurt, but it seems systematically that one group is disadvantaged and we’re not even quite sure who is benefiting here. It seems that, you know, there’s a sort of, I think it. It turns out that whites tend to do a little better because Asians air downgraded in the Harvard admissions process. But it’s not like African American or Latino admissions at Harvard or through the roof during this period of time. It seems that they’re not comfortable with what they would get with an object of rendering of their own statistics, which is something like, you know, 50% to 60% Asian American enrollment. So I don’t know that I have any cosmic significance to attribute to this sort of thing, but it’s just sort of interesting. And I don’t even know that. I kind of do blame Harvard. It’s going to take shots at Harvard, but I’ve seen the same thing in my home institution. U C L. A. Where you know, there’s been an effort over time to deal with admissions, and I think the affirmative action policies generally Professor McDaniels much more of an expert on this kind of stuff tonight he’s actually studied it. But one of the things that’s interesting is that since in California you’re not allowed to use race as a criteria. So what they end up using a lot of admissions are other variables that are, in my opinion, not in my opinions were reading. The data weakly correlated with race, and you end up getting an odd admissions policy, you know. So in California, for instance, they take into account socio economic circumstance and, you know, home and lifestyle things, all of which I think are consequential and important. But they’re not strongly, powerfully correlated with race. And so you know, for instance, in the case of Asian Americans there a lot of Asian Americans who end up with personal circumstances that are much you know they’re tough is tougher, tougher than your Hispanic or African American students. But that’s not actually the group that the university necessarily wants to benefit, so it’s complicated. But I thought this article was interesting, the by the way, this is a loss that this is a claim against Harvard. So the stats are the stats, but I don’t want you to take this. Is is, you know, the Bible on this right, that Harvard has another point of view about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. So,

[0:41:54 Speaker 3] and part of this also fits into this larger narrative that Asian Americans have been trying to fight against for a long period of time, of specifically that of being the other. So there’s a lot of work which talks about how Asian Americans and never really been fully accepted as American, and so they’ve constantly trying to fight it said No. We’ve been here their constant as well. Where you from, where your parents runs like San Francisco, where your parents from San Francisco, where grandparents from San Jose I mean, it’s it’s it’s so there’s constant being question is, Are you Do you really belong here? and in addition to this, you’ve all seen a great deal of backlash against really Asian Americans doing well in school using this at U. C. L. A. At other schools. And so this idea that Asian Americans don’t have the proper traits of personality traits for Harvard in many ways fits with the stereotype of this group is you know they’re nice, but there’s something wrong with them and they’re not like us. And this has been something that Asian Americans have been mean. I’ve been fighting for centuries. If you think of the Chinese exclusion act, think of the Japanese interment camps or even the idea be considered the model minority. It’s this idea, you know. They’re the other and there will never fully assimilate. And so, uh, this is a problem that, you know, all the Ivy leagues have had to deal with this, whether beauty, race, anti Semitism, things of that nature, it’s something that never really seems to go away on. As we try to create a much more equal society, we have many ways have to acknowledge some of the biases that we have and try to confront them head on with the idea being to confront them. You openly aware of them that you can prevent them from being problems in the future?

[0:43:38 Speaker 2] Yeah, I think you know, any time you’re you’re setting up a criteria again, you know, the theme of the day, I guess, is that rules matter. And you think about it from a college admissions point of view. And you said, Well, OK, we’ve got G p A and test scores, and then we want to take into account thes extent circumstances, your home, your environment, how tough you had it. We certainly don’t want those people were less advantaged. Teoh, you know, suffer. And what I think you know, they found at these places is that if you go by those sets of criteria that Asian Americans end up being at the very top of that list, Um, and then you’re in Harvard situation. Whoa. Well, my God, that would be a class of 60% Asian Americans. So rather than say, we don’t want that which I think would be more intellectually honest, but certainly illegal. Uh, these holistic criteria brought in and you have an embarrassing situation like Harvard is facing. Now, where you downgraded on the subject of criteria that you know clearly I think are basically sort of, you know, discriminatory grades or marks that have been given. But they’re the only means by which Harvard can kind of create a class that sort of fits its interpretation of what would you know, what it wants a Harvard class to look like. And, ah, again, you know, way like pointing out the imperfections in the system. But we also want Oh, really try to give you guys a little bit of context and circumstance. I mean, I don’t I don’t think Harvard is just evil. I don’t think it’s quite the same as the sort of intentional discrimination to keep Jewish populations down the 19 twenties and thirties. Although there’s clearly a case you could be made on the lines. I think they’re trying to do the right thing, but they’ve got kind of crude mechanisms to do it, and you end up with very clumsy efforts like this. Sometimes,

[0:45:18 Speaker 3] yeah, I mean, trying to create the diversity is very difficult, and, uh, and it has become more of the questions off. Should universities be actively trying to create diversity? University told that is our goal. But what do you consider be diverse? The economic diversity, we racial diversity? What do you consider to be diverse and defining? That has been very difficulty and universities really the front lines where you’re seeing a lot of these fights for? How do we make sure everybody has access? Um, everybody who’s qualified has access to these things to these same tools

[0:45:56 Speaker 2] so that I think we’re done for the week of guys. Have a great week, and we will see the same time next week. Dr. Later

[0:46:14 Speaker 9] The Government 3 10 and The news podcast is hosted by doctors Darren Shaw and Eric McDaniel and is produced by the liberal Arts TS Development Studio and the Department of Government in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin