In a constitutional democracy, elections are important, but not for the reasons that supporters of unlimited democracy think they are. Reflecting on this is useful in the context of the January 6 House Committee and of recent declarations by the president of Brazil, Jail Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro fears losing the upcoming election in Brazil and suggests that he could be the victim of electoral fraud as, he also suggests, Trump was (“Biden Pushes Back Against Waning U.S. Influence in Latin America at Summit,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2016):
Mr. Biden held a one-on-one meeting later Thursday with Mr. Bolsonaro, a close ally of Mr. Trump who was one of the last global leaders to recognize Mr. Biden’s victory. …
“The American people are the ones that talk about it (election fraud). I will not discuss the sovereignty of another country. But Trump was doing really well,” [Mr. Bolsonaro] said earlier in the week when asked if he believed there had been fraud in Mr. Biden’s victory.
Bolsonaro is preparing to pull the same trick as the former American president did—and as political rulers regular do in backward countries. In fact, Trump suggested even before the 2016 election and before the 2020 election that he would recognize the results only if he won. Bolsonaro is also suggesting that the election outcome will be legitimate only if he wins:
Mr. Bolsonaro has repeatedly criticized the country’s election system ahead of the October presidential election. Polls show he is currently trailing former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of the vote.
In a constitutional democracy (emphasizing “constitutional” as James Buchanan would say), elections are important not because they express “the will of the people.” Such a thing does not exist because individuals making up “the people” have different preferences, values, and wills (see my article “The Impossibility of Populism” in The Independent Review, Summer 2021). And elections are not important because of any divine right of numerical majorities. On the contrary, the only majority that has normative significance is a 100% majority, that is, unanimous consent; democracy is only meant to approximate, in a sense, this criterion (see my Econlib review of the classic book explaining this idea, Buchanan and Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent).
In a constitutional democracy, elections are important for basically one reason: they allow a peaceful transfer of power. One could also say that elections have a symbolic importance as they remind rulers that all citizens are formally equal and that their consent is equally required.
Once a certain proportion of voters think that that the function of elections is to choose God-on-earth, instead of just vetoing the rascals if necessary, dangerous consequences follow. First, any defeated candidate for the God-on-earth job will be strongly tempted to claim that he won, especially if he thinks that he embodies the people. How can the people vote against itself without fraud? Second, elections will have stopped playing their main, if not only, function.
One objection to my argument could be formulated as follows: Granting that, in backward or backward-to-be countries, defeated candidates will succumb to the temptation of blaming fraud, why did the phenomenon, in advanced countries of our own times, show up first in America and not in Europe? Why, for example, did Charles de Gaulle not claim that his plebiscitary referendum of 1969 was stolen, instead of resigning? Is it because Europeans generally believe in unlimited democracy but not in personal power? A related question: Why is it that, in French elections, the citizens living abroad are encouraged to vote not with mail-in ballots but on the Internet, and that (thus far) no losing candidate blames his loss on these votes?
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jun 11 2022 at 2:12pm
Legitimacy is a funny thing, isn’t it? A government without legitimacy can’t prove its own legitimacy.
There’s a video of an interview held with Bernie Sanders three weeks before the election where he voiced his concern about the concept of a red mirage, ie that Trump would look like he’s winning on election night and then wind up losing because of the mail in vote. To be honest, my present sense impression, as the election was happening, is that Trump had won and they were going to continue to count until Biden won. Can I personally prove that was the case? No, I can’t. Do I admit the possibility that Biden actually did win? Of course, but I must say I really am at the point where I don’t care and I have no interest in bolstering the legitimacy of a government that I personally find illegitimate.
Ultimately the issue comes down to trust and the only thing I trust is that the Democratic Party wants to lay claim to more than half my income (they did that already) and wants to continue to parasitize me.
For many years the Republican Party has sought, generally, to seek certain voter ID rules to prevent voter fraud. Democrats have responded to this by claiming there’s no evidence of voter fraud and that the Republican Party is merely trying to disenfranchise voters. In the voter ID case out of IN, the Marion County case, the Supreme Court then upheld the voter ID scheme there on the basis that even absent evidence of voter fraud, the government had an interest in taking steps whereby the public would view the electoral system with integrity. All of this of course in a country where the intelligence agency has a long history of meddling and directly interfering in the elections of other countries.
There are also way too many references to eliminating the Electoral College and court packing where the Democratic Party only accepts the results when it gets the result it wants. There is no deference to the system anymore. There’s no buy-in here anymore.
As an attorney I’m naturally subject to ethics rules. Of note is the standard I need to apply. The standard is the ‘mere appearance of impropriety’ — not even an actual impropriety, I need to avoid even the appearance of one. And yet that didn’t stop them from running the 2020 election in a way that they knew well before hand would, at minimum, look bad.
At the end of the day, 2020 cost the government a certain amount of legitimacy. What the Democrats do post-election is frankly of no weight or consequence to me whatsoever. The problem with legitimacy is that the government has a continuous duty to prove its own legitimacy; I don’t need to prove the government is illegitimate to myself and its up to you whether you think likewise or not. I made up my mind Nov 2020 and there’s nothing the government can do itself that can convince me otherwise. The government cannot prove its own legitimacy, its legitimacy needs to be self-evident to me. And to me, its not.
Can the government regain this lost legitimacy? That’s obviously possible, maybe even probable because there’s obviously a fair amount of institutional inertia behind the current regime.
“In a constitutional democracy, elections are important for basically [two] reasons: they allow a peaceful transfer of power [and underpin the legitimacy of those assuming power]” — modifying Professor’s quote on purpose.
The left of course has begun to screech about what a threat deplorables like me pose to ‘our sacred democracy’ to which I would respond that I believe in democracy, I just don’t believe in this democracy.
#nationaldivorce
Warren Platts
Jun 11 2022 at 2:48pm
Good points Craig. And let’s not forget that for four years, we were constantly reminded the Democrats that Trump’s election was illegitimate because of supposed Russian collusion, without which, he would have lost.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 11 2022 at 3:33pm
Warren: Imagine that, after the results of the 2016 opinions, Trump’s followers had been told about every stupid and dangerous thing he would say and do during the following four years and a half. Despite Trump’s belief that he could shoot somebody “in the middle of 5th Avenue” and all his followers would remain loyal to him, I like to think that many of them, even while denying that Trump would say or do this, would have agreed that they would in this case, at some point before the final conning lies, stop following him.
Craig
Jun 11 2022 at 5:26pm
“Despite Trump’s belief that he could shoot somebody “in the middle of 5th Avenue” and all his followers would remain loyal to him”
I’d still vote for him over Schumer though and then support his removal for the Republican VP (except Pence 😉 . That’s because by voting for him, I’m not loyal to him or following him. I’m a #NeverDemocrat and I have very, very good reasons for that.
The taxation is way too personal because it represents time.
Pre-pandemic of course I spent many, many starlit mornings in single digit weather making an extreme commute to Midtown. Post-pandemic the remote work gave me this real deep sense of loss about all that time I had spent commuting for all those years, all the time with my kids missed, all the workouts I missed sacrificing my health. I was quite forlorn about it.
The 56% taxation I experienced was when I operated my business in North Jersey. When things soured in 2012 (and I wasn’t a giant automaker) how much rope did I have before finances compelled me to sell (a year as it turned out)? Crocodile tears are in order because I’m not poor by any stretch of the imagination, but the excessive taxation imposed, and I might add, even when not engaged primarily in that business (I still have portions of the business I didn’t sell), taxes remain the single largest expense I face.
As an attorney I’ve met people who have been released from prison and they have a much greater sense of lost time, many get divorced and don’t have contact with their children, or have large gaps where they didn’t see their children grow up. Taxation is not nearly as bad as that, but there is this really, really deep sense of lost opportunity akin to the acknowledgment of the loss I had by commuting revealed to me by the remote work.
So sure, you might say Trump shoots somebody on 5th Avenue and the fact I’d be willing to vote for Trump over any Democrat reveals some flaw in my character. Ok, fair enough, sometimes I will have to stand sufficiently chastised, right? But hey, you know what? Maybe the fact I’m willing to vote for a murderer over a Democrat means the Democrats should have some insight into their flaws and wonder why a person who is married with two kids, gainfully employed, running what are now the remnants of a business and now a side hustle business, would vote for a murderer over a Democrat. Why?
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 11 2022 at 3:24pm
Craig: One has to distinguish a few things. First, even if Biden were the devil and Trump were Archangel Gabriel (married with Stormy Daniels–sorry, I couldn’t help; erase this parenthesis), it would remain quite obvious, from incentive arguments, epistemological arguments, and the fake evidence that Trump minions tried to produce, that they and Trump have been conning their followers. As Wall Street Journal editorialists, who tried hard for a couple of years to love Trump, wrote,
In other words, one should still refuse to live within a lie, as Vaclav Havel argued.
Second, the legitimacy issue is more complicated but, except under a tyranny, it not a pure matter of emotions. If one doesn’t espouse a Rousseauist state, one does not agree with either the Democrats or the Republicans that an election won by the other identity group is a negation of the “will of the people.”
Craig
Jun 11 2022 at 5:02pm
“In other words, one should still refuse to live within a lie, as Vaclav Havel argued.”
Let’s stipulate for purposes of this post that I genuinely believed Biden won. I’d suggest I’m still justified in defaming the legitimacy of his election as a peaceful form of the natural right of revolution, notwithstanding the participants in J6, I wasn’t there.
The bottom line, I just don’t want to live in blue America. I have proof too, I uprooted my family and I emigrated from North Jersey to get away from it. This is the Cold Civil War, at least mostly, I’m glad its cold too, I have no intention of fighting in any wars.
But as for the truth, well, to be honest, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. [How can one be honest about being willing to sacrifice the truth? ;-)]
Let’s assume that based on a lie about the election results, a constitutional crisis is triggered leading to a #nationaldivorce (low probability for sure, but the mental divorce is happening for sure). We wouldn’t be living with the lie because I’d suggest that in this course of human events, it has become necessary for a subset of the people to dissolve the political bands consisting of what are essentially a group of parasitic liars.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 13 2022 at 8:56pm
In today’s Wall Street Journal, there is a story, which I did not see before writing my post, and which illustrates the sort of in-your-face lying or post-truth bravado that makes Trump different from probably the worst Democrat, perhaps even Clinton:
Jim Glass
Jun 13 2022 at 11:12pm
I’m going to violate a Cardinal Rule and go way, way out on a limb to suggest a diagnosis from a distance: Trump reeks of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (Hey, I’m not the first person to suggest this, 2 million+ hits on Google, the first for me: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/16/politics/paul-ryan-donald-trump-narcissistic-personality-disorder/index.html)
This is a Cluster B disorder, I have some working familiarity with these, they also include Borderline, Histrionic and Anti-Social (psychopath! happily not Trump.)
People with these usually (not always) are not self-aware about them. That is, if you suffer from anxiety or depression you know you have a problem, but if you are amid Cluster B you (typically, not always) think you are fine, it is the whole world that is wrong. And you really believe it! No matter how obviously illogical it is.
That is, if Barr had had the FBI strap Trump down for a lie detector test, Trump very likely would have passed it as telling the truth when saying “I won the election! It was stolen from me!”. (One reason why lie detector results generally aren’t admissible in court, among many.) So yes, he was insistent about it!
Of course, this is no excuse whatsoever for the behavior of Giuliani and all the many other election steal enablers.
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 11:21pm
“he personally investigated a variety of fraud allegations, including claims of a “vote dump” in Detroit.”
Once a diamond leaves Ghana how do you know if its a conflict diamond?
Medicare loses what? $60 BILLION per year they ESTIMATE, USPS, Medicaid, the VA….shall I go on?
The state is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt, if there IS to be a presumption, that presumption should be that the elections are subject to fraud just like every other thing the government touches with its Midas touch.
So basically all we’ve proven here is that the government wasn’t willing to prove that its own elections are illegitimate.
Where’s the evidence of basic competence?
vince
Jun 15 2022 at 7:54pm
“The state is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt, if there IS to be a presumption, that presumption should be that the elections are subject to fraud just like every other thing the government touches with its Midas touch.
So basically all we’ve proven here is that the government wasn’t willing to prove that its own elections are illegitimate.
Where’s the evidence of basic competence?”
Excellent points. By constantly repeating a claim, the government and its PR Department (the mainstream media) don’t convert opinion into fact.
vince
Jun 15 2022 at 12:09am
Notice what Barr said: ““My opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was not stolen by fraud”
That’s just his opinion. He isn’t claiming it’s a fact. No one can.
Jon Murphy
Jun 12 2022 at 7:32am
I don’t think those two instances are that relevant to the point you’re making, mostly because it’s not obvious that either would result in the Dems necessarily winning anything. But also because the Dems still accept the results even when they’re not winning. Despite the rather insane conspiracy theories the Dems tossed about, they never deligitimized the transfer of power from Obama to Trump. They acted within the legitimate powers of Congress and did not resist every time they lost.
None of this is to justify the Dems, of course. But their actions were not nearly as reprehensible as some of the Republicans efforts after 2020
Jon Murphy
Jun 12 2022 at 8:41am
Let me rephrase my last paragraph slightly to be clearer:
There’s a significant difference between proposing unserious legislation (like court packing or eliminating the Electoral College) and being obstructive (such as the constant inquiries) and openly challenging and defying the transfer of power
MarkW
Jun 12 2022 at 8:44am
Despite the rather insane conspiracy theories the Dems tossed about, they never delegitimized the transfer of power from Obama to Trump.
They didn’t!? Not with the ‘resistance’ by partisans burrowed into the the ostensibly non-partisan bureaucracy? Not by taking phony oppo research from the Clinton campaign and lying about it to FISA courts in order to be able to spy on the Trump campaign? ‘Russian Collusion!’ wasn’t just an insane fringe conspiracy theory, it was everywhere — accepted and promoted ad nauseam by legions of prominent, ‘respectable’ voices. It was the basis for ongoing investigations and impeachment proceedings that hamstrung the Trump administration (of course denied its legitimacy) and came a whole lot closer to overturning the 2016 election than Jan 6 ever could have. Here’s Hillary Clinton in 2019. How is that not delegitimizing the transfer of power in no uncertain terms?
Don’t suppose I’m a Trump supporter or voter. But I don’t see any reason to ignore the truly egregious sins of the Democrats in this area. So, you know, vote 3rd party next time. Why not? The outcome will be the same, but you’ll feel better. And, more importantly, you’ll be less likely to downplay the faults of whoever you held you nose and voted for (which seems to be a tendency among a lot of libertarians — they hate Trump SO much they literally cannot see or credit the incredibly shady, corrupt things Democrats have done).
Monte
Jun 12 2022 at 10:15am
Hear, hear!
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 12 2022 at 5:10pm
Mark: Very interesting link you posted: I did not realize that Clinton went that far. But this, I think, does not change the fact Jon is right. The degree to which Trump has tried (and succeeded with the majority of his followers) to delegitimize the victory of his electoral opponent is much greater than what one disgruntled Democrat has said. The difference is well illustrated by the fact that Trump had twice suggested that he would not accept the election result if he did not win; and by so many other facts.
Buchanan, I believe, would have thought that both a Clinton administration and a Trump administration (and many others) would be illegitimate. That’s why he called for a “constitutional revolution.” This, however, cannot be done with lies and a ruler who is either crass ignorant or an admitted would-be dictator.
Craig
Jun 12 2022 at 6:05pm
“That’s why he called for a “constitutional revolution.” This, however, cannot be done with lies and a ruler who is either crass ignorant or an admitted would-be dictator.”
The government is morally, fiscally and institutionally bankrupt. Who cares?
In any event, its June 2022, that’s water under the bridge.
What matters is 2022 and hence 2024 and the bottom line is that Buchanan might have called for a “constitutional revolution” which I’d speculate is likely very similar to the Philadelphia Convention. I might add that when Madison was there and they were propounding a potential new constitutional order which would replace the Articles of Confederation there were certain aspects of the Articles of Confederation, specifically the fact that it called for change through unanimous consent of the members, which was not going to happen, not the least of which was “Rogue Island” as it was then called, didn’t even show up.
Basically Madison’s response to that is that he didn’t care, the AoC was a dead letter. The Constitution of 1787 set up a limited government of enumerated powers, but they made a mistake, they made the federal government itself the sole arbiter of the extent of federal authority and lo and behold the current government is many things, a limited government of enumerated powers is simply not one of them.
So when the dottering American Emperor Palpatine gets on stage and says he won’t answer the question as to what he will do about court packing until after the election, he’s telling you that he’s NOT interested in constitutional limits to his authority.
Really the Republicans should’ve stood up right there and then and cancelled the election and declared Trump Augustulus and moved forward with a constitutional convention towards dissolution.
“admitted would-be dictator”
If I were a “would be dictator” on J6 I would’ve lined them all up and shot them. I think that’s the first rule of Coup School, no?
Propaganda is a legitimate tactic in any conflict and this IS a conflict, Professor, make no mistake about it. I have every right to defame the legitimacy of a government that pursues illegitimate objectives. Beats grabbing a musket and running off to Manassas which I have absolutely NO intention of doing. Trust me, I’ll emigrate before partaking in any hot Civil War. But this IS a Cold Civil War.
What I think people overlook with respect to the aftermath of the 2020 election is that if Trump actually did pull that off somehow/someway, the left absolutely would NOT have accepted it. It would’ve been over, right there, right then.
MarkW
Jun 13 2022 at 7:18am
“Very interesting link you posted: I did not realize that Clinton went that far.”
Did you also not realize that Biden was saying the same thing?
“The degree to which Trump has tried (and succeeded with the majority of his followers) to delegitimize the victory of his electoral opponent is much greater than what one disgruntled Democrat has said.”
Do you really think that most Democrats disagreed with both their 2016 and 2020 standard-bearers and accepted Trump as legitimately elected? This poll suggests otherwise (65% of Democrats polled agree that their fellow partisans do not accept Trump as legitimately elected).
The idea that Putin’s election interference put Trump in office and that Trump was Putin’s stooge was absolutely mainstream on the left. It’s astonishing to me that memories of this are so short. Remember this? Which was soundly criticized only because…it was homophobic.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 13 2022 at 3:34pm
Mark: RE: Your comment starting with “Did you not realize…”.
I don’t think that your links show anything like what Trump did and is still doing.
One may cogently argue, from a constitutional economy perspective (or perhaps just after reading Lysander Spooner!), that all presidents starting in the late 19th century or the early 18th were illegitimate. Trump did much worse, besides his usual in-your-face lies: he has been shouting that Biden is illegitimate because of a fraudulent election, which he has openly tried to overturn.
In the first link you provided, Biden, answering a question, does nothing of the sort. The second link reports on an opinion poll where Democrats and Republicans were asked what they think that Democrats think! Why not what they think that Democrats think that fellow Democrats think? And I don’t know what to make of the caveat that “the poll uses a methodology that doesn’t produce a traditional margin of error.”
As for Colbert’s musings, they are just vulgar, like so many remarks by Trump. Nothing to learn there.
Jon Murphy
Jun 12 2022 at 6:10pm
That’s utterly absurd. Impeachment would not have overturned the 2016 election, even if Trump were removed from power. Mike Pence would have taken over. The results of the election would have stood (just like Clinton’s impeachment did not overturn the 1996 election, nor Nixon’s impeachment, nor Johnson’s impeachment…).
Besides, the original hope of the Framers was that Congress (and the Courts) would all jealously guard their powers. To claim “ongoing investigations and proceedings”, which are the explicit purview of Congress, denied legitimacy to the Trump Administration reduces Congress to a mere rubber stamp.
Again, this is not to say the Dems are paragons. Indeed, they represent a major threat to liberalism as well. But there is a rather significant difference between “Orange Man bad” and “I need you to find me the votes” (such as Trump wanted GA to do).
MarkW
Jun 13 2022 at 6:56am
Impeachment would not have overturned the 2016 election, even if Trump were removed from power. Mike Pence would have taken over.
Of course it would have overturned the election. No, Democrats would not have been in power, but Trump would have been out of office and that was the main goal. Mike Pence is nothing like Trump. Pence is a straight-laced, amiable, respectable, dull, traditional Republican of the type that Trump voters rejected and defeated in the primaries. Democrats would have been ecstatic to be able to remove Trump in favor of Pence.
Come to that, I would have much preferred Pence (or any other Republican candidate in the primaries) to Trump. But not via a lawfare coup — which is what impeachment based on a ginned up conspiracy theory would have been.
Jon Murphy
Jun 13 2022 at 7:21am
Again, that’s not “overturning” an election. It’s affirming the election as the order of succession and the power transfer that was chosen in 2016 remains intact.
Jon Murphy
Jun 13 2022 at 7:26am
Congress is not a rubber stamp to the President, nor is the President a supreme authority subject to no law. Congress has the power to impeach for just about any reason they want (and have exercised that power). To compare impeachment to a “coup” is to cheapen both terms.
Do not deny Congress their legitimate power. Down that road leads tyranny.
MarkW
Jun 13 2022 at 9:02am
Again, that’s not “overturning” an election. It’s affirming the election as the order of succession and the power transfer that was chosen in 2016 remains intact.
Come to that, the possible means for overturning the 2020 election (voting not to certify election results of certain states) too would have been entirely legal and constitutional — Congress does have the power to do it. But it would have been an outrageous, unprecedented abuse of that power. I believe the same applies to Congress impeaching a president based on an absurd, baseless conspiracy theory invented and promoted by the that president’s defeated political opponent. I am truly astounded by the people who do not see this. This has been an enlightening thread.
Jon Murphy
Jun 13 2022 at 9:10am
Sort of. It’s a bit complicated, but for our purposes here the complexities do not matter. What matters is Congress and the States chose to certify the election whereas Trump, his allies, and the rioters, sought to put illegal pressure on Congress and the States, refused to accept their judgement, and sought to violently contest.
There’s a world of difference. Do not conflate the two.
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 6:56pm
“Do not deny Congress their legitimate power. Down that road leads tyranny.”
I’d deny every power to Congress without blinking because they’re the road leading to tyranny. They’ve used their lawfully delegated authority illegitimately and Congress has expanded the scope of their authority because the federal government just so happens to be the sole arbiter of the scope of congressional authority.
Congressional deference isn’t warranted any longer, they’ve lost the benefit of the doubt and they should be relegated to the dustbin of history just like the framers of the 1787 Constitution did to the AoC.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Jun 12 2022 at 7:59am
I grant that a peaceful transfer of power is preferable to a civil war, but why in your theory is there a need for a transfer of power at all? Just becasue individual rulers are mortal?
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 12 2022 at 4:50pm
Thomas: Good question! By the way, it’s not my theory as much as William Riker‘s, which I try to combine with James Buchanan‘s; and it seems to me most classical liberals in the Scottish Enlightenment’s tradition were close to it.
One reason why power needs to be transferred to somebody else (besides death or incapacitation, as you mention) is that a large majority of voters may believe that the current government is not efficient at doing what government is meant to do, that is, producing what everybody wants but can’t be provided by the market. A related reason is that the government has become corrupt. A third and important reason is an abuse of power: the government has extended its own powers or otherwise violated the basic rules that unanimously legitimate the existence of the state. Elections are ways of vetoing the government.
In all cases, if the the government is vetoed by only a small (potentially incoherent) majority, that is, likely by mistake, the damage is minimal compared to the danger of the government staying in power. (“Minimal” as each individual would have considered in relation to himself at the constitutional level: if you hire a security guard and you end up not trusting him, your risk is lower in replacing him than in keeping him.) Remember that the “will of the people” does not exist; only the consent of each individual matters.
Jose Pablo
Jun 12 2022 at 8:58am
The “will of the people” is a problematic concept for the very basic fact that it does not exist.
Making a nonexistent philosophical concept the cornerstone of a system of government can only result in very significant problems.
Somebody is always going to interpret this nonexistent artificial construction in a way instrumental to their own ends. Like in any religion or cult, the high priests of “the will of the people” will explain and interpret it and, surely enough, their exegesis will significantly favor their own case.
And, in any case, where is the legitimacy of the “will of the people” coming from? At the end, like in any religion, it is the triumph of ignorance: since there is not right answer less find out voting the “people favorite” mistake.
It must be better ways to perform: “peaceful transfer of power”. For instance, the POTUS been elected randomly among all citizens older than 21 (after all, POTUS should be allowed to drink).
Among the many advantages of this system would be:
a) Any resemblance of legitimacy will be gone
b) “Government” should be designed to allow any moron to run it. With more independent “technical bodies” (akin to Central Banks) running other areas. This system will make obvious that having a moron as President is just a matter of time … exactly like now but catching us much better prepare to handle the situation.
Monte
Jun 12 2022 at 10:42am
In the polluted world of politics, by exercising my sacred right to vote, I manage at least to pick up my own litter. And no matter the outcome, this familiar quote by good old Abe always pacifies me:
“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 12 2022 at 6:34pm
Monte: This quote looks to me as a justification of the tyranny of the majority. There are things that should be forbidden for majorities to decide. As Buchanan wrote in his Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative,
Monte
Jun 13 2022 at 11:39am
Pierre: I agree that majorities should be forbidden to decide certain things, but I fail to see how Lincoln’s quote can, in any way, be construed as a justification of this. Quite the contrary, Lincoln was an avid constitutionalist and recognized, as the founders intended, that ours is a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy under which the “tyranny of the majority” would prevail. It’s true that Lincoln did embrace a majority principle, but one “held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations”, arguing, in essence, that it was “the only true sovereign of a free people” and the only real alternative to anarchy or despotism.
Jon Murphy
Jun 12 2022 at 8:01pm
Were that true! Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of votes have no effect on the outcome, so we don’t even get to “pick our own litter”
Monte
Jun 13 2022 at 11:54am
Ah…an electoral college antagonist? In its absence, we truly would have a tyranny of the majority. This, from E. J. Feulner, founder and former president of The Heritage Foundation:
Jon Murphy
Jun 13 2022 at 3:41pm
No. I am a major supporter of the EC. I am merely pointing out that no one vote has the effective power to change an election. Thus, it is incorrect to say that one’s vote represents one’s choice of litter.
Monte
Jun 13 2022 at 4:13pm
I think you’re basically agreeing with me here, Jon. My point in saying that I manage my own litter when I vote is the equivalent of saying I do my part to save the planet by picking up my own trash and disposing of it in a garbage can. It’s a dutiful act, but effectively makes no difference in reducing the overall level of pollution.
Jon Murphy
Jun 13 2022 at 4:38pm
If you want to call it a duty, that’s fine. But it is not “saving the planet” as it is an ineffective act.
Monte
Jun 13 2022 at 6:24pm
I thought I just said that. Maybe you’re echoing my sentiments in a better way?
Craig
Jun 14 2022 at 10:02am
One could call a not voting some form of voting itself. I actually fell out of voting because by the time I got back from the city, NJ polls were closed. When I moved out of my parents home, my wife and I moved to the next town over where I got my driver’s license, filed taxes, etc, I never re-registered because the state must’ve been pinging on my old voter registration and continued to send the jury summons to me at my parents’ home. That’s not good enough to be effective service so I just ignored them and I never re-registered because being able to avoid jury duty was worth a helluva lot more than voting.
Monte
Jun 14 2022 at 11:59am
I can certainly empathize with those who are cynical about the vote, but I remain committed to it, nevertheless. As a rational, self-interested voter prone to altruism, I refuse to forfeit this right.
vince
Jun 13 2022 at 1:51pm
To those who believe the election was not fraudulent, I say: Prove it!
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 13 2022 at 3:00pm
Vince: Here is a proof, as much as one can prove that “unicorns do not exist”: https://www.econlib.org/epistemology-economics-and-conspiracies/; please also read the two other posts of mine linked to in that one.
There is an epistemological problem in what you ask. To prove that “unicorns do not exist,” one just has to bring one and show it. But bringing a horse or a fly won’t do. Trump’s followers tried to to this, before multiple judges including some nominated by the Very Stable Genius himself. All unicorns revealed to be flies, including in the attempt to release the Craken!
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 6:50pm
I don’t remember any discovery taking place. When a motion to dismiss is granted, the standard of review for a judge is that judge should ASSUME that EVERY averment in the complaint is TRUE and that EVEN IF true, no cause of action exists.
Why would Trump, ostensibly the victim of the fraud, have the evidence?
We live in a world where they blip trillions of dollars into existence. We live in an ephemeral digital world where nothing is written in stone and everything is a keystroke away from being edited. A world where the CIA has proven it can absolutely pull something like this off.
vince
Jun 13 2022 at 3:26pm
Exactly. Unicorns do not exist. The voting system does not retain the evidence that could prove the result. Until that flaw is fixed, elections will be disputed and no one can prove the result. I can’t prove it was fraudulent, and you can’t prove it wasn’t.
If the January 6 protest accomplishes just one thing, it should be real voting reform. It’s not going in that direction. Another circus.
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 6:51pm
“I can’t prove it was fraudulent, and you can’t prove it wasn’t.”
But we’ll go for fraudulent because that works better for me 😉
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 13 2022 at 9:08pm
Craig: But “honest-to-God” works better for somebody else. If you abandon the criterion of truth in disagreements, no basis for solution or compromise exists. As Hobbes would have said, it’s “the war of war against all.” Or as some German philosophers would have said, it’s might that makes right.
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 11:24pm
“If you abandon the criterion of truth in disagreements, no basis for solution or compromise exists. ”
For purposes of…..very important three words. For purposes of the Cold Civil War. If your goal is to secede what is the mode? Military conflict? Guerilla war in the face of cameras and a surveillance state that is really, really formidable? With the most powerful military the world has ever seen? That’s not a good idea and frankly I’d emigrate before I fought anyway. Nevertheless, the legitimacy, as of RIGHT NOW, that is the only potential Achille’s heal of the federal government that I see as potentially exploitable.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 14 2022 at 12:02pm
Craig: But if you tell me that you don’t respect the truth when it goes against an interest of yours, why would I believe you?
vince
Jun 15 2022 at 12:16am
“But if you tell me that you don’t respect the truth when it goes against an interest of yours, why would I believe you?”
Exactly. And those who claim it’s a fact that election was not fraudulent don’t respect the truth–the truth being that no one prove it. It’s opinion, not fact.
Jim Glass
Jun 13 2022 at 11:53pm
The voting system does not retain the evidence that could prove the result. Until that flaw is fixed, elections will be disputed and no one can prove the result.
Where does this silliness come from? Actual voting fraud has been proved countless times in this country. Many stories are legendary. When large-scale fraud exists it leaves evidence all over the place. Especially among politicians. Election poll workers are the lowest paid patronage hacks of the political parties.
I can’t prove it was fraudulent, and you can’t prove it wasn’t.
Your problem isn’t that you can’t prove it was, but that you have no evidence supporting your claim at all. All you have is this reaction, a classic admittedly, but hardly anything new, or substantive at all.
The law works by placing the burden of proof on the person making the charge of wrongdoing, not the person defending against it. Don’t like that? Think it is illogical?
Ok, then I charge you with being a serial child molester. I can’t prove it, but you can’t prove that you never molested a whole bunch of children. So you are guilty. You are a demonstrated child molester to the exact same extent that the election was demonstrated fraudulent. More so even! Because there’d be a heck of a lot more evidence of national voter fraud than of one person being a child molester.
By the way, do you consider Republicans to be competent politicians who are competitive with the Democrats? Yes?
Then tell us how many electoral offices the Republicans fraudulently stole from the Democrats. I say … many! all over the country! I dare you to prove it is not so. You can’t. Ha! Massive fraud at polls committed by Republicans is thus shown.
.
Craig
Jun 14 2022 at 12:24am
“The law works by placing the burden of proof on the person making the charge of wrongdoing”
Indeed a great general rule and there actually are exceptions in courts where the burden of proof shifts actually. But we needn’t get into that because this isn’t a court of law, this is the court of public opinion and the fact of the matter is that the government has a continuous, perpetual duty to prove and bolster its legitimacy to the people and the people can judge for themselves that legitimacy based on their own individual conscience.
You made up your mind, I made up my mind before Trump was even elected. I don’t have any duty or evidentiary burden to you to prove the government is illegitimate, that’s up to whatever standard you personally want to employ as any juror in the court of public opinion.
vince
Jun 15 2022 at 7:44pm
Confidence in an election isn’t based on the legal principle of burden of proof. Voter have to believe the system is fair.
The current system is circular and incompatible with burden of proof–the evidence that could prove it is not available.
If the black box says candidate A wins, then A wins, by law. If the same votes were tallied by the black box, but the same black box says B wins, then B wins, by law. Same votes, different black box result. Yet each result is considered undisputed fact–after the fact.
vince
Jun 15 2022 at 7:34pm
“Your problem isn’t that you can’t prove it was, but that you have no evidence supporting your claim at all. All you have is this reaction, a classic admittedly, but hardly anything new, or substantive at all.”
And you have the same problem. You don’t have sufficient evidence. All you have, too, is your reaction but hardly anything new or substantive at all.
And that’s the whole issue. Accountable evidence doesn’t exist. A black box spits out the winner. To end disputes, change the system so that enough evidence is available that we can have confidence in the result.
Maniel
Jun 13 2022 at 4:16pm
“Are elections important?” I say it depends. This century, the USA has not had a president with the kind of leadership or management skills of a George Marshall, a Dwight Eisenhower, or a Margaret Thatcher; not even close. However, our Constitution tells us that we need a president to lead the federal government and outlines a process for the citizenry to select a new one at regular intervals. Therefore, if we agree to follow that process and if all candidates agree to abide by the results, then I say yes, elections do matter. If we don’t do that, the “great experiment” in democracy fails and we should probably all read “The decline and fall of the Roman Empire.”
As a boy, I loved baseball. One summer day, I was the batter in a Babe-Ruth-League game, with a 3-ball, 2-strike count on me. The next pitch looked inside to me, but the umpire called it the third strike (aargh!). “That was inside,” I protested. The umpire, a Tarheel boy, simply said, “aintcha never seen a curve ball?” In the midst of my humiliation, I couldn’t help laughing. I admire the kids we were then: “play the umpire’s call, son.” There are worse things in baseball than being called out on strikes, such as being a cheater, a sore loser, or a crybaby. And by the way, the umpire, who is the same age I am, has been a lifelong friend. The point: that’s “the American way” that we learned: play by the rules and be gracious, in victory or defeat.
vince
Jun 13 2022 at 5:29pm
“The point: that’s “the American way” that we learned: play by the rules and be gracious, in victory or defeat.”
Sure—and change the rules when they need it. End-to-end auditable voting?
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 13 2022 at 8:44pm
Vince: Your idea is very European, with a vengeance. Why not implant a chip under the skin of every “citizen”–call it a citizen-chip? When he votes, his vote is copied on, and stored in, his citizen-chip. So “the authorities” can always tell him “Your papers, please!” and with their chip reader audit his vote. Better for our purpose: just be walking or driving around or droning around for a few days with their chip readers, the cops could audit the vote. Privacy rules could be devised. Elections results would be uncontestable–not counting those who have refused to have the chip implanted, of course–but there would be no citizens left in any meaningful sense.
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 8:47pm
One can take any point, bring it to its extreme and of course then it will become absurd, Professor. I’d suggest your anecdote here is an argumentem ad absurdum.
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 9:10pm
“Why not implant a chip under the skin of every “citizen”–call it a citizen-chip? ”
Personally I hope they do nothing about it because my personal desire is secession, my causus secesscio is election integrity.
Believe what you want to believe but the polls are clear that the majority of Republicans in the US think 2020 was a fugazi as of 11/2021 in an NPR article: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/01/1050291610/most-americans-trust-elections-are-fair-but-sharp-divides-exist-a-new-poll-finds
So ultimately I’d suggest if you want this thing to continue, you better do something about that to bolster their confidence in election integrity whether you think they’re right or not because there may not be many people like me, but if you haven’t noticed the background calls for #nationaldivorce are definitely more vocal than at any time I’ve been alive and trust me, if given a chance (and of course I won’t be because I’m too busy working) I’d put a stake through the heart of this government’s ‘legitimacy’ without blinking.
vince
Jun 15 2022 at 12:12am
Yes, let’s plant a chip in every straw man.
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 8:45pm
“The point: that’s “the American way” that we learned: play by the rules and be gracious, in victory or defeat.”
But in defeat they take more than half your income (thousands and thousands of hours), so….yeah….sorry, that doesn’t work for me, crackheads kill their mothers for far less. I moved 1200 miles to get away from it, I promise you one thing, I’ll NEVER be gracious about it.
Maniel
Jun 14 2022 at 7:42pm
@Craig
“But in defeat they take more than half your income (thousands and thousands of hours), so….yeah….sorry, that doesn’t work for me, crackheads kill their mothers for far less. I moved 1200 miles to get away from it, I promise you one thing, I’ll NEVER be gracious about it.”
Okay, I give up: I don’t know what “defeat” you’re discussing, who “they” are or who you are, or where you “moved 1200 miles” from. What would victory have looked like?
Jim Glass
Jun 13 2022 at 10:37pm
“In a constitutional democracy, elections are important for basically one reason: they allow a peaceful transfer of power.”
Or perhaps they also provide the legitimacy of the government. Which is why so many authoritarian regimes which assure they never change make sure they win elections that are often credibly fair. (It’s not much of a trick for an authoritarian regime to assure it will win an election without rigging the ballot box.)
And voters can change the nature of a regime as well. Not always for the better, many times for the worse. Many examples.
I’ll take “constitutional democracy” to mean “constitutional liberal democracy”, as there’s no shortage of authoritarian democracies with constitutions that they actually follow, more or less. (See: Russia. Putin and his party are popularly elected, and moving from authoritarian towards fascism, but he restrains himself to running a “special military operation” because declaring a war would cause him a host of problems under the Russian constitution.)
In the popular conception “liberal democracy” often is taken to be one thing with a two-word name. In reality liberal government and democratic government are two different things.
Liberal institutions assure rights of the individual and limited powers of government, and have a strong record of advancing personal freedom, economic development and healthy democratic processes.
In contrast, democracies — majority rule voting regimes — have a very iffy record in these areas, with voters driving these processes backwards as often as forwards. Because all voters — including you, me, and everyone else — are profoundly ignorant about 98% of everything the govt does, and 100% susceptible to the emotional reasoning and manipulation, cognitive fallacies and tribalism that affect all human beings. (I know, we particularly enlightened people here think we aren’t, but we fully are.)
So, if choosing between liberal and democratic policies, choose liberal. Liberal institutions preceded democracy in Britain, the USA, the Anglosphere and Western Europe, where things have generally gone well. Where democracy preceded liberal institutions, not so much, from ancient Greece (where popular democracy was recognized to typically lead to dictatorship) to Eastern Europe today, where the further east one goes into former Soviet territory the more dictatorial the “authoritarian democracies” are, from Orban in Hungary to Putin and the dictators of all the ‘akistans. Democracy, voting, is a thing the people there know well — but liberal rights are an alien concept to them.
As they still are to perhaps 75% of the world today — including too many voters right here in the USA, where I guess kids in school aren’t taught civics (how the Constitution works) and real history anymore (only social studies).
This is the one real threat to the USA’s leadership of the world in the next 100 years. We can only do in ourselves. As Stephen Kotkin has pointed out, there’s nobody else in the world to come close to catching us in our lifetimes, if we don’t sabotage ourselves. The Russian regime’s self-destroying delusion is that it is entitled by force to be recognized as a world power equal to NATO & the EU & Japan combined, with a corresponding sphere of influence, when it has a GDP smaller than New York’s and shrinking. (When the littlest guy in the Texas bar decides to prove he’s the toughest guy there, bad things happen.) China will never catch the USA for a host of reasons. There’s nobody else.
But our self-defeating delusion is that we aren’t the world’s #1 leader by far militarily, economically, and most importantly institutionally. As our democracy is undercutting our institutions. When Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is on tape deriding Trump’s bogus stolen election claims and the January 6th riot, so everyone knows he knows reality, but he then publicly says “never mind” and works to bury the truth and protect the stolen election-rioter wing of the party — in spite of, what, 62 court cases finding no election theft — something is seriously wrong with our democratic process.
Happily, our liberal institutions have held so far. Trump wasn’t the guy to defeat them. He’s a politically incompetent narcissist, which is why he lost the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives while president, and among his other accomplishments had his chosen candidate lose a senate seat to the Democrats in Alabama(!!). A competent anti-liberal authoritarian politician like Orban, or maybe Huey Long, (or Putin, Mussolini, Adolf) would have held all those and gotten re-elected and expanded.
But the fact that so many right-side voters remain in thrall to this blatant political failure and his transparent frauds — to the point where they are willing to destroy the electoral system — is an alarming fact about the democracy side of our liberal democracy indeed.
Well, it’s not the 1850s, perhaps it will pass.
Craig
Jun 14 2022 at 12:08am
“But the fact that so many right-side voters remain in thrall to this blatant political failure”
The Trump cult might be a cult, but its the only cult that wants less of your income. You have every right to judge Trump for Trump, but I judge Trump for the successes I was able to have.
“transparent frauds”
The TJCA doesn’t lie and the 1040 is very objective. And I might add the TJCA is, rather shockingly to me, still the law.
“to the point where they are willing to destroy the electoral system”
Yes, because Trump is the difference between living in a society where the government makes the majority of economic decisions with my income (federal, state and local of course) vs a society where I make the majority of economic decisions with my income.
And yes, I’m willing to destroy the electoral system for that because governments serve a purpose and if you’re taking more than half my income, then you’re not serving that purpose anymore and I’m going to throw it out with the garbage.
“is an alarming fact about the democracy side of our liberal democracy indeed.”
I’d say its alarming that people have such deference for a government that obviously knows no limits.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 14 2022 at 11:37am
Craig: There is some problem in summarizing all political issues (including issues of individual liberty) in the taxes that one pays. If you had been living in Portugal under Salazar or in Spain under Franco, you would have paid less taxes in total and a at lower tax rate than if you had been living in France. But your after-tax income would likely have been much higher in France. Would you have preferred to stay in Portugal or Spain? This argument, often used to justify Leviathan, has limits, but it does illustrate the weakness of an argument of the sort: “Yes, he is a tyrant but he leaves more of my money.”
Craig
Jun 14 2022 at 12:40pm
But Professor, I’m not interested in living in Europe, you know after all, I’m not European. This is about real events happening right here in the US. I emigrated from NJ because its what I would call ‘mostly NOT free’ and left for FL. My home in FL and TN I might add are paid for by the taxes I no longer have to pay to the People’s Republic.
The blue cancer though knows no limits. So the bartender from Queens was down in TX and she says, “‘We flip Texas, we flip the country’ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ocasio-cortez-flip-texas-democrats-b2014337.html
And of course she’s correct. Its abundantly clear to me that they want to flip the country blue. But here’s the thing, I don’t want to live in Blue America and if it means delegitimizing the election results to prevent that from happening, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. Sadly, they’re also not going to self-deport any time soon and I’m not suggesting they do. I WANT California to be blue, I WANT NY to be blue, I don’t want to flip them red.
If you sit back and do nothing, its a slow boil to democratic socialism.
“There is some problem in summarizing all political issues (including issues of individual liberty) in the taxes that one pays.”
Its incrementalism and its always ‘just a little bit more’ and even at 56% they were still looking for more, after all bartenders need tips, I suppose. And she probably preferred evading tax on her cash tips, I’m sure.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 14 2022 at 11:22am
Jim: I agree with everything you said (if we agree that anarchy is not feasible or desirable). My only quibble is that the beginning of your comment (“Or perhaps they also provide the legitimacy of the government”) doesn’t look consistent with the remainder. Majoritarian elections don’t confer legitimacy to the government of a constitutional democracy; they only do so if they are constitutional elections that respect the constraints imposed to democracy. Majoritarian elections as such only confer legitimacy to the government if one believes in raw democracy, not in constitutional democracy. (Switzerland looks like a historical outlier.)
By the way, when James Buchanan says “constitutional democracy,” he means the same as “liberal democracy.” The classical liberal tradition cannot be separated from limits on government. In this perspective, saying “constitutional liberal democracy” is pleonastic but not incorrect.
Jim Glass
Jun 15 2022 at 9:26pm
Someone says such a thing on the Internet?! Yea for humanity!
Anarchy actually exists in international relations. Always has. It’s not a theoretical thing.
I recently saw a video map of all the wars in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire until the 20th Century. It looked like a bubbling cauldron as all the warlords, fiefdoms, kings and emerging states continuously went after each other. This isn’t counting all the civilian massacres, ‘ethnic cleansings’ and such that went along with it all. The word “genocide” didn’t exist until 1944 because before the 20th Century that’s just what happened, nobody noticed. Things calmed down only very slowly as the local rulers grew geographically and, like good monopolists everywhere, eliminated the competing providers of violence in their areas — then less slowly as liberal regimes emerged in the west.
So, I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit skeptical about anarchy! (The vid is on YouTube, I’ll look for it in my clip file.)
Legitimacy in whose mind? Theoretical political scientists, perhaps.
I’d say that a won popular election provides a significant degree of legitimacy in the mind of ruled populations (which is why Putin and such authoritarians go to all the trouble to win them) and in the minds of the international community.
Ukraine has a notoriously corrupt government, with oligarchs of its own and all the rest, as the result of being a spin-off of the Soviet Union. Does that mean its popularly elected government lacks legitimacy in the view of its own people and of the western liberal democracies? Apparently not!
Ukraine, as grossly corrupt as it is, has clearly been moving in the direction of becoming a real liberal democracy, which has given its democracy plenty of legitimacy to Ukrainians and to the west. And to Putin too — as his fear of having such a legitimate democracy appear on his border is the cause of the whole war.
Putin decides the regimes in Kazakhstan, Chechnia, Belarus, Syria etc. have no legitimacy and so takes them over. Well, he’s right. Who in the west cares? Nobody elected them.
Craig
Jun 13 2022 at 11:45pm
I believe you set up your contrast well.
“In reality liberal government and democratic government are two different things.”
And then you go on to define it most pertinently: “Liberal institutions assure rights of the individual and limited powers of government, and have a strong record of advancing personal freedom, economic development and healthy democratic processes.”
I think that is a great definition.
But:
“Happily, our liberal institutions have held so far. Trump wasn’t the guy to defeat them.”
I disagree, our ‘liberal institutions’ as you are using the term have been slowly eroding since the New Deal and the US is currently on slow boil to democratic socialism.
Trump wasn’t the guy, but he was the guy to stir up a hornets nest.
“Well, it’s not the 1850s, perhaps it will pass.”
Most probably it will, but then again nobody is saying slavery this time and we now live in an era where Quebec and Scotland didn’t vote yes, but Canada and the UK would’ve recognized a ‘yes’ vote.
Luke J
Jun 14 2022 at 4:31pm
And here I plug ranked-choice voting and run-offs, both of which represent incremental improvements toward approximating the “will of the people.”
vince
Jun 15 2022 at 12:58pm
Yes, both help us break out of the duopoly. Our system is one of the worst systems. It gives third parties low chance of winning and high chance of a spoiler effect. Instant runoff is much better. Another excellent, simple alternative is approval voting.
Pierre Lemieux
Jun 15 2022 at 5:38pm
There is no electoral gadget that will remove the Condorcet paradox without violating one of Arrow’s conditions. See my “The Impossibility of Populism.”
vince
Jun 15 2022 at 6:16pm
Failure of an axiom doesn’t make alternative equal.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 3 2022 at 1:07pm
Of course. An alternative may however give the false impression that preferences have been successfully aggregated, while it is just another plurality (or majority) that winds.
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